In the 1970s and 80s I was a volunteer for a suicide prevention and crisis intervention agency. One day several of us were asked to go to an elementary school in a poor neighborhood and do what we could to help the kids deal with the loss of a classmate. He had been shot.
From the first moment of contact with the children, I felt out of my league. It didn’t take long to realize that, while they were upset by the situation, they weren’t surprised. It was nothing out of the ordinary. I learned that almost everyone there had had a family member or friend or neighbor who had been wounded or, even worse, killed.
By a gun.
Since that time decades ago the number of guns has grown substantially. In all communities.
In December 2015, CBS News reported Florida had a “staggering” 10.2 guns for every 1000 residents, or a total of 199,828 registered firearms.
A May 2017 report stated Florida had about 1,900,000 guns.
The number of guns sold in Florida in 2020 alone was 1,658,434.
Every day the figures in Florida grow.
With all these guns around, it seems obvious we must be safe. Right? After all, the NRA assures us that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is by a good guy with a gun. Therefore, it’s clear we need more guns in the hands of good guys. All types of guns. Multiple numbers of guns. And we can be assured it’s only good guys who are buying them! Even though loopholes exist in background checks.
How well is that working out?
Almost every day the local newspaper carries multiple stories of shootings.
A man walking through a crowd after leaving a bar is murdered because someone he passed didn’t appreciate his intrusion.
A teenager is mowed down because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got in the way of a drive-by shooting.
An ex-wife is shot at her place of business.
Maybe all the good guys aren’t so good. Or maybe they aren’t as effective as we’d been told.
Furthermore, these good guys, by their stupidity and carelessness, not only shoot people but also contribute in multiple other ways to the mayhem.
A child kills a brother because he found a loaded gun around his home that had not been locked up and the ammunition not safely stowed at a different place.
Two children break into a home and find guns lying around which they use to engage in a standoff with police.
It seems to be that the more good guys there are with guns means the more deaths and injuries there are by guns.
What kind of twisted logic makes one think that if there are more guns there will be less gun violence?
Disney doesn’t think so. Their theme parks and others have a strict no gun policy and several weapons have been confiscated as tourists stream in.
Their policy is one founded in irrefutable logic. If there are no guns, there will be no shootings. It’s that simple.
I fear we as a nation will never recognize the logic of such thought, even though other countries have.
I love 90% of the Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment was a horrible mistake that has been reinterpreted and reinterpreted to allow a nation awash in firearms.
And the deaths and injuries and heartbreaks that inevitably follow.
From the first moment of contact with the children, I felt out of my league. It didn’t take long to realize that, while they were upset by the situation, they weren’t surprised. It was nothing out of the ordinary. I learned that almost everyone there had had a family member or friend or neighbor who had been wounded or, even worse, killed.
By a gun.
Since that time decades ago the number of guns has grown substantially. In all communities.
In December 2015, CBS News reported Florida had a “staggering” 10.2 guns for every 1000 residents, or a total of 199,828 registered firearms.
A May 2017 report stated Florida had about 1,900,000 guns.
The number of guns sold in Florida in 2020 alone was 1,658,434.
Every day the figures in Florida grow.
With all these guns around, it seems obvious we must be safe. Right? After all, the NRA assures us that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is by a good guy with a gun. Therefore, it’s clear we need more guns in the hands of good guys. All types of guns. Multiple numbers of guns. And we can be assured it’s only good guys who are buying them! Even though loopholes exist in background checks.
How well is that working out?
Almost every day the local newspaper carries multiple stories of shootings.
A man walking through a crowd after leaving a bar is murdered because someone he passed didn’t appreciate his intrusion.
A teenager is mowed down because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got in the way of a drive-by shooting.
An ex-wife is shot at her place of business.
Maybe all the good guys aren’t so good. Or maybe they aren’t as effective as we’d been told.
Furthermore, these good guys, by their stupidity and carelessness, not only shoot people but also contribute in multiple other ways to the mayhem.
A child kills a brother because he found a loaded gun around his home that had not been locked up and the ammunition not safely stowed at a different place.
Two children break into a home and find guns lying around which they use to engage in a standoff with police.
It seems to be that the more good guys there are with guns means the more deaths and injuries there are by guns.
What kind of twisted logic makes one think that if there are more guns there will be less gun violence?
Disney doesn’t think so. Their theme parks and others have a strict no gun policy and several weapons have been confiscated as tourists stream in.
Their policy is one founded in irrefutable logic. If there are no guns, there will be no shootings. It’s that simple.
I fear we as a nation will never recognize the logic of such thought, even though other countries have.
I love 90% of the Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment was a horrible mistake that has been reinterpreted and reinterpreted to allow a nation awash in firearms.
And the deaths and injuries and heartbreaks that inevitably follow.
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