A few days ago we had another in a long and seemingly endless series of massacres carried out with a gun. Thirteen people died at Fr. Hood in Texas and another 30 suffered gunshot wounds. I could list all the previous such incidents, but we all are at least aware of them.
Right up front, let me say that I do not think trying to take away anyones guns is the answer to this. Let me also say that I do not think that there is any political desire from politicians and lawmakers to tackle this issue. The gun lobby, the NRA and its supporters, have effectively won the public debate regarding governmental action on guns. I do not expect government to do anything about this now or in the near future.
I would very much like to see an attitudinal step taken on this entire issue. Everything in our society has its price and there is a price to be paid for everything. We live in a society with over 100 million guns and in some states the number of guns outnumbers the number of adults in that state.
The laws in Texas made it possible for a man to purchase a handgun designed to hold 20 bullets at one time and was partially designed to be powerful enough to pierce body armor. This is legal under the law of that state.
All I want is a simple acknowledgement that in a nation with a strong Second Amendment, there is a price to be paid for that right to bear arms. And some of the people who pay that price are the innocent dead in these reoccurring incidents of gun slaughter. Lets all please simply acknowledge that there is a price to be paid and innocent people are paying it.
I do not want this to be seen as an attack on gun owners because it is not. No more than criticism of a drunk driver who kills a family of four on the highway should be seen as an attack on the bar industry or liquor industry. Sadly, when tens of millions of people drink, some to excess, there is going to be some damage associated with that activity. We have tried mightilly to change the public attitude about drinking and driving because we came to the societal conclusion that thousands of dead people from the deeds of drunk drivers was too high of a price to pay for alcohol.
Why can’t we do much the same thing regarding guns? I have no problem acknowledging that guns help protect people from crime. There are plenty of examples of this happening and one would be foolish not to admit that there are benefits to gun ownership. All I want is acknowledgement that while there is an upside, there also is a downside.
And perhaps once that is acknowledged, we can then have the discussion that government and society do not want to have now about such things like selling people handguns that can shoot twenty armor piercing bullets in under a minute.
Is that too much to ask when innocent people are paying with their very lives so that we have weapons like this? There needs to be a middle ground where rational and reasonable people can meet and discuss this issue. There has to be a middle ground somewhere in between the NRA and gun banning. I think we need to find that.