According to Yahoo News, Utah lawmakers easily passed a resolution through the initial hearing that would make the Browning M1911 the official state gun of Utah. Whatever. That's unnecessary, and the only point to it is pro-NRA grandstanding.
The reason for my post is that Republican Representative Carl Wimmer said that the semi-automatic pistol: "defended American values and the traditions of this country for 100 years".
Here's my problem. The moment I read that, I immediately thought: you don't defend values with guns-- you defend borders and people with guns. Values are ideas. You don't enforce ideas at gunpoint! Well, you do if you're Christians, just ask the Native Americans. Ideas are attacked with reason, and defended with words. This guy just illustrated what's wrong with this country.
I have values-- lots of them, and they are very well thought-out because I think about them constantly. But I guarantee you that when someone like him says "American values", he's talking about something very different from my values.
And traditions aren't defended with guns either. Traditions either stand the test of time or they don't; in a kind of Darwinian evolutionary process, traditions fade away if they don't reflect the current values of society. Tradtions, to conservatives like him, mean all the wrong things. Traditions should not defended. They should be able to survive on their own. If they can't, the sooner they die, the better. That's what I have to say to representative Wimmer.
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