On
Friday of last week, a gunman opened fire in a midnight showing of the movie
“The Dark Knight Rises”. Twelve people lost their lives…people who went into
that movie theater that night excited to see another Batman blockbuster hit,
never expecting in a million years that they would die just minutes later in a
gun massacre that made international news. Twelve families and hundreds of
loved ones were taken by TOTAL surprise when that call came in and woke them
from their sleep, just after midnight. What a terrible, terrible tragedy. And
it doesn’t stop there. The total number injured was fifty eight.
Soon
after, the buzz of social media began and people start expanding upon each
other’s opinions. I ran across this article by Michael Moore, “It's
the Guns - But We All Know, It's Not Really the Guns”. In response to the
article, I would like to say a few things.
I would like to stand publically
and say that I believe Americans should have the right to bear arms. I also
believe that we could take better care of each other as a society. Way too many
people die every year to gun injuries. I agree with Mr. Moore…there have been
many terrible atrocities throughout the history of mankind, and there will
surely always be those types of events as long as we are man, but the issue
discussed here is guns, specifically the ones that murder. We need to reduce
the number of deaths due to guns, not just in this country, but in the world. Period.
He
went on to make some good points about the destructive nature of Americans,
which I agree with, and to give statistics that supported how the US is way
above the normal in gun deaths per year. Here is the summation:
“That means the United States is
responsible for over 80 percent of all the gun deaths in the 23 richest
countries combined.
Considering that the people of those countries, as human beings, are no better
or worse than any of us, well, then, why us?”
This is
a great question Michael. I will get back to this in a minute.
Mr.
Moore also said, about the slogan “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”, "I would just alter that slogan slightly
to speak the real truth: "Guns don't kill people, Americans kill
people."”
Technically, I would say
guns don’t kill people Mr. Moore...criminals do. Criminals don’t just use guns
because they are legal and easy to get, but they use them because they can have
power. I believe that making laws to restrict those individuals
who will abide the law from owning
and gun - a law that criminals won’t follow anyway - doesn’t seem to be a good
solution at all.
I asked myself this...”If someone in that
theater would have had a gun in their waistline, and shot the killer in the
head after his first 5 shots went off, they could have probably saved many lives...then
what would the conversation be?”
I bet the parents of the children that were
killed would have been thankful for this armed citizen who took action to stop this
movie theater killer before he shot 1000 bullets in the place and killed and wounded
70 people. A good man with a handgun and proper training in that movie theater
would have been celebrated if he would have stopped this atrocity. Heck, our
country would have placed a crack-dealing, pistol-whipping thug in the
limelight if he would have saved lives…but criminals don't usually care about
saving lives, and they never care what the laws are. They will still find guns
no matter what the law says, and we will need a way to stop them. The responsibility
that lies with the government here seems to be to protect you from the wrong type of people
collecting firearms in the first place, without
limiting your freedom to own a firearm to protect your family?
I am not really sure how I feel
about Michael’s conclusion that we Americans are “good killers”. I guess that’s
one way of looking at it. I think technology has made the world smaller to
humanity, and methods of accomplishing the tasks at hand have changed or “evolved”
over the last 100 years. Now when our government needs to use a gun to murder
another human being, they can spare a US citizen’s life, and remotely do it
instead (insert sarcastic smirk here). I agree, “It is madness”. The real
problem is not in how we have advance our killing methods, it is that our
governing bodies lack nobility, courage, leadership, righteousness, morals, and
values. We shouldn’t be killing anyone at all! What gives us the right?
But in today’s society,
the real bush we all beat around is -
Who is to blame?
.....the government for not regulating
guns?.....the gun manufacturers?.....wal-mart or k-mart for selling
bullets?......the bullet manufacturers?..... how about the guy who did the
terrible criminal act…James Holmes?.....God?.....The Devil?.....Mankind…..? Any
good clear blame in any of those places? Well, to have blame would indicate
that someone failed to do their job. So
who do we blame?
According
to Wikipedia.com,
AND I AM AWARE OF THE NATURE OF WIKIPEDIA and the ABILITY TO EDIT, we have had an
estimated 10 massacres in this country since 1970. Forty two years total…ten
massacres on US soil. That’s an impressive number in my mind, considering the
population of people in those forty two years. What alarms me is that eight of
the ten massacres have happened since 1991. So, by the numbers, society is
clearly killing more in the last 20 years. That’s 80% of the massacres on US
soil in the last forty two years has occurred in the last twenty one years. Now back to Mr. Moore's question.....
why?
We all have an opinion. I agree with Mr. Moore here too…people have
always killed one another…if not with guns, then with spears and swords, and if
not with swords, then with fists.
But back to the main point…It’s not
guns fault that we choose to kill, it’s ours. We have entirely too much
accessibility to guns, and we are not mature enough as a civilization to have “the
power to take life” at our disposal. I don’t believe that we respect guns as
much as we should, nor do I believe we ever have. The founders of this country
had to know how to shoot for survival, and guns have played a huge part of our
history, but our ancestors knew something we have forgotten as a culture…the
responsibility of owning a gun is great. It is a weapon not an accessory, and it
is a matter of life and death.
It is the responsibility of the government
to keep us safe, but not dictate over us. The
people who qualify to sale firearms should require that anyone that wants a gun
should have to wait one year before you can receive a gun of any kind...this
way, the people applying can be fully screened. You should have to take classes,
tests, and should have serious requirements to show stability. I know there’s a
couple billion being wasted somewhere in a government program that meets once a
month and never uses real names that could go towards this. It would seem to me
that the unstable or criminal types would get noticed through a “process” of a
year. This whole idea that you can walk into a pawn shop and walk out with a
.40 caliber GLOCK is ridiculous. We have teenagers with regular access to guns,
but no access to guidance at all. Stop selling auto and semi-auto weapons, and
reserve them for military only. Allow citizens to have a rifle, a shotgun, or
handguns, and stop allowing anyone to purchase weapons that are for war.
Again,
I will state for the record, I believe we should have the right to own guns to
protect our homes.
I
think the more important question is “who are we so afraid” that we need 300
million guns in our homes? Maybe we are afraid of our government. Maybe we
can see how bad this country is getting. Maybe we just want to be able to sleep
at night and know that if someone breaks in and wants to rape our women and
kill our children, we have an option that will stop them.
The
real issue is not that we are afraid; the real issue is that we should be. This
world is slowly declining, getting worse generation by generation. We are
complacent, self-entitled, lazy, arrogant, envious, and more self-righteous
than we have ever been in history. Maybe we are secretly afraid because we all
know we are due justice and judgment for our wicked ways, and we need guns to
feel more secure. Who knows, but I think the people who make money off the guns
are most likely the real contributors to the problem. They are the ones forcing
as many guns into the marketplace, however they can, to profit…if that means
paying off government, then they chalk it up as the price of business. It’s
always about money and that is a very sad truth. They don’t care what happens
to the guns once they get sold, even if it ends up in a pawn shop in Colorado.
I am in favor of being
able to own firearms because I think we are going to need them, just as the
original settlers needed them. I think a
time will soon come when that is all that will protect us from the trouble this
country is headed for if we don’t start focusing on the people, and not on the
money, and not on disagreeing just because we want to be right.
I will leave you with
this thought…..laws that restrict abiding people from defending themselves,
which criminals will not follow, are a bad idea. What if our guns get taken
away by laws, and the criminals still have theirs? I want the right to protect
my family, and I want people who sale guns to be more responsible, the people
who make guns to be more responsible, the people who purchase guns to be more responsible,
and the people who shoot guns to be held more responsible.
God bless America and her people