It's been a few days now since the senseless killing of 9 worshipers at a church in Charleston, SC. Tragic....racist....simply beyond comprehension. But it happened, and it has started the conversation anew about gun control. And IMHO we have again taken the wrong fork in the road. We're headed towards a dead end where nothing will happen except get everyone even more polarized and pissed off.
We have lost our sense of reality. As in most instances, we know what we would LIKE to see happen, without seriously acknowledging what actually CAN happen. There is quite a difference between the two.
My liberal friends think Congress should pass a law restricting certain types of guns, or even outlaw them all together, similar to what has been done in the past in the UK, Australia, etc. End of problem, and we all live happily ever after. La-tee-dah!
My conservative friends think Gubment agents will soon be knocking on their door....no....KICKING THEIR DOOR DOWN....in order to confiscate all their firearms.
The first scenario is a pipe dream, and the second is silly.
No law can change people's thinking. A law is a signed piece of paper, nothing more. People have to be willing to accept it before it can have any long-term practical affect on our society (think Prohibition), and a huge portion of our population will NEVER give up their firearms. ("....when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.") It simply won't happen. And no one, no amount of force, can go door-to-door and confiscate people's guns. There would be blood in the streets.
And for that same reason, no Gubment agents are going to come into our houses and confiscate our firearms. There aren't enough police or soldiers to do it, and besides, a good many would probably mutiny if they were ordered to do so.
Nor can they prohibit / buy up all the ammunition, making our guns little more than paperweights. There are already BILLIONS of rounds of every caliber ammunition you can imagine in private hands. That goal is even more pie-in-the-sky than confiscating our guns!
Instead of chasing those windmills, why don't we pursue something more realistic, something we can all (?) agree on, like keeping firearms out of the hands of known criminals and the mentally unstable? How difficult would that be to do? Damn difficult....but much easier than turning the country upside down looking for several hundred MILLION guns and BILLIONS of round of ammo, and creating a civil war in the process.
Known criminals are just that, known. They should regularly be subject to random searches of their residences, cars, their persons, etc, to insure they are not in possession of guns they are prohibited having due to their status as felons. A daunting task for sure, but even if marginally successful, likely to yield immediate, noticeable results.
The mentally disturbed....Oooo....that will be tougher. Who gets to decide who is mentally disturbed? Their former spouse? Their next door neighbor with an ax to grind? Will counselors and therapists rat out their patients who they suspect might be dangerous, without having any real proof? Will that doctor / patient confidentially thing come into play? I dunno. Still, I think this, more than anything else, will make our country safer.
We must somehow identify those among us who are disturbed enough, desperate enough, hate-filled enough, to resort to violence. Making this a national priority should start NOW. We can talk this subject to death and accomplish nothing, or we can get real and maybe see something good come of this tragedy.
S
Bureaucrats and politicians and much of civilized society, too, believe in rules and laws. If there's a problem, you pass a law or amend a rule and the problem is fixed. Sometimes that works, often times not. It looks like our leaders will soon be writing new laws to deal with gun violence in the wake of the Connecticut school shootings. So will these new laws represent a paradigm shift in public safety or just be a symbolic gesture?
I expect to see new gun laws that will prohibit the purchase of some types of high-powered firearms and expand the databases that decide who can buy a gun and who can't. It's a noble gesture, something the public will welcome as it will make them feel they're doing something to relieve the pain we all feel when we think of those innocent children lost at Sandy Hook.
I expect to see school districts everywhere amend their school visitor rules, requiring more identification and explanation of intent before doors will be unlocked for them.
Good people will comply with these new gun purchase rules and will always knock politely and ask for permission to enter. Evil people will still buy their guns on the streets or just steal them and kick in whatever door is in their way. This is reality.
Keeping some types of guns off the streets isn't a bad thing at all, but with between 250M and 350M privately owned firearms out there right now it would be like assessing every adult another $1.50 in taxes and expecting that to balance our budget. This is little more than symbolism.
Let's get real. We have many mentally disturbed people living among us. Some slowly go over the edge or just eventually snap and do terrible things. These are the people we need to reach out to. We need to identify them and do something....really DO something....to help them. Right now any programs to help them are being increasingly starved for money. They're just pushed to the side by society.
In exchange for help they would have to give up their right to own weapons, and would be subject to frequent random inspection of their residences and belongings to confirm they remain unarmed. Anything we could do to assist them would no doubt be appreciated by them and even more so by their families who are desperate for help, and would make us all safer, too. Not just feel safer, but actually be safer. Win / win.
If we won't even honor "Thou shall not kill", what chance does another photo-op bill signing in Washington DC have?
S
....your momma puts "ammo" on her Christmas wish list.
K's former boss....she's now working "upstairs"....for some reason recently decided she wanted a concealed handgun license. She successfully completed the classroom portion and passed the shooting part as well with a gun she rented from the gun range. Now she wants to buy her own semi-automatic pistol. Trouble is, she knows nothing about handguns. Tomorrow morning I'm taking her to the Gun and Knife Collector's show in Dallas and will try to give her a crash course in what she needs to know about firearms, especially about safety. I'm afraid her out shopping for a gun by herself would be like the little naive lady at the unscrupulous car repair shop.
She's not that big of a lady and she keeps talking about getting a .45. She mentioned that her rented gun jammed several times during her test, which tells me her wrists might not be strong enough to handle the recoil from a .45. I'm going to try and talk her down to a 9mm. I hope she'll listen. Then comes live shooting at a range, and finally care and cleaning. When I get through with her she'll be a regular Annie Oakley. ;)
S
Late edit: K's boss called to say she's sick. This is twice she's asked me to take her, and twice she's been "sick". Maybe she does need to go gun shopping by herself after all.
