It's 2013 and the world is still here. That can be good or bad news depending on whether you're a glass half full or glass half empty type. Anyway, I haven't been around to post on my blog recently because life outside of the computer has been crazy. But, I'm back now. And I thought I would start off my blogging year with a post about this gun control issue that people have been getting pretty serious about since the elementary school shooting. I don't know that you care about my position on this issue, but if you don't care, don't read it.
School shootings. Wow. That phrase looks and sounds terrible, like it shouldn't be a real thing. But it is a real thing. It is a very real thing. It makes you want to do something about it. But what can you do? The fact is, there will probably always be school shootings because there will always be messed up people. Now, in short, I'm all for taking care of criminals and getting them off the streets, but I don't think taking away guns is going to fix that problem. At all.
Gun does not equal criminal. We can't punish everybody in the country because some people out there use guns in ways they shouldn't be used. I mean, think about it, if someone really wants to kill someone, is the lack of a gun going to stop them from committing murder? There are plenty of ways to kill someone without using a gun. Taking away guns from people may reduce the number or crimes committed with a gun, but it won't reduce crime.
And let's be logical here; criminals are criminals because they break the law. If they want to murder someone with a gun, they are going to. Murder is against the law but people are still murdered . Gun control will make it harder to get a gun, but it won't make it impossible.
I'm a firm believer in the constitution. That doesn't mean that I don't think nothing ever needs to change, but I don't think it needs to change unnecessarily. The second amendment clearly states that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. This is a day and age when we need to stand up for rights, not consent to them being taken away. We give the government control of our guns, we are giving them another piece of our liberty. We are supposed to be a free country but we are slowly having our freedoms taken away.
If we take guns away, not only are criminals who want a gun going to ignore the law, but innocent people will have lost a way to defend themselves. If someone has a gun pulled on them after we take away the right to own a gun, that person is basically doomed to die if the one with the gun decides to shoot. Hypothetically, what if one of the teachers at the Sandy Hook elementary school had had a gun on them? They could have shot the gunman down and maybe the number of lives lost would have been lessened.
The founding fathers were all for citizens owning guns. George Washington said "a free people ought to be armed" and Benjamin Franklin said "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety," and, frankly, I agree with them.
Instead of pretending that gun control will fix the problem, why don't we focus on the underlying issues? Why are people killing each other? Why all this gun related crime? We should focus more on things like mental illnesses, parenting, education and the things that shape people into who they are. We need to work on the reasons people are committing crimes, not taking away the tools they use to commit them.
This is just my opinion here, but I promise you that gun control will not stop crime. There may a drop in gun related crimes, but there will not be a drop in crime. We need to understand that guns aren't the problem: people are. Guns don't do anything wrong: people do. Guns are a tool that are very useful and necessary when used in the ways they are intended to be used. Anything can be abused, though, and used wrongly.
Instead of whining about it, though, why don't we work more on educating people about guns and gun safety? Why don't we stress the importance of using guns wisely? Granted, this won't stop the criminals from using them, but neither will gun control.
Let's work with the people, not with the guns.
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