Alphecca

Balancing Gun Rights and Gun Control

I stumbled across an interesting editorial from the Jacksonville (NC) Daily News:

One of the perennial issues facing Americans, especially lawmakers, is gun control. Those of us who defend private ownership of firearms are continually battling those who wish to restrict guns in private hands.

Opponents of gun ownership approach their goal from many directions. Some of their proposals seem at first to be common-sense measures whose aim is to protect us from ourselves. One of the most recent of these measures making the rounds in state legislatures is something called "safe storage" of firearms.

These laws require gun owners to keep firearms locked in some way so curious children cannot get to them. Thousands of children a year find their parents' firearms and play with them, sometimes with tragic results.

On the surface, so-called safe-storage laws are designed to prevent such shootings. But by paying close attention to the words used by the backers of such laws we can surmise they have bigger goals in mind.

Even if the results are accurate, of greater concern is the apparent disdain some public health researchers have for others' rights. And this is where their language gives them away. According to one media report on the survey, John Vernick, co-director of Johns Hopkins' Center for Gun Policy and Research, worried that although 18 states and the District of Columbia have safe-storage laws, there's no way to tell how well they're enforced. "They're great, and we absolutely need more states with laws. But often they seem to get enforced after it's too late, when a child has shot himself, or someone else," he said.

Any time a person, especially a child, is accidently shot it's unfortunate. But what would Vernick have police do, check every house to ensure guns in the home are unloaded and locked up? Vernick would likely deny that was his intent, but activists have been known to step on others' rights in their quest for their version of a perfect society.

A free society must balance liberty and safety with individuals taking responsibility for any injury their actions cause others.

Safety and children's activists blithely declare that any death is one death too many. Such simplistic thinking (or fund-raising rhetoric) sounds logical but if we apply it to the examples I've just given then we would all be required to live within a walking distance to where we work and shop. America would become all cities and no suburbs or rural areas. None of us would ever enjoy a quick dip in the pool during the hot Summer months, either at home or at an inn or hotel.

We could still live where we wanted to live if there were a mass-transit option run by the government. Of course, buses and trains are also subject to accidents. We could ride bicycles if we wanted to live a couple miles from where we work but then again, they're rather dangerous too and -- again! -- any death is one too many.

I guess my point is that we live in a world where a person's safety cannot be promised or guaranteed. If it were, it would be because we're all in safe stasis by floating in computer controlled cocoons similar to what you saw in the world of the movie, The Matrix.

Let me offer my own thoughts:

1) It is reasonable to assume that life is fraught with risk.

2) Risk to life, and the struggle to survive, is the primary reason why humans evolved to a smarter, more agile form from the lower orders of apes.

3) We can try to eliminate some of that risk but we cannot vanquish all of it.

4) Eliminating all risk to ourselves would bring our evolution to a halt. It would also mean that all innovation, creation, exploration, [All this rhyming, Jeff, sounds like Jesse Jackson... --ed.] medical cures, scientific breakthroughs, sports, and everything else we know of that seperates us from the pre-programmed ants would cease to exist.

5) #4 above would not be a good thing for us!

People die from ski accidents. Should we ban skiing? A tiny fraction of people are allergic to some vaccines. Should we ban vaccines and take our chances with the various strains of the flu, whooping-cough, polio, malaria, and everything else that threatens us every day? After all folks, isn't "any death one death too many?"

Personally, I say "no". There will always be deaths. They can come from milk allergies, bathtubs, pets, stairs, and everything else that surrounds us.

Guns are dangerous. They're supposed to be so. Some mutants mis-use them for evil purposes. Many more folks use them to protect, defend, and feed themselves. There will always be some wrongful deaths caused by bad criminals using them but that is not a reason to ban them or regulate them to the point where their ownership and use is meaningless and impossible to comply with.

In a perfect world, gun owners would (as most of us "red-state" owners do) teach their children safe gun handling. But that is not something you can regulate or even enforce. It's a personal measure that responsible parents follow. Requiring all gun owners to keep their firearms neutered renders them almost useless when they are most needed.

I think back to the story of four mutants beating a co-worker at their restaurant to death with baseball bats (in Florida last year) and I'd really hate to see Baseball disappear from the American way of life. If only the victims had had a firearm to defend themselves... But what good would it have been if it had been locked-away?

I would hate to see a (granted) tragic death of a child by a firearm cause all of us to lose our right to defend ourselves from the wolves at the doorstep.

Freedom is perilous. It allows us to have some free will in the course of our lives even though it also means that some of us will be hurt. Hurt, pain, bumps and bruises, they are all part of growing up and frankly, they are also part of being an adult. Sometimes the bumps and bruises are mental but they still hurt. We are trying to banish that from our children but if we do, they will be all the more painful when our kids experience them as adults. It might sound cold on my part but physical or mental black & blues prepare us for the life ahead of us. And unfortunately, death does, too.

Life is risky. I'm sorry, but that's just how it is. It always will be, too. It's what keeps us going, striving, creating. If you give in and let the government pretend to know better then they gladly will. Politicians LOVE to control every facet of our lives. Power is the only reason they got into politics in the first place. Any politician who claims otherwise, that they wanted to "help humanity" or some such bullshit is totally a LIAR. Period. For proof, I offer the liberal Democratic bastards who kept at Judge Roberts about the "commerce clause" in the Constitution because they want to CONTROL EVERYTHING we buy or use or do, regardless if it crosses a state line. By the way, Robert's answers weren't all that satisfactory.

Maybe you (liberals and leftists) want to live in a THX 1138 world but I do not. I own guns and I always will and if the world changes and decides that I can't own them, I will use them to prevent that and if I die, well fuck-it, I won't have to live in the horror-show ultra-controlled world you will be trapped in.

Life involves some risk and death. That's the cause of our evolution and the only reason we have our cool hands, good eyesight, useful brains, and a smidgen of freedom. Eliminate that risk and we become like the ants. Nobody is going to step-on me.