I’ve been hearing that “they are coming for our guns“ and that “they want to control us” since I was a teenager and that was 70 years ago. Just last week I received a mailing from the NRA that claimed “left wing extremists are coming to take your guns and throw you in prison!” followed, of course, by an appeal for money. What hogwash. Nobody wants your guns simply to deprive you of having them, and nobody wants to control you. What some people do want is to try find ways to prevent our children and others from being slaughtered by senseless gun violence. Unfortunately, largely absent from that group are law abiding gun owners. Instead of participating in the effort to curb violence, too many of us have been brainwashed by the Republican Party and the gun industry into believing that we should resist any effort to end or reduce this national disgrace because to do so would lead to gun confiscation. It’s all nonsense. What law abiding gun owner has ever been denied the right to own firearms? What law abiding gun owner has ever been denied the right to purchase a firearm? But the bigger question is what are we, as law abiding gun owners, willing to do to help keep our children safe in their classrooms short of turning schools into fortresses? Would you be willing to have your gun sale to an individual done at an FFL dealer with a background check? Probably not, because you’ve been convinced by the gun industry and lobby that that would constitute a violation of your Second Amendment right, and that you must defend that right at all cost or you’ll be enslaved by your government. Someone posted on here that if assault style rifles were banned a person could walk into a classroom with two bolt action rifles and kill eight instead of 30 children, as though the saving of 20 children was no big deal. What?? Just because no single action would end gun deaths, should we not try to save any lives? A lot of you have made the point is that there are a lot of factors other than easy access to guns that are causing gun violence. That’s true. But the main cause, whether you will accept it or not, is easy access to guns. A mentally deranged person can’t shoot up a classroom if they can’t get a gun. If gun owners continue to refuse to take a seat at the negotiating table, making the issue “Second Amendment or No Second Amendment,” not too far into the future there won’t be a Second Amendment. The gun industry’s main objective is to sell guns. If they could sell you a fully automatic machine gun or a bazooka, they would do it. The NRA’s main objective is to promote the gun industry and to scare the hell out of you so that you’ll send them money! There are lots of things that could be done to reduce gun violence - some dealing with guns and some with security and mental health - but the final chapter of this saga will probably be written by folks who don’t know which end of the gun the bullet comes out. Because those who do know will refuse to participate in its writing, and in the process destroy the very thing they say they would die to preserve.
