Gun Control

After what happened in Las Vegas last Monday, anything I say with even a hint of humor would be totally inappropriate. There’s enough negative news these days that I can easily find one to write about. Yeah, gun control.

We’re back to the battle of the guns and how to control them. The Second Amendment was first adopted at a time in our nation when we needed an armed citizenry to protect our borders. And now, 226 years later, we have a powerful military to shield us from invaders. Our Founding Fathers wrote this amendment so that our citizenry would have guns to protect themselves and our nation from invaders. Gun ownership now should depend on our legitimate uses of them and not on our need for national defense—hunting, target shooting, and the unlikely need for self-protection. Let’s face it, the odds are greater that we’ll be struck by lightning or crushed in an avalanche than by bumping into someone who wants to do us bodily harm. Does anyone need an AK47 for hunting or target shooting? What kind of game would we be hunting with a “nearly” full-automatic rifle? A herd of dinosaurs? A flight of pterodactyls? And what sort of target would we fire at to prove our marksmanship? A thousand beer bottles strewn over the ground a thousand yards ahead? A target with a diameter of a hundred feet for us to shred? As a precaution against personal danger, an AK47 would be too large to carry in one’s pocket. A hand gun would be more practical. And why would we need an inexpensive bump stock ($100 to $300) to turn a semi-automatic rifle into a killing machine capable of spraying out bullets at a rate of 9 per second? In the time Usain Bolt runs the hundred meter dash, a psychotic gunman could get off 90 shots. Slide Fire, one of the companies that make and sell bump stocks, says in its promotional literature, “The command and control behind the Slide Fire stock will create an exhilarating experience that keeps you smiling for days.” Whoa! Is that ever a scary image. Some whack job goes to the range and gets an “exhilarating experience” that has him “smiling for days.” Is that how Stephen Paddock felt up in that room high above the concert crowd, exhilarated and happy? He owned at least 47 guns and had more than twenty with him on Monday night. NRA members all over the country must be applauding that his rights of gun ownership weren’t infringed upon. I think the first step toward slowing and then halting mass murder would be to outlaw the weapons used in mass murders like what we saw in Las Vegas three days ago.