I’m tempted to say that the Orlando tragedy finally puts an end to the debate about whether guns should be easier or harder to get. In the words of Fat Al, a logical mind coupled with a spirit of goodwill would declare unequivocally that “the debate is over.”

But given the shortage of both logical minds and goodwill, I’m not naïve enough to believe it is. Experience tells me that the people who want only murderers to have guns will never give up.

A newly arrived, rational humanoid from another galaxy, upon learning the facts in the gun-control debate, would likely ask, “Who in the world are these strange creatures who want to prevent people from defending themselves?” The answer is that they fall into two groups.

The first group resides in Watters’ World and muddles through life in a kneejerk fashion, its members basing their opinions on emotion and thus providing a target-rich environment for sloganeers. You know, drivel like “That’s not who we are as a people,” “equal pay for equal work,” and “income inequality is our biggest problem.”

Those in the second group have a political agenda and are, at best, amoral. At worst, they are out-and-out immoral. Which means neither human rights nor human lives are of any particular significance to them. They prey upon the useful idiots who stumble through life in the first group and promote nonstop hatred against those to whom human rights and human life are sacrosanct.

The Second Amendment is not subject to the whims of criminal politicians and their civilian cheerleaders. On the contrary, the Second Amendment is a fact of life in what is supposed to be a free country, a country where politicians and bureaucrats are supposed to be servants of the people.

While the Framers made it clear that the main purpose of the right to bear arms was to protect oneself and one’s family from the government, they also realized that people needed the ability to protect themselves from (non-government) criminals. Over and over again, we see defenseless human beings being gunned down like fish in a barrel by lunatics who are intent on taking human lives.

The reason they harbor such a psychopathic intent is irrelevant. Right now, of course, a disproportionate number of such lunatics refer to themselves as Muslims. Repeat: They refer to themselves as Muslims. That’s not an opinion; it’s an indisputable fact.

But, as I said, it doesn’t matter what a murderer’s motivation is. What matters is stopping him from killing, and that can only happen if we make some major changes in the generally accepted beliefs of millions of Americans.

I’ve always admitted that if only one or two people were armed in a mass-murder scenario, things unfold so fast that they would probably be dead before they could even get their guns out. In other words, it’s a numbers game.

In the Orlando slayings, for example, imagine if just 50 percent of the people in that nightclub had been armed. That’s about 150 armed folks against a single gunman! Common sense tells you that many of those armed people would have had time to pull out their weapons and start firing at the shooter.

It’s a pretty good bet that he would have been lucky to kill ten or twenty people before he himself was gunned down, which means that thirty or forty innocent people would still be alive today. Having to wait for the police to come and take down the gunman or gunmen is nothing short of suicidal.

Nevertheless, the agenda-driven presidential pretender has already pivoted into his gun-control mode. Why? Because his every action (and inaction) is agenda driven, and his agenda is to destroy the United States of America and silence those who oppose his efforts.

Those in the gun-control brigade care nothing about human rights or human lives. So the drumbeat for gun control continues to grow even while defenseless people are being murdered by maniacs who know they will encounter no resistance when they attack a soft target.

The fact is that we need more guns in more hands, not less. As Armageddon continues to unfold before our very eyes, Americans need to be armed to the teeth. Background checks are fine if used only as a weapon to weed out criminals (who, unfortunately, are going to find a way to get their hands on guns anyway), but as to the rest of us, the government has no right to restrict either open or concealed carry of weapons in public.

You and I already have the right, as supposedly free people, to carry a weapon with us at any and all times. The government, on the other hand, has no right to interfere with our God-given and constitutional rights.

Speaking for myself, I would feel much safer if I knew, before I entered a store, restaurant, or movie theater, that a majority of the people inside were armed. Did you ever hear of an ordinary citizen, carrying a concealed weapon, suddenly pulling it out and killing someone? It simply doesn’t happen.

To help the antigun freaks understand more easily, I’ll offer an analogy. There are tens of millions of cars on the road, but how many times do drivers purposely run down pedestrians or smash into another car head on? It happens, but very rarely.

The reality that the anti-gun lobby doesn’t seem to get, or doesn’t want to get, is that O.J. did just fine without a gun or a car, and endless other murderers have achieved their goal of snuffing out one or more lives by using a pillow, a crowbar, or a poison pill.

None of these killing tools have free will, thus they don’t have the capacity to kill anyone. The will to murder resides only in the mind of a human being. That said, the debate should be over, but, unfortunately, it’s not.