I’ve read countless
Facebook posts about gun control and how guns are to blame for the Sandy Hook
Elementary School tragedy.
This statement is not entirely
correct.
Yes, guns were used,
but people are to blame. In this case, a
mentally disturbed individual is to blame. I can own one hundred guns, but if I
never load one and fire it at someone, then those guns never kill.
That being said…. Should
we institute some form of gun control.
Yes. But we need to make certain
it is not in violation of our overall right to bear arms. It’s a fine line, but it is an important line
and should not be crossed.
People have quoted
statistics about how the United States has the highest rate of gun-related
deaths each year. I would like to know
how many of those deaths are due to genuine accidents and how many were caused
by un-registered, un-licensed gang-type behavior.
See, Americans who are
licensed gun carriers are not the ones killing people. Americans who own guns to protect themselves
and their families are not the ones walking into schools and murdering
children.
If we take away our
right to bear arms as a nation, it only affects the law-abiding citizens and
those aren’t the people who are killing others. The “bad” guys are still going
to get guns, whether there is a law against it or not.
Drugs are illegal, and
yet look at the number of meth, crack, heroin and cocaine users in our
nation. It is the same with guns. “Bad” people are going to do bad things no
matter what laws we have in place. What
we CAN do is make it harder for them to do bad things…
Should we make it more
difficult to purchase a gun? Sure. Should we institute harsher punishments on
those caught with un-registered, un-licensed guns? Sure.
But punishing legal gun owners who have not and most likely will never
use their gun to commit a crime is only causing greater problems.
A greater debate is do we
arm more “good” people in order to better be able to stop the “bad”
people. I don’t know. But, had the Principal or the Counselor or
one of those teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary been a concealed, licensed
carrier, maybe they would have been able to get to their gun and maybe they
would have been able to take the man down before he reached any classrooms.
I don’t know the answer…
but I believe, in today’s world, arming teachers so they can at least have a
fair shot at protecting our children is no longer an idea I would frown upon. Having an armed guard at our schools is no
longer unfathomable.
Look at the two signs above. Now, pretend you're a deranged individual who gets the idea to go into a school and kill people. Which sign has a better chance at making you stop and re-think your plan?
Let’s face it, parents
of all of the children in all of the schools across our nation watched the
Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in horror; and if one of us could have
picked up a gun and ended the disaster by killing the shooter we’d have done it
in a heartbeat. Any one of us would have
fired that shot and taken him out to protect our kids; but we can’t fire a shot
with a gun we don’t own.
Unarmed good guys can’t
stop an armed bad guy…. but armed good guys have a shot. ~
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