Any time I hear a pro-gun person whining about how “they’re going to take away our guns” whenever something like Aurora or Columbine happens, two thoughts go through my head:
First, instead of worrying about the Second Amendment right away, maybe you should take 5 minutes to reflect on what the victims and their families have lost. Your gun isn’t going anywhere — if it was, it would have been gone after Columbine. So can we dispense with the hand-wringing? Please?
Secondly, maybe it’s time to help become part of the solution? You guys in the pro-gun culture are more exposed to it that those of us who, like me, don’t care about the subject, or those who are vehemently anti-gun. Clearly the answer isn’t more guns — there’s plenty of them out there — and likewise, the answer isn’t fewer guns, because that clearly isn’t going to fly, either. So…why aren’t we having a talk about how we can reduce gun violence as a whole? Do we need better mental health care in this country? Do we need to re-examine the culture of fear that seems to have been building for some time now? What? For god’s sake, tell us.
There’s the challenge to my pro-gun readers: if you were tasked with solving gun violence, but you can’t take the tack of “arm everyone”…how would you do it?
I wouldn’t go so far as to say I am pro-gun…I like to hunt and shoot for recreation at most. Honestly the problem is not the guns it IS the people behind them. You get into some quagmire territory when you start thinking about proactively policing violent offenders versus impinging upon an individual’s freedoms. I don’t think there are any easy answers…but better mental health offerings certainly are not a bad place to start.
I agree — I firmly believe that solving the gun violence issue is one of social engineering, rather than just taking away or selling more guns.
I just spent all day debating this with some yahoos on someone else’s facebook page. Their feelings were that there’s no reason AK’s should be outlawed because people kill people, not guns (the logic was that if we banned some guns we would have to ban all guns, and that if we banned things that killed people we would also ban heart disease, mountain lions, bees, etc) and that crazies shouldn’t be allowed to have guns (because apparently it’s really easy to determine who is “crazy” and who isn’t). I couldn’t stand to tell them that they’re the exact crazies who I would recommend taking them away from if they can’t see that NO civilian needs an AK for protection or any other reason unless “the other guy” also has an AK.
I argued that we’re not all allowed to drive semi trucks because they’re dangerous, but they’re not outlawed, just like we shouldn’t ALL be allowed to carry AK’s because they’re dangerous even though they’re not outright outlawed. They didn’t even comment on that, so I knew I had something there.
Their final dumb argument was that it’s just as easy to build a bomb to do that scale of damage if they want to, but I would guess that if it were, people wouldn’t spend the money on AK’s and ammo in favor of cheap & easy bomb supplies. And it takes a lot more premeditation to build those & come up with one that works than it does to swipe a visa & go home with a loaded weapon.
The 2nd amendment debate falls flat with me because AK’s didn’t exist when that was written, but awkward, bulky, slow muskets did. Again, they argued “the point isn’t about how long it takes to reload a musket, it’s about defending yourself” to which I could only repeat “if the other guy doesn’t have an AK you don’t need one either. You don’t even need one to defend against a mountain lion.” The rebuttal was, “I’ve killed a mountain lion with my semi-automatic.” Point taken, lunatic.
But interestingly enough, every point came back to “I have one & it’s fun as hell to shoot!” Of course, one of them also accused one of us defending the anti-AK side of not being able to “follow logic” because we weren’t bending to his will, so the irony of it all became too much & I had to excuse myself. Some people can’t see past their own selfish desires or wrap their minds around the idea that not everyone is as responsible as they believe themselves to be. Innocent lives aren’t as important as having the baddest weapon in the room in case someone looks at you funny.
While I agree with you about an assault weapons ban, I’m not sure the logic with regards to the 2nd Amendment and technological development is sound.
By that same logic, a similar argument could be made that we should rescind the First Amendment because television, radio, and the Internet didn’t exist when the Founding Fathers wrote it.
Ultimately, I don’t think that we’re going to get rid of guns, but we need to find a way to reduce their impact such that the solution isn’t “BUY MOAR GUNS”…
Finding a way to “end gun violence” is about as realistic as stopping auto crashes, war, and world hunger. Just without all the sensationalized bullshit. This is the real world. People kill. People die. We’ll never stop all of it. We can’t keep a gun out of a wackos hand any more than we can keep a drunk from driving. And yes Virginia even if we wave our magic wands and make all the nut jobs glow so we can keep them from buying guns, people were killing each other long before the invention of gunpowder. McVeigh got it done with a u-haul some diesel fuel and some fertilizer. Sucks I know but control is an illusion.
Very true. We’ll never entirely stop gun violence, and yes, people kill each other and die at each others’ hands (by guns and by any other number of weapons). The question is: how do we reduce gun violence?