© Charles D. Hayes
I’ve been a gun owner since I got a Daisy Red
Ryder BB gun for Christmas in 1948 at age five. I still have it. My grandfather
laid out all of the ways in which the use of guns required common sense. Since
then I’ve served in the Marine Corps and as a police officer.
In
February of 2015 I caught a burglar in my home and held him at gunpoint until a
state trooper arrived. The burglar pointed a pistol at me. I had a shotgun and
convinced him to drop his. He was a second or two away from dying before he put
the gun down. In all of my years with firearms I’ve never shot anyone
accidently or on purpose.
The
current social uproar over gun rights is endemic of the overall political
divide facing the country. Common sense has been abandoned strictly on identity
based political grounds. In other words, this is not an example of reasoning,
it’s a manner of relating as in my group has a stake in this, so we must win at
all costs. Not to be confused by facts.
The
irony in the rhetoric is breathtaking. Surely a Christian God would deem it a
moral blasphemy and an outrage to forbid women and children refuges shelter
from possible physical harm on the chance that some might someday pose a
terrorist threat, but then cry foul by asking that those purchasing a firearm
must be checked against a no-fly terrorist list. Think about the utter insanity
of such a dogmatic position as it exposes levels of hypocrisy that are off the
charts of any objective standard of human decency, religious morality aside.
Taking
the position that no laws are effective in keeping guns out of the hands of
people who shouldn’t have them and that more people having guns is a deterrent
to violence is a complete abandonment of common sense. And don’t offer me a
quote from John R. Lott Jr’s book More
Guns Less Crime because his data has been thoroughly debunked and
discredited.
Think
hard about what the politicization of gun safety has done to pervert logic. The
more people swim, the fewer drownings, the more people drive, the fewer the
accidents, and the more children there are who play with matches, the fewer the
burns. The more marriages, the fewer the divorces. The more people with guns,
the fewer the shootings. This is insanity on steroids and it has no business
being a political issue.
We
require driver’s licenses to keep bad drivers off the road and it is ludicrous
not to take reasonable measures to keep guns out of the hands of lunatics.
Granted not having a valid driver’s license doesn’t stop some offenders from
driving, but it does deter enough to make a statistical difference in traffic
fatalities due to DUIs.
From
my experience, there is a grain of truth in the notion that a person is less
likely to pull out a handgun and start shooting people if they believe there is
a good chance they will themselves be shot. But this pales in comparison to the
likelihood that if more people are armed that minor conflicts will result in an
increase in the use of firearms and you only have to witness a few examples of
road rage to fully appreciate this reality.
I
understand and I sympathize with those who have affection for firearms, but
take a walk through your town or visit your local Walmart and tell me you think
it would be a good idea that everyone you meet should be armed, some of whom
you must admit are not capable of playing with a full deck.
My
point is that common sense gun regulations have been made nearly impossible for
reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the reality of public safety,
but everything to do with partisan politics, as if us vs. them is the only
thing that matters and that if “they win we lose.” Moreover, this divisiveness
is purposefully spurred on by the firearms industry, the very people who profit
from the paranoia. No wonder there is an ammunition shortage nationwide.
Arguing
that common sense firearms regulations have no positive effect at all on human
behavior is patently absurd and the only basis to deny the statistical evidence
that regulations do have a positive effect is political posturing that’s
completely out of touch with reality. An extrapolation of such ideology would
suggest that because some people are lawbreakers we don’t need any laws at all
about anything because after all, some people won’t obey. This is nonsense!
Our
nation is founded on the premise that most people are law abiding citizens
which most people are and this is why it is possible to have a government and a
civil society in the first place. Gun safety requires a slug of sanity and some
double barreled reasoning with politics set aside.
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