Neither gun manufacturers’ profits and quasi-interpreted Second Amendment rights, nor the convenience of packing heat are valid reasons to endanger innocent lives any longer.
Six police officers were shot and killed within two months in Puget Sound. A young man was shot over an iPod and two teenagers were shot in Burien at an apartment complex.
Enough. We need gun control, and we need it now.
There are already enough, check that, more than enough weapons, handguns especially, in our homes. More importantly, there are too many guns on our streets.
Why would someone need more than say, five weapons? I mean really, from Saturday night specials to pearl handled .45 automatics, the obsession has verged on psychosis with our protectors — law enforcement — having to battle criminals who sometimes have weapons more powerful than police. And this happens all because it’s our right to bear arms?
Enough.
Some parts of our country have become armed camps.
The scary thing is to couple this belief with, for example, militias, which strangely seem to be devoid of diversity. Then the picture gets even more menacing.
This is not an argument to end the Bill of Rights, but to address the rationality of the no gun control argument.
I mean, imagine what the outcome would have been if we would have had gun control laws, stringent gun control laws, as it related to Maurice Clemmons, who killed four Lakewood police officers? How about when an armed and drunk David Edward Crable shot two Pierce County sheriff’s deputies just a month later?
Criminals get their weapons from the proliferation of guns that are sold originally and legally to law-abiding citizens. These weapons generally are acquired through illegal means.
When you factor in the traveling gun shows that engage in slipshod background checks, where their basis for conducting such malfeasance is their belief in the Second Amendment, it puts us all in danger. What’s even scarier is that once these weapons hit the streets, it’s almost impossible to remove them from circulation.
Instead of these pro Second Amendment groups opposing federal mandates, one would think that they would want to help keep weapons away from felons and mentally deranged persons. The conundrum for them seems to be any rational limits on gun ownership makes them think they are giving away their Second Amendment rights to bear arms.
With their position, our safety as a society is secondary.
Many of these people do not realize that the solution to this problem is to get behind gun control initiatives. The only way to avoid future tragedies is to help law enforcement, and lawmakers, stem access to illegally obtained arms. How many tragedies have to take place before this vociferous group understands this?
Lucius Daye, a service-connected disabled veteran, is working on his MBA degree from Syracuse University. A member of The Olympian’s Diversity Panel, he can be reached at lucasdaye@comcast.net.
