My thoughts on gun control and the recent shooting this
summer in America
If you are reading this then you probably already know this
summer (July 2012) a man walked into a packed movie theater in Aurora Colorado
armed with legally purchased firearms and began randomly shooting people. He
killed 12 people including a 6 year old little girl.
A month later (August 2012) a man walked into a church in
Oak Creek Wisconsin armed with at least one legally purchased handgun and began
randomly shooting people. He killed 6 people.
Same month (August 2012) a man walked up to a former
co-worker on a busy NYC sidewalk, pushed him to the ground and shot him in the
head in broad daylight at around 9am.
It has definitely been a summer of highly publicized gun
violence.
When you hear of news like this what is the first that comes
to mind?
For me its…what would I do if I were there? What would I do
if my family were there caught in the middle of these situations? I have 2
little boys and a wife and I can’t help but think what would I do if an active
shooter were to try and kill us while we are out in public somewhere?
Another thought that comes to mind is… why didn’t at least
one person have a gun to defend themselves? At least in the Colorado massacre
that is. Its legal to carry a concealed weapon there.
Many people see this on the news and say to themselves “oh
that will never happen to me”. I on the other hand say to myself, it can happen
to anyone at any time at any place. Only a fool would think otherwise.
Believe it or not there are people out there who think that statistically there are over 200 million people in America and the odds of being hurt or killed by random acts of violence are extremely low.
They believe
they have a better chance of getting struck by lightning or being bit by a
shark or winning the lottery.
They say, “I refuse to live in fear” so they go about their
business as usual without a care in the world and do absolutely nothing to
prepare themselves for any kind of threat to them or their family. They say
things like…”If its my time to go then that’s just life and there is nothing I
can do about it. Why waste time thinking about it”.
I am not made this way personally. If you believe in God
then you believe that God helps those who help themselves. If you believe in
luck then you believe luck favors the prepared.
Another thing I think of is how are these massacres going to
affect our gun laws? In other words, how are these crimes going to affect how I
can defend myself after ridiculous gun control laws are made in a knee jerk
reaction to these crimes?
I painfully remember the 1994 Clinton assault weapons ban .
I was born in California and I cant stand the idiotic 10 round magazine limit,
bullet button and the featureless nonsense they have to put up with that does
absolutely nothing to stop crime.
For those who don’t know, crime actually went up after the
assault weapons ban. Why? Probably because criminals never stopped buying
stolen weapons and never stopped carrying illegal guns. Simply put, they never
stopped being criminals. They didn’t care about the law before the ban and they
didn’t care about the law after the ban. They don’t care about laws in general.
That is why we call them criminals.
The gun control laws only affected the law abiding citizens
who followed the law. It effectively disarmed and punished Americans who never
committed a crime.
Ironically cities like Los Angeles, Oakland, Chicago and NYC
have the country’s strictest gun control laws all in the name of “safety” and
“to reduce crime” yet they also have the highest firearm crime rates in the
entire USA. How is it possible to have high firearms related murders if guns
are so restricted? It simply cannot be possible. It is a fact that the anti-gun
liberals refuse to recognize. It’s clear gun control does not work.
Ironically in states that allow ownership of class III
machine guns… there has never been a single case of a registered owner of a
machine gun committing a crime with it. Las Vegas has lots of dirt bags and
machine guns are completely legal to own there yet no one person has used a
machine gun to commit a massacre or rob a billion dollar casino? How ironic. If
you are an anti-gun advocate? Please answer that question?
These 3 recent shootings have only reinforced my decision to
carry a concealed weapon every day. Not because I live in fear, but because I
refuse to put my family at risk of being one of those defenseless victims.
Those who subscribe to me already know, I carry my Glock 26
7 days a week. I always encourage my friends
and family to have a certain “situational awareness” and stay armed if you can.
Especially if you live in a state where you have the freedom to carry?
A few people have watched my youtube videos and have
criticized me for being a “typical paranoid American”. I can only assume these
comments are from a European socialist? But no matter who it is, I have to
laugh at these kinds of comments because these are the same people who probably
put a seat belt on their child. You don’t put a seatbelt on your child because
of the law. You put a seatbelt on your child because you want to protect them
just in case something bad happens.
This is the exact same reason I carry a concealed weapon. I
carry it to protect my family in case something bad happens. That’s not being
paranoid. That’s being intelligent and prepared.
I fear these recent massacres will push law makers into
creating new gun control laws to try and make us safer. With the Presidential
elections just a few months away I fear whoever wins will feel compelled to
enact some form of gun control to make us safer.
The anti-gun movement has been working hard to find new ways
to restrict guns in America. Many openly wish for an all-out total gun ban. The
NRA and the 2nd Amendment itself has been difficult for the anti-gun
movement since the constitution clearly protects our right to bear arms.
What I fear is what the 2nd Amendment does not
protect. It doesn’t protect magazine capacity or the amount of ammo we can buy.
It doesn’t protect against high taxes on ammo or protect against caliber
restriction.
I fear the federal government is going to try and push all
of America to adopt the same gun control laws as California, New York and Illinois
all in the attempt to make us safer…but as history has already proven…it wont.
The shooting at the Empire State bldg. in NYC is proof of that.
Here is the sad truth about humanity. Criminals will always
kill. Mass murders will always happen. With strict gun control laws there will
be millions of defenseless law abiding citizens for killers to prey upon.
