Category Archives: Guns and Gun Control

Why Am I A One Issue Voter?

I admit it. I am a one-issue voter. I will never vote for any politician that thinks making it harder for law-abiding citizens like me to get a gun or ammo will do anything to stop gun crime. And as a bonus, I usually find the candidates that oppose gun control also agree with my feelings on most other issues, too.

Gun control is one of those issues that pits individual liberties and responsibility of the individual against those that think government can solve all problems. Supporters of gun control want to pass even more laws that have no effect on people that use a gun for crime. How can any rational person, politician or anybody else, think someone willing to commit murder will be affected in any way by laws restricting the availability of guns?

Blaming the gun for crimes and trying to control access to them is like blaming the drugs for addiction and trying to control access to them. It simply does not work. If it did there would be no illegal drug use. It is also like blaming the match for arson. Guns don’t go out and shoot someone by themselves any more than a match goes out and lights a fire without someone striking it.

Some may think eliminating guns will keep criminals from getting them. If there are no legal guns, like there is no legal heroin or cocaine, they somehow think gun crime will be eliminated. Heroin and cocaine prove the illogic of that position.

Recent events in the US and Canada have drawn the usual whines for even more gun control. In Canada a terrorists used a 30-30 lever action rifle to kill a soldier and shoot up the parliament building. I just kept waiting for someone to call the rifle that has been around for over 100 years a “semiautomatic assault style weapon.”

In the US, police were attacked by a terrorists using a hatchet. Wonder if it was semiautomatic? In a school shooting a student brought a handgun to school and killed two of his classmates and shot others, The big question has been “where did he get the gun.” As Hillary would say, “What difference does it make?”

Why did he do it? Would he have done something similar, or worse, for example some kind of bomb, if he had not gotten a gun? Immediately the Brady Bunch, who used to be called Handgun Control, Inc and now renamed the Brady Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, sent out fund raising letters and emails. They want to somehow stop kids with mental problems from getting their parents guns. How? By eliminating all guns?

There are insane people in our world and there are mean, evil people, too. They will find some kind of weapon to do violence on those that abhor it. If no one had a gun, what would they use? And in the two above cases, a good guy with a gun shot and stopped the terrorists.

If guns caused problems there would be a high murder rate in deer camps, where every fall folks sit around for days within easy reach of high powered rifles, often the dreaded semiautomatic weapon type. Yet you never hear of a shooting in a deer camp.

If guns caused problems it would be unsafe to walk into a store selling guns. From Walmart to Berrys Sporting Goods, racks of guns sit calmly and don’t shoot anyone. In fact, there are a bunch of guns in my house, all loaded and ready to shoot, but they have never shot anyone.

Gun safety is important. If there were young kids in my house I would teach them to leave guns alone unless an adult was present, but I would store guns and ammo separately and lock them up. Kids will be kids and accidents will happen, but teaching safety will go a long way to preventing them.

I got my first .22 when I was eight years old, and had been shooting a BB gun for about three years before I got it. Gun safety was instilled in me from the time I was old enough to understand danger and guns were part of my life every day. All my friends had guns and from the time we were about ten years old we were allowed to hunt together, since our parents knew they had taught us well. And we never had an accident or intentionally shot another person.

Guns are inanimate objects. They have no will of their own. Only people have the ability to do harm with them. Getting rid of guns or making it difficult for careful, law-abiding folks will do nothing to stop those with a will to do harm.

Be wary of politicians supporting gun control. They don’t trust you and guns are not the only one of your liberties they want to control.

Using A Tragedy To Push the Gun Control Agenda

Last Monday, August 25, 2014, a nine year old girl was at a gun range near Las Vegas being taught to shoot a Uzi gun by an instructor. She lost control of the gun and the instructor was shot in the head, killing him.

This tragedy was immediately grabbed by the gun control fanatics and all kinds of claims were made. The girl’s parents took her to the range as a present, and the instructor had been trained in teaching firearms use. I am sure the girl is traumatized and all involved would do anything to have kept it from happening.

Many have blamed the girl’s family, claiming they should never have allowed her to shoot, and the gun range for allowing young shooters to fire guns. Demands range from banning guns to not allowing kids to shoot guns to closing gun ranges.

Regardless of what you think about families making decisions for their children, and what you thing about guns, tragedies happen. Not just with guns, but with everything in life. There is no way to stop them but gun tragedies are treated differently by those that hate guns.
In 2011, the last year I could find information, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports 677 people killed on bicycles in the US, and about 65 of them were 14 years old or younger. That is more than one child killed each week. Yet there are no calls for banning bicycles, not allowing kids to ride them or closing bicycle shops.

Some claim guns are not needed by anyone in the US. Neither are bicycles. Some claim guns are only made for killing people. Go to the Griffin Gun Club during one of our many shoots and you will see hundreds of folks using guns, and none of them are using them to kill people.

This is the first time something like this tragedy has ever happened. Many claim thousands of children are killed each year by guns, In 2010 1544 “children” eighteen years old or younger were killed by guns. No report on how many 17 and18 year old gang banners were in that number. And no mention of the number of kids killed by drive by shootings where bullets are fired at houses by gang members with illegal guns.

Life is dangerous. There is no way to remove all dangers. But don’t single out guns just because you fear or don’t like them.
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