I always thought that the fundamental untrustworthiness of human nature is why we need laws. Even among normally law-abiding, sensible, decent people, judgment is impaired from time to time, sometimes fatally, by emotion, by stress, chemicals, hormones, hot sun, sweltering nights, youth and any number of other things. Civilization, I thought, was the difference between the Wild West – check out the bronze plaques here and there about Hays – and modern America.

Apparently I was mistaken, and the problem with the Old West was that there was not enough guns and too much law, because now, in 2015, it’s not enough that in Kansas practically anybody over age 18 can carry a firearm openly. At least 26 Kansas senators want to give to anyone who can legally own a weapon the ability to carry it concealed. Period. If you are 18 and can buy it, you can hide it on your person and go out in public. Sen. Terry Bruce, the Senate majority leader, was quoted as saying he doesn’t think it will lead to a lot of shootings. “Most incidents, I believe, they resolve themselves with the gun being brandished.”

Brandished. The Senate majority leader said that. He is a highly-placed, elected official of the state of Kansas. I would have thought that the math is pretty simple: Human nature plus more guns equals more shooting. But brandishing, that’s not so bad, is it?

Sen. Bruce must also perceive some basic shift in human nature that is hidden to me. We can now trust the citizenry at large to go about its daily business armed and yet behave peacefully in almost all the infinite variety of possibly contentious human interaction. The speaker is obviously willing to bet on it. Our senator of the 40th District, Sen. Ralph Ostmeyer, puts so much faith in the speaker’s take on the fundamental reasonableness of humanity that he didn’t even bother to read the bill before signing on as a co-sponsor.
Well, OK. If that’s what they want to do, they certainly have the numbers to do it, so maybe the best thing is to try to make the best of it. If we think it through it a little more, maybe we can even extend the benefits out beyond the warm, fuzzy feeling of safety and warrior chic that comes from wearing a .45 into the dry cleaner’s, the drug store, Wal-Mart, The Mall – wherever.

One thing that comes to mind right away is budget savings, this being Kansas. State budget, I mean. In the great free-market, capitalist tradition of America, surely there is a way to take the increased trustworthiness of the general population, and the resulting improvement in sound judgment, and monetize it by way of tax cutting.

Take, just as a for instance, the Kansas Highway Patrol. Its budget for the current year is about $81 million. If we can trust ordinary, everyday 21st-century citizens to carry guns as they go to and fro about their daily business, surely we can trust them to be reasonable and responsible in the operation of motor vehicles. Oh, we’ll still need a few troopers to accompany the governor for the appropriate showing of pomp and ceremony, and perhaps a few for other ceremonial occasions, and some for the interstates because we don’t want such people as Missourians, Coloradoans and Texans to take advantage.

But savings in the $60 million to $70 million range might just be possible in this one area alone.

Local law enforcement savings may have to wait for a while. A certain critical mass of firearms might be necessary before you could start eliminating city and county police. Perhaps a subsidy of some sort would be a wise investment. You know the old saying: Shoot a bad guy for a citizen and the citizen is safe for a day. Give the citizen a gun, and he’s safe for a lifetime. Besides, a handgun and an initial stock of ammunition – we could give it a cool name like “Second Amendment Liberty Kit” – would be a one-time outlay. Once somebody gets a taste for shooting things, chances are good that he or she will become self-arming in perpetuity.

A cop, on the other hand, requires ongoing expenditures for salary, health care and pension, not to mention ammunition, targets for practice, cars, etc. There’s just no end to the expense.

And how about this: If your everyday man or woman on the street is to be trusted to casually carry the tools of death, subject only to his or her own judgment at any given moment of stress, then surely highly educated, responsible professionals such as doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, nurses, morticians and psychiatrists don’t need all the expensive watchdog and licensing machinery currently required just for the practice of their professions. The institutions that gave them their training wouldn’t graduate them if they weren’t qualified, right? See, millions and millions more in savings, and I bet our Legislature, full as it is of common-sensical, no nonsense, righteous red-state folks, can come up with a lot more. It’s kind of a point of pride with most of them.

The key thing here is that with enough tax savings and enough guns, we can pretty quickly get to the point where Kansas is just like Texas. A certain kind of nit-picky elite might point out that Kansas has only a fraction of Texas’ oil reserves, fracking or no fracking, and they might harp on the fact that Kansas has not a single mile of coast, and therefore does not have a single port city or beach resort, whereas Texas has Houston, Galveston, Corpus Christi, Texas City, Padre Island, Brownsville, Port Aransas, Matagorda Bay and many other lesser centers of international commerce and tourist trade.

But, let’s not forget what’s important here: zero income tax and an astronomical per capita quantity of guns. If you’ve got that, who needs all that other stuff?

Kurt Beyers is a former newspaperman who now works for University Relations at Fort Hays State University.