Guns: The Price We Pay For Freedom

The politicizing started only seconds after the shooting stopped. The “Ban the Guns” crowd mobilized like a SWAT team and the airwaves buzzed with the media call for A-C-T-I-O-N!
It’s all so appalling. In one breath they said that children died and in the next they played politics.

The two arguments are: “Guns are bad and no one should be allowed to own them.”  versus: “ The gun is not the crime.”

“If the shooter didn’t have a gun, those people would be alive now. If there was an armed person there to stop the shooter, those people would be alive now. “

Whichever you believe, the certainty of our world is that guns do exist and they aren’t ever going away. If you can’t get one here, you will get one from someplace else. Guns smuggled from China or even the world’s second largest supplier of the world’s arms, Russia, would find their way into the American market. The law of Supply and Demand will make it so. What have we ever really stopped from coming across the border? 

The South American drug cartels smuggle loads of guns into the United States while they are bringing drugs. They use the guns to protect their illegal drug networks. A case could be made that the government itself is driving the illegal gun trade since they have made certain drugs illegal. Literally thousands of people in the U.S. are killed each year due to shootings connected to the illegal drug business. As I recall, much of the shooting stopped when the Prohibition on alcohol was lifted back in 1933. This is somehow different?

Then there is the matter of citizen gun ownership being the 2^nd most important Amendment to the U.S. Bill of Rights.  It is widely said that the 2nd Amendment guarantees the 1st. Where would any of the rights laid down in the Bill of Rights without the means to defend them? There are over 5 million firearms manufactured and sold in the United States. Millions more are imported for the North American market.

A ban on guns is an unrealistic approach to this gun crime in America. Now what?

I heard a criminologist report that the United States averages 20 mass shootings per year. A mass shooting is described as a shooting of 4 or more people. We the public do not hear of many of these shootings.

And we very seldom if ever hear of the people who successfully defending themselves and others with guns but it happens all the time. We wouldn’t want that to become a national trend now, would we?

But guns in America are a double edged sword. They keep the peace, they break the peace. They can save and they can vanquish. They can drive an enemy before you or a friend. They forged a new nation on the North American continent. They are inanimate, unthinking tools, they cannot choose.

There was a time in this country that every town had a place to shoot and a boy started with a BB gun and received his first 22 cal. rifle at the age of 12 which was precisely the age I shot my first rifle at Summer camp. There was gun education, gun clubs, shooting teams and people who taught you how to be responsible with guns. Those were the days where America’s wars affected everyone’s lives and the nation united in their prosecution and where American sharp shooters turned the tide of battles. Every hear of Sargent York?  

Now most kids grow up knowing nothing about guns, their safety or the responsibilities that come with them, they’re only told that they are just BAD. This is the standard, substandard education they get these days. They don’t have to own one but they should know all we can teach them about them, their history, what they can do and the laws governing them. Ignorance is fear.

And if you think all the English ever did with them was shoot Indians then you’re in the wrong place so Stop reading and get off my page!

The British marched on Lexington for what? To get the guns and powder stored there and guns continue to be the first thing sought out when people’s faith in their government falter. People immediately grow suspicious and start hoarding guns at the first hint of another government anti-gun “Crusade”.

Instead of trying to ban guns we should work to keep guns out of the hands of people who we know shouldn’t have them; the mentally ill, the loners, the criminal. We should remain vigilant to point out the isolated and disenfranchised among us who, with murder in their hearts, wish to harm others with whatever means at their disposal whether it be a gun, a knife or a bomb.  It is no secret that we have closed many mental health facilities in this country and on the state level, Michael Dukakis closed down and dismantled the mental health facilities in Massachusetts in the 1980s and the result was that many of these people ended up in rooming houses and on the streets.

We need an engaged and educated populace to be alert to the dangers of our nation. Nothing has changed except that people should get their noses out of their iPhones and be cognizant of what’s actually going on around them. To speak to each other and not take warning signals for granted.

This will go farther than the empty tears of yet another conniving President, the empty words from overstuffed Congressional suits or another fruitless and wasteful attempt by government and their partisan press at a ban on guns. 

But knee-jerk reactions are really all that politicians are good for these days, aren't they?

Sure beats trying to actually think through an issue to solve a problem.