Idiots with Guns

For some this is going to just be the ravings of another one of those gun nuts. And since they immediately formed their opinion on who/what I am after reading that, they have completely and utterly ignored the entireity of the rest of this post, or if they are still slightly open-minded read it only picking out what confirms their bias against me. For them, I'm sorry that I find that hunk of steel, and wood/plastic to be as much a beautiful work of art, and an indespenible tool as much as anything else that it can be.

Let me begin with the most trite and cliche of sentiments...Guns don't kill people; People with guns kill people. But alas, even if we were to take away all of the guns in the world, then it would be the people with knives, with explosives, with baseball bats, and frying pans, and cars, and on and on ad nauseum. Granted, a gun is a tool designed to wound and to kill. I will not argue that. But the many millions of people who own them legitimately and have nothing but good within them, do not go out because they have a gun and randomly shoot people for no apparent good reason. They do not rob, or intimidate or kill indiscriminately. God forbid, that should they have to use a gun to shoot at another human being, they had to do so in defense of themselves or of their loved ones, or in those rare circumstances when it seems prudent their property (I only include property because it is legal in some jurisdictions and there are some items of property that it might be better that the person taking that is stopped, rather than allowing them to continue). The taking of another life or attempting to do so for the majority of people is repugnant, and even if justified, they will NOT be the same. They will be traumatized. They will question their own morality, their sanity, their very core values, and how they can reconcile themselves to what has happened. And that is if they were justified.

But alas, when a tragedy occurs where some person with evil intent in their heart uses a firearm, we hear more about the gun than we do about the why's of the individual who created the tragedy. The gun is considered to be the evil. Like it "spoke" to the person and made them do it. I won't try to say that this person wouldn't have done what they did if they hadn't been able to obtain a fire arm. I won't be that naive. What other objects could they have used when targeting the Congresswoman? A car driven into the crowd. A homemade bomb. A knife. Some of those objects could have been wielded just as easily and caused as much dmage or more, some less and maybe even no deaths.

If we are going to talk about guns, then let us talk about how to find ways to keep them out of the hands of criminals. How to teach people that they are NOT a means of settling petty disputes (let us talk about the various forms of media that seem to inculcate society with the idea that this is, while unacceptable, a viable, method of dealing with any problem). Let us NOT impose even more draconian laws upon the public. With approximately 42,000 laws in our nation (federal, state and local) that impose restrictions upon the ownership, storage, concealment, carrying, use, display and other various and sundry aspects of firearms, I think that we have enough "well-regulation" of the militia and it is time to focus on the real problem...those who would use any tool or device with evil intnt and malice to deny someone of their life, their liberty or of their property with out recompense, those who would terrorize and subjugate.

Let the discussion begin.