At a recent international meeting, a friend of mine from Australia asked me what the American preoccupation with guns was.This was just days after Congresswoman Giffords of Arizona was gunned down.I explained that the right to bear arms lies at the core of every American and that I supposed it came from the fact that we conquered a frontier and then needed our weapons to achieve our freedom from a King.(Apparently Australia did not have to go to war to separate from Britain.)So, I am firmly planted in the concept that we should bear arms in this country.I have my own.But, I don’t carry a handgun or keep one at my home.The danger is too great.
Vince Lombardi once said that there are three things that can happen when you throw a pass and two of them are bad.With guns, I think there are six things that can happen and only two of them are good.This blog is inspired by the occurrence of two separate shootings with handguns that were reported in our Jackson news on the same day, July 16, 2011.The front page of the local paper carried a story of a Texas woman who accidentally shot her 53 year old husband in a futile attempt to shoot a pit bull dog who was attacking a child.She grazed the dog and killed her husband, who was trying to pull the dog away.This was clearly a case of someone misusing a hand gun with no training or experience and mistakenly killing a loved one.
The second incident was found on the front page of the local section of the paper. It described how a priest was killed with his own hand gun at his home by a part-time caretaker for the home. This was a case of the criminal finding the hand gun before the owner did and using it to harm him.
The two good things that can come from guns are good hunting and protection. The four bad things are:
- your gun will be the first thing crooks steal when they break into your car or house
- the criminal will use your gun to kill you
- you will accidentally harm someone you don’t intend to
- children will find it and harm themselves or others