A “gun free zone” might as well have a sign that says “mass
murderers please come here. No one can stop you”.
Thankfully banning all guns is impossible at this point but
even if we did ban all guns today, the fact remains that guns are here to stay
whether legal or illegal. If we stopped making guns and stopped importing guns,
we shut down all gun stores and made all face to face gun sales illegal…the
fact remains that guns are still on Earth.
If you restrict them, you will create a powerful black
market demand for them. Look at history. What happened when the Government
banned something we love like alcohol? It created the bloodiest time in modern
history. It created the entire organized crime phenomenon.
What do I think is the answer? My opinion is that instead of
restricting guns, we should give law abiding citizens the power to defend
themselves from random acts of violence.
Do I want everyone to carry a gun? No. My fellow gun
advocates will probably hate me for saying this but I believe we should allow
gun ownership (not restrict it) but allow it with some strict rules.
The die hards hate this idea because they feel that once you
give up an inch of the 2nd amendment, somehow we will lose a mile. But
for me, I feel if you own a gun you should have “mandatory” firearms training.
Make gun buyers take a competency safety test. If you cannot pass an in-depth
background check, and cannot pass a standard safety class then you are not
competent to carry a gun. But if you are proven to be competent then we should
be allowed to carry a concealed gun “IN ALL 50 STATES”.
We should create a national concealed carry law instead of
individual state CCW laws. Give the good guys the power to stop random acts of
violence. If one person had a concealed weapon in that movie theater they could
have stopped the killer or at least injure him to the point where he could not
concentrate because he is being shot at. People would probably still die but
not 12 people.
Many argue that a handgun would have been suicide against a
man with an AR15. True but I would rather die fighting to protect my family’s
life than to just sit there and do nothing.
Some will say having a restaurant or grocery store or
theater full of armed citizens is a disaster waiting to happen. If 3 or 5
people respond to a single man with a gun, there will probably way too many
shots fired and actually hurt or kill more people than the killer could. (if
there are people behind the bad guy).
To a certain degree I agree. The NYC shooter killed one man
but the police who responded shot him and 8 bystanders because the shooting
happened on a busy NYC street.
As much as I would like to think all gun owners are good
people. The fact is that there are a lot of people out there with bad
attitudes, short tempers and violent personalities, or have a low intelligence
but they are completely legal to own a firearm.
Because of this I do think it would be wise to do more
extensive background checks. Make it
mandatory for firearms owners to take firearms competency tests and safety
classes. Educate them before they can own a gun.
Here is the biggest problem. Mentally ill people! Every one
of the shooters had emotional or mental issues. Many of them even had a history
of mental illness or emotional problems. Why focus on guns when we all know the
real problem is crazy people with guns!
If you take away the guns you are still left with a violent
mental person who still has access to knives, machetes, swords, chainsaws,
needles filled with poison or diseases, homemade pipe bombs, fertilizer bombs
and other explosives they learned to make from the internet. The capacity to
kill does not go away by simply banning all guns. Humans have been killing long
before the invention of the gun.
I know I will piss off a lot of people by having this
opinion but it is my opinion.
I can understand the fear of my idea of gun control. Just look
at what happened to the gun rights in the UK and Australia. Massacres we
committed in those countries and the citizens voted for gun control. Next thing
you know their guns were over restricted and banned totally.
It was a clear case of over-reaction. The anti-gun movement was
given an inch but they took a mile. Once they restrict your guns its almost
impossible to repeal the law unless it has a built in expiration date.
I think the proper reaction to a massacre is not gun control
but the right to carry a concealed weapon. Just like what Texas did after the
Libbys restaurant massacre. Before the massacre Texas did not allow concealed
carry of a firearm. After 22 people were killed in Libbys at lunch time, Texas wised
up and gave their citizens the right to carry a concealed weapon. They did
exactly the opposite of what politicians normally do in these cases. They
empowered the citizens not leave them defenseless.
Look at Texas now. Yes they still have crime but when was
the last time you heard of a mass murder in Texas?
Not true...look at the Ft. Hood massacre, you say? Well guess
what… The Army does not allow it soldiers or visiting civilians to carry a
loaded firearm on base. It’s essentially a gun free zone even though there are
hundreds of troops trained to shoot. It’s extremely ironic.
The shooter knew everyone in the bldg. was unarmed. He knew
he had a large window of time to conduct a massacre before anyone with a gun
would arrive. For example at Virginia Tech 30 people were killed in 12 minutes.
12 minutes is all a mass murderer needs. It’s fairly common knowledge that it
takes SWAT 15 minutes to even show up.
So there you have it. That is my opinion on gun control here
in America.
#1 Don’t ban guns. Make CCW permits legal in all 50 states
and actually allow more guns to be in the hands of legally checked and trained
citizens.
#2 Mandatory safety training for all firearms owners. Yes
all of us. It’s a compromise but it’s the only compromise I feel makes sense.
Restricting mags to 10 rounds, restricting barrel lengths to 16 or 18 inches,
restricting pistol grips, restricting flash hiders, restricting, suppressors,
restricting collapsible stocks, restricting folding stocks, restricting mag
release buttons does nothing to make us safer. Let us keep all these things but
make us take a safety class to do so. That makes the most sense to me.
#3 Focus on the mentally unstable, not the gun itself. Guns
don’t commit mass murder. Crazy people do.
What is your recommendation?
Like it or not that is my opinion (for now) unless someone can make a better case.
