Archive for April 2013
Proper Gun Control
The issue of guns is one political topic I mostly avoid getting into a conversation over because I never really took up a side. But after seeing so many ignorant comments from people on both sides on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social streams - not to mention from the mouths of certain red necks I work with - I'm tired of keeping my mouth shut. You see, I've always avoided taking a side because neither is practical. One might say I'm a fence sitter, another might say I'm taking the road less traveled. I would like to think I'm doing the latter, or I'm just daring to think.
So what is my position on the issue of guns? To be frank, I believe we should retain our Second Amendment Right to bear them, but I also believe in having certain conditions that must be fulfilled in order for an individual to first attain the right, before they can retain it.
But what do I mean by this? For several years now I've listened to right-wing gun nuts losing their sense over the "pinko commies" trying to take away their guns. Similarly, I've dealt with aligning myself to a side that is projected as believing "guns kill people", to which the right responds - with what they call "whit" - "no, people kill people". But let's stop for a moment and think about this. If we threaten to take up arms in order to keep them, are we any better than the gun toting, hung-hoe, super patriots that the right-wingers are stereotyped as being? Nope. They would be realizing that stereotype to the extreme. On the other hand, if we abolish the Second Amendment entirely, then we've nullified all sense of personal security that should be afforded to U.S. citizens, fully realizing the big brother, big government stereotype plaguing the lefties.
Here's a fact. There are more car-related deaths in the U.S. today than gun-related. We give a sixteen year old high school student the key to a hunk of metal and fiber glass that can brutally kill someone at only 25 mph in a school zone. So the big hype made by the left about how dangerous guns are is grossly unwarranted and misdirected. However, after the Aurora shooting, Columbine and Sandy Hook, and other incidents dating all the way back in our history to the infamous Boston Massacre, Americans from all walks of life would be stupid to refuse the fact that guns are the only way to end certain evils.
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| Charles Whitman; the ex-marine active shooter that perched himself atop the University of Texas bell tower on August 1, 1966, to snipe and kill several innocents with multiple firearms before being shot by Austin police. |
But who should be the heroes that carry them? Only the police? The right would only, and justly, assert that the U.S. would become a police-state if only the lawmen were allowed to carry firearms. Not only that, but there are many good citizens out there that are willing to use a gun for good, and only in circumstances calling for their appropriate use. Situations like the Aurora movie theater shooting could have been ended swiftly if someone in the theater had been carrying a concealed weapon for personal defense. During the University of Texas shooting, before Austin Police Officer Houston McCoy shot and killed Charles Whitman (the active shooter), several brave Texans laid down suppressive fire with their own rifles in order to give Officer McCoy and his partner a chance to get in close.
So now we come around to the real issue behind the extreme left vs. right Facebook battle of the stupids: how can we allow our citizens to bear arms while preventing future gun-related crimes and killings. My proposal is simple; if new drivers are required to take a test in order to receive a license, gun owners should go through a proper weapons safety course in order to purchase and retain firearms. It is inherently our right to bear them, but a citizen forfeits that right when they show they cannot responsibly handle a weapon. Instead of taking someone's right away only after they prove they cannot handle it, why not screen them ahead of time before they break the law or place the lives of innocents in danger?
In the military, I constantly must recertify my training on the use of force as an officer of the peace as well as retrain on my use of several weapons. Those range from a pistol, to a rifle, to a grenade launcher. They are dangerous, highly deadly, but are also meant to ward off those that seek to harm innocents. Just as I, and my fellow lawmen, must constantly retrain ourselves on how to properly use firearms, and become knowledgeable on general rules of safety, so should any citizen wishing to retain such power.
Humans are social creatures, dependent upon the order of society, and bound by a constantly evolving and group-depending law of morality. No sane man is going to wake up one day and decide that they are going to buy a gun and go kill someone; only the criminally insane or mentally unstable do that. We don't afford the Second Amendment Right to them.
I understand the desire for peace and nonviolence from the left. I also understand the right's need for a sense of security and a right to defend what is theirs. But for heaven's sake, people, listen to and look at your ignorance. Gay-bashing, Bible-belt, redneck southerners making up the bulk of the NRA isn't helping the cause to keep your guns. And the far left's delusion of reaching a gun-free utopia isn't helping with the more realistic and humble idea of simply keeping firearms out of the hands of people that shouldn't have them in the first place.
Instead of, pardon the pun, sticking to your guns and party politics, why not harmonize the noble ideals behind each argument? As that, ladies and gentlemen, is daredevil thinking.