When a society discards individual responsibility in favor of collective or corporate control, it is saying that random killings like those in Charleston and Roanoke – and the brutal massacre of the deputy sheriff in Harris County (Houston), Texas – are acceptable collateral damage.

Think on this, my fellow Americans…if I go for a drive today, what is there to stop me from running every red light and stop sign in town?

Even if there is a police car sitting at the intersection, they can’t stop me – they can ticket me or arrest me afterwards and at some point later, a court can determine my innocence or guilt and impose punishment but in reality, there are no collective answers for individual acts. Laws and law enforcement are by definition lagging actions. Neither can prevent every infraction because they are neither omnipresent or omnipotent.

In truth, there is nothing external to my person that can force me to obey the traffic laws. Only my own self-governance, self-interest in my own health combined with my desire not to cause harm to others or their property causes the behavior I exhibit when I get behind the wheel. Traffic laws only work because each individual driver knows the laws and shares the same desires that I do. Traffic laws are only valid because people choose to give them validity.

Collectivism can never achieve individual control. Collectivism is a vehicle to avoid individual responsibility and accountability -both in the governing and the governed. It is seen today – individual acts are blamed on any variety of collective psychosis to avoid blaming the individual. Sally Kohn, a dreadful progressive CNN contributor actually commented that Vester Lee Flanagan might well have been discriminated against because he was black and gay. She actually implied that his actions might have some justification by tweeting: “was mentally unstable AND appears to have acted out of sense of victimization i have no reason to believe not justified.”

In reaction to these tragedies, the progressive statist left calls for more collective and corporate control – in this case, focusing on the presence of a gun. They seek more laws and more government – but it isn’t more collectivism we need, it is more individualism. More individual freedom, more individual responsibility and more individual self-governance. The very reason gun ownership is increasing is directly related to the inability of the collective to protect the individual – for over 30 years, the courts (SCOTUS as well) have held that police have no specific duty to protect the public. Realizing that they could be victims of the random acts of violence the collective considers acceptable loss, citizens logically opt to enact ways to protect themselves and their families.

The external controls and threats of punishment imposed by a overweening state do prevent some things – chief among them is the prevention of the individual from ever questioning, exploring, testing or developing their own internal controls. Why would they? The state will do that for them and as long as they are “legal”, they never have to worry about whether a thing is moral or not. They never have to be personally liable for their acts. They never have to worry about being personally accountable to any authority higher than the state.

Vester Lee Flanagan legally bought the gun he used to kill. He lived his life legally. Even though people were witness to his mental instability, the collective excused and ignored it and now choose to blame the gun and the “sick gun culture” in America.

What a butt load of male bovine fecal material. Progressives blame guns because to actually address the real problem highlights that they really do consider people like Alison Parker, Adam Ward and Deputy Darren Goforth acceptable collateral damage – sacrifices, actually – to the furtherance of their political goals.

Call it God, religion, faith, morality or simply a code of behavior, absent one of these that doesn’t include the very basic tenets of the Biblical Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments, we can expect more horrendous crimes like those witnessed within the past week to continue.

The issue America faces is not a proliferation of guns – it is the proliferation of the state and the substitution of any sort of individual moral code with collective ambiguity and legalism.