Good post. The GOP is a little crazy when it comes to guns. I don't own a gun. I've fired one a decade ago and came away convinced there is only one reason why those things were every created and that's to end human life. So on principle, I don't own one and never will. However, I'm a believer in freedom to posses guns, but why do people need machine guns? If you are hunting deer with a machine gun, then where's the sport in that? And let's be 100% honest. We don't need guns as a safeguard against despotism, because if our government becomes a Dictatorship, then we're sunk anyway. Even if we all had the right to buy machine guns, our military is so well trained and financed that they would crush a fully armed American citizenry within days. We wouldn't stand a chance. So that train has come and gone perhaps a century ago. Those who argue that we need guns to have a fighting chance against government despotism are totally deluded.
So what argument does that leave the gun proponents? I really don't find any reason for Americans to be so insistent on the maximum freedom on gun ownership that we have now. All it results in is dead children. It makes me want to cry at the stupidity and violence of Americans. When will we learn? We are the most violent nation on earth. I challenge anyone to gainsay me on that. We are in a perpetual state of war. Peacetime for us is an anomaly. No wonder we can't contain our domestic violence.
The UK and other countries have shown that with gun control, deaths from guns decreases markedly. This whole argument that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is like saying it's ok to give every country who wants it nuclear weapons, because they won't use it.
Human nature has proven time and again that we have to limit the availability of destructive power of any kind, because humans are too damned violent and stupid to restrain themselves a good proportion of the time. If they have the power, then the probability is that they will use the power at some point.
Exactly how many more Conneticuts do we need? How many more little angels lost before we put serious gun control measures in place? At the very minimum ban automatic assault weapons. No American needs that.
And btw, this next statement may be at odds with the above ban, but I'd actually like to see armed security guards allowed to shoot to kill adults or minors who find their way into a school with a gun. No amount of precaution or countermeasures should be spared to protect the most innocent among us. |
