As much as I enjoy shooting, I hope that I never have to use any of my weapons to defend myself from anybody, but I will if necessary. As my guns sit in closets and drawers collecting dust (figure of speech) I can’t for the life of me, figure out how after owning gun(s) from age 8, how I have not as yet killed myself or someone else for that matter. Amazing, considering that according to some, merely owning a gun leads to death of somebody. In all of history no one has ever died in a horrible manner other than sickness, disease or old age until the invention of the gun. The closer I get to it the more I realize how nasty old age can be. Being a fan of the History channel, I was able to vicariously experience the “Black Plague” that all of Europe experienced in the dark ages and a third of Europe’s population died.
The first chronicled murder in the Bible was Cain killing his brother Abel. I believe he used a 38 special and did a “triple tap”, two to the chest and one to ……..no, that’s not it. Probably a stick, rock or his bare hands. Then there was the genocide of the Philistines perpetrated by that religious fanatic Samson that killed thousands with a Glock 19 and a Benelli 12gauge. No, wait a minute, that was the jawbone of an ass. Right now I’m pretty certain I’m being called an ass by some. I can only say, in my defense, that sarcasm is a truly unappreciated art form.
As previously stated, I have owned a firearm in one form or another since the age of 8. That means about 50years of gun ownership with no accidents, injuries or deaths, except for the unlucky “flea ridden” disease carrying varmints that were unfortunate enough to cross my path. What am I doing wrong? I must be one of those statistical anomalies I’ve heard about because, according to some, guns and gun ownership is nothing but bad news waiting to happen.
The problem, as I see it is that people are giving an inanimate object power over themselves. CLICHÉ ALERT “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. “ A gun is lifeless, a gun sitting on a table is a metal mechanical device with wood, plastic, or neoprene grips. It does nothing, it means nothing, it doesn’t eat drink ,or breathe. It just takes up space. Why do people hate guns? “Well, they kill people” No, as my “smart ass remarks in the opening paragraph prove, you don’t need a gun to kill people. GROSS ALERT Hypothetically, if a man walks into a movie theater, school, or restaurant with a baseball bat. He will be able to crack quite a few skulls and kill a few people before somebody steps up and challenges him. No shots being fired. Replace the bat with a long knife or sword and you may have a few more deaths. Still that bat or sword, sitting on a table, hurts no one. The worst it does is it takes up space. Not until a supposedly higher life form picks it up ”with intent to do harm” do they become a weapon. Any and most every object has the potential to be a weapon . It is the person wielding the object that determines its purpose, good or evil. CLICHÉ ALERT; “When guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns”. A carpenter’s hammer in the hands of a master carpenter can build and create objects and structures. In the hands of someone lacking a basic level of morals, character and conscience, it’s a weapon for gaining entry to your house or crack open your cranium if you try to stop him. A plumber’s pipe wrench in his hands is a tool for repairing things. In my hands, a good reason to call a plumber. In the hands of someone less noble than myself or said plumber, is a heavy metal object used to persuade someone to give up their goods. A surgeon’s scalpel is also a tool used to heal, in my hands a reason to quickly find a band aid and again in another’s an implement of destruction. All three sitting on a table with no one around to pick them up and use them are nothing more than an object lesson in the definition of matter, “anything that has mass and takes up space”. So it is with a gun. Should we outlaw hammers and wrenches? When hammers are outlawed, will only outlaws have hammers? Definitely keep sharp objects away from me.
BORING STATISTIC ALERT!In 2011, 160,000 people died from lung cancer. Of that number, 125,522 were smoking related and second hand smoking related deaths were up 20 to 30%. Gosh, it appears that smoking kills and not only kills the user but the person next to the user. Someone should do something to stop this senseless killing. I know, let’s make tobacco illegal, better yet, let’s keep it legal and tax the crap out of it!
93 people a day die in auto accidents. In 2011, 32,367people died needlessly in car wrecks. Of those, 11,000 were drunk driving related. I say we outlaw the “death machines”. We can’t? No, we can't. The President just spent billions of dollars bailing out the manufacturers of these vehicles of doom? Well maybe we should at least outlaw drinking and driving. It is illegal? If it’s illegal, why do they sell alcohol where they sell gas? That’s confusing. Well people are going to drink anyway and they have to drive so let’s make it more convenient for them.
Innocent life, (here we go), This year alone there were 1,205,418 abortions and 2,424 yesterday alone. This was a dynamic number as it changed several times while I was writing the stats down. These were all done in the name of “Choice” and someone’s right to choose. We’ve known for some time now, the process we have to go through in order to conceive a child. I believe there is also a "right to choose" prior to conception and we need to take responsibility for those choices we make. But, but ,but, what about rape and incest? Sorry less than a 10th of a per cent of recorded abortions are because of rape and incest.
Cars are inanimate objects until a human starts the engine and a bottle of booze is harmless until the lid comes off and is consumed. The demon weed, tobacco, wouldn’t kill anyone if no one put a match to it. Abortion, I’m sorry but the male genitalia has been blamed for way too much in American society. Why aren’t these numbers more widely reported? Why don’t these numbers assault the American psyche. One reason is we like our cars, we like our booze we like our “innocent sinful”(there’s a contradiction) behaviors. But to appease our self righteous consciences we allow ourselves to “pick the atrocities” we will rage against. "Abort a baby but Save the Whales" We rage against the death of innocents by a gun or rifle and blame the gun. They are just inanimate objects taking up space. An inanimate object that in the hand of a trained, responsible person can provide food and safety for many. In the hand of another, take safety, peace and life from many. But make no mistake, it is an inanimate object with no will of its own. We believe it’s easier to blame the gun, to “control” the gun.
We have spent the last several decades teaching young people that it is okay to be disrespectful, irresponsible and undisciplined. We’ve taught them that everybody is good and a winner and no one loses. If they act up, we drug them. Gaining a sense of accomplishment and achievement means you’re “better” than someone else, and we can’t have that. God help us if we should tear them away from their video games, like “Grad Theft Auto” and go outside to face reality. When these little social experiments gone wrong get out in the real world, they’re lost, dazed and confused. When life doesn’t work out the way they were taught it would be, they rage and rebel, and we blame the “tool” they use to express their rage and rebellion. We certainly can’t blame them, they are after all merely the product of our imaginations. We can’t blame ourselves because that would be admitting fault and that just doesn’t feel good. We blame the gun.
One more boring statistic. It’s about the civil war in Rwanda in the 90’s;
Beginning on April 6, 1994, and for the next hundred days, up to 800,000 Tutsis were killed by Hutu militia using clubs and machetes, with as many as 10,000 killed each day.
The Hutu, now without opposition from the world community, engaged in genocidal mania, clubbing and hacking to death defenseless Tutsi families with machetes everywhere they were found.
The killings only ended after armed Tutsi rebels, invading from neighboring countries, managed to defeat the Hutus and halt the genocide in July 1994. By then, over one-tenth of the population, an estimated 800,000 persons, had been killed.
Death of innocents is not pretty, where was the outrage. 10,000 a day killed with clubs and machetes. Well that wasn’t America and there were no guns involved? Except, Guns stopped the killing. Is there a small lesson there?
Blame the man wielding the weapon for making it good or making it evil. Do not blame the weapon for making the man good or evil. Somebody needs to take responsibility for their own actions, and they better do it soon. "I am a lover not a fighter but I will fight for the things I love"
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