| ���Guns are made for killin'/They ain't no good for nothin' else...Lynard Skynard. That lyric says it all. Guns have been a part of the American landscape since the first European ship anchored off the coast. For over four-centuries, guns have been instrumental in protecting isolated settler families in the wilderness, putting meat on the table, fending off attacks from brigands, cattle rustlers and bank robbers and bootleggers. As the American Revolution began, men with little more than muskets and cannon fought off British rule, and therafter, as the Constitution's Second Amendment verifies: ...a well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed... But back then, when the U.S. was new, we the people were the militia because the government couldn't afford to keep a standing army as we can today. And for much of the past, all the way to nearly the end of the nineteenth century, most guns were muzzle-loaders that fired one ball with a limited range. ���Today, all that has changed. Today, clip-fed guns can fire thirty rounds of high-powered, armor piercing ammo a second and be reloaded just as quickly by slapping in another clip. Today, criminals can amass weapons that most police departments cannot get. Today, an unruly gang of youths can acquire the firepower equivalent to a Civil War era platoon and unleash it in a crowded parking lot. In 1994, guns were the second leading cause of death for young people 10 to 24 years of age and the third leading cause of death for persons aged 29 to 34 (from the Centers for Disease Control - National Summary of Injury Mortality Data 1987-1994). More than 70% of homicides are committed with a firearm - 17,800 in 1994. That's about nine Columbine High Schools with zero survivors. Firearm accidents cause several hundred deaths a year, many to children who find a loaded, unlocked handgun in daddy's sock drawer. Illegal arms flow from where they are easy to get into the hands of criminals and children, which tragically are sometimes one in the same Guns kill, and there's no disputing their purpose. |
���This side of the brain won't argue the fact that guns do kill - that's what they were designed for. And true, the world is a much different place than it was two centuries ago, yet blaming guns as the root of the evils of today is the easy way to assauge a society of its responsibility. Never has a gun gone out on its own and sprayed a classroom full of children. There has to be a finger on the trigger, and a mind behind the hand. It is not the gun that kills, it's the person behind it, and that is where the blame must ultimately lie. To take the gun from the hand of the responsible owner who has more than likely taken a safety course of some type and has been licensed by a policing body is to remove a level of security from that person. F.B.I. preliminary figures show that violent crime dropped 7% from 1997 to 1998, and murder dropped 8% in the same period. In the Northeast, murder fell 11% from the previous year. Yet violent crime still persists, and to take a husband's and father's means of protecting his family is an unconscionable act. But the gun control advocates say we need to be protected, from ourselves if necessary, and taking guns away is the only way to do it. Unfortunately, the only way to assure the safety of all in the U.S. is to have a nation of 125 million police personnel attached one-to-one to 125 million civilians. In Rawanda, 700,000 people, mostly Tutsi's were killed in brutal, ethnic attacks between by Hutu rebels. Few of those killings were cause by guns, and most were committed by killers wielding machetes. Still recent in our minds, in Kosovo, unarmed civilians were driven from their homes and homeland, and many were killed enmasse by armed Yugoslav forces. And always in our memory, the Holocaust whereby millions upon millions of Jews, gypsies, the mentally handicapped, and other undesireables were gassed into oblivion by the Nazis. Of these embattled populations, some did manage to resist, but how much bloodshed could've been stopped if enough were given the ability to effectively fight back? Guns are the great equalizer, whereby the weak can defend against the stronger person who wishes to do him - or more often than not, her - considerable harm. Taking guns away from lawful owners does nothing to remove the guns from the hands of criminals; while it has been noted that criminals, when asked if they would attempt to rob someone they knew, or even suspected, was armed, many said they would go after an easier target. Read that as an unarmed target. |
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