Guns and Common Sense

In the wake of the horrible tragedy that struck in Aurora, Colorado where twelve innocent souls lost their lives and numerous others were injured, the debate about gun control and the Second Amendment has become news again, and, as ever, it is a heated debate.

Some will claim that stricter gun controls laws would have prevented the shooter in that incident from possessing the firearms or the ammunition needed to carry out his plans. Like any other event, the politicians who have had a beef against gun ownership for years have come forward to claim that they were right all along.

This debate is not an easy one to solve but in the end there is no reason to try to limit taxpaying citizens  rights that were guaranteed to them at the very start of our nation. While we have progressed much since that document was written we are still a very violent society that still has uses for both hunting and self defense firearms.

We have all heard the saying ‘guns don’t kill people; people kill people’ for a long time now, it has become a very well known phrase on a very controversial subject. The reason it might be repeated so freely is that no matter what your stance on gun control, it makes complete logical sense. Guns really don’t kill people, it is the person behind the gun that should really get the blame.

You also have account for the fact that no matter how strict the gun laws become, you may be only hindering law abiding citizens from possessing a firearm, because it would seem someone contemplating or committing criminal acts is never going to follow those rules in the first place. James Holmes, the shooter in the Colorado incident, did get his weapons through normal means, but he also had a nice clean background in neuroscience and no legal entanglements beyond a traffic ticket.

A good example of how much of a difference stricter gun laws might not make is in the Chicago land area in Illinois, where I spent a good portion of my life. That area, especially within the city of Chicago limits, has some of the strictest gun laws around, yet the murder rate is up around thirty-five percent from last year, proof that the bad guys will always get the guns.

Then we have the hunters and the hunting industry that surrounds them. Besides the right to be able to hunt for your own food, hunting is an integral part of quite a few communities’ income across the United States as well as the jobs created by everyone making, supplying and selling the gear needed by hunters each hunting season.

While we know that the public officials supporting harder gun laws only mean the best for their fellow man, it cannot be an option to take away the personal prospect of self defense, hunting and maintaining our country’s freedom based on tragic events committed by men who would have found what they need to carry out their horrible plans no matter what laws we put in place.