Guns Don't Kill People, But, People with Guns Do

Let's face it; we are a violent nation. We have an unholy love affair with guns, and an amazing ability to rationalize the damage that some deranged individuals do with those guns. It's time to stop allowing the Second Amendment to the Constitution to be used as an excuse for allowing the proliferation of weapons such as that used by a nutcase in Arizona to shoot Representative Gabrielle Giffords and several others, and for reasons that might never be clearly understood.

Along with our fixation on guns, we have also devolved into a society where the use of militaristic and violent political rhetoric is the rule rather than the exception; and where people who engage in such rhetoric refuse to accept responsibility for the ideas and images they are putting into the minds of people who are prone to resort to violence without a lot of prodding in the first place.

I grew up in a gun culture. I received my first rifle as a birthday present when I was six. In the good old days of the 40s and 50s, we could go into the woods near our little truck farm and hunt rabbits and squirrels, or plink at old rusty cans, and never do I remember considering aiming my gun at another human being. In fact, back then, and later in the army, I was always taught never to point a gun at anything unless your intent was to shoot it.

Somewhere along the way, all that changed. Guns became not implements for hunting to put food on the table, but symbols of prowess and weapons to 'take out' those you opposed. Combined with the increasing vitriol of partisan politics of the past few decades, it isn't hard to see how we've gotten to a place where Columbines and Virginia Techs are happening more and more. And, all the while, the far right zealously defends the rights to have as many guns as we want, and there have even been debates in one state on whether or not people should be allowed to carry their guns in church. That's the point when I had an epiphany - guns do not kill people, but deranged people with guns kill a lot of people. Twenty years in the army, including two tours in Vietnam, showed me what guns can do. Over the decades, I've seen one too many incidents of what happens when guns are too easily available; to kids who have a natural inquisitiveness without the judgment; and to nuts with a grudge against society.

The founding fathers lived in a time when people lived on isolated homesteads, and needed guns in the home for protection for a whole host of dangers. There were no well organized police forces, or 9-1-1 in case of emergency. Were they alive today, I have no doubt that in their wisdom they would put limits on the availability of firearms. We have got to stop hiding behind the second amendment, and face reality.