Monday, December 17, 2012

The Reality Of Gunsanity


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I ask that you take a short break from reading our iPhone app reviews, to think about the extremely important issue of gun control.


There are so many debates and articles flooding the web on those who support stronger gun laws, and those who want their 2nd Amendment gun freedom. You don't know who makes a valid point, or if what you are reading is even the truth. So to take a little different perspective, I thought we could just relax for a minute, and imagine these tragic situations with armed citizens.

The most recent murder of 20 children and 6 teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary has hit us all so hard. The fact that a human being could gun down so many helpless children, none of us will ever comprehend. As I read and expressed my own sorrow on Facebook, I quickly learned how naive I was. What started as a few thumbs up, ended with a comparison to 22 Chinese children being stabbed, BUT STILL ALIVE! Then I read other posts about us "gun control liberals" and how if teachers were armed, the children may have been saved. Those statements are why I want you as the readers to forget about who's right or wrong, and imagine what really happens in real life situations that could someday impact you.

Let's pretend a law was put in place last year to arm teachers if they take a course and are cleared mentally. For those who think we'll just arm the young body building teachers, something like 76% of them are women, and 56% are over 40. Fifty-five year old Mrs. Pegi Jones decided she would take the course, and the school would install a combination safe compartment to keep her gun. December 17, 2012 comes around, and it's a normal morning at school. Suddenly there are loud popping noises, and Mrs. Jones class jumps up and asks what is happening. All of a sudden one of the children yells out, "there's someone in the hall with a gun!" Never expecting she would ever need to flip that combination, Mrs. Jones quickly gets her gun, and tells the children to get down as she runs out of the room. Not knowing what to expect, she see's children frantically running in the hallway, and the gunman trying to break into another classroom. She starts to panic and fires 3 shots at the gunman. One of the shots whizzes by the shooter hitting a student in the leg, one hits the shooter in the thigh, and the other hits him in his bullet proof vest. The shooter screams out with rage, shoots Mrs. Jones, and unloads his weapons through the classroom window and hallway. The shooter is bleeding from his leg, but his adrenaline and anger easily takes him over to Mrs. Jones, and fires a bullet into her head. The shooter hears Mrs. Jones students screaming, and walks into her classroom. Without saying a word, he fires at the crying children, and shoots himself. When it was all over, 8 adults died, and 32 children.

Some of you are saying, "all you did was just make up a lame fictional short story and kill off some more people!" I won't disagree with you, but tell me how this story could possibly end up with a happier ending? Tell me a story about how if five movie watchers were packing the night of the Aurora Movie Shooting, they would have changed the outcome? Are you going to tell me how one of these men is a dark room sharp shooter, and with one bullet hits James Holmes right through his mask? Again, my guess is that short story ends up with James Holmes killing 50, and movie goers with guns killing 4.

So why is an iPhone App blogger diving into this topic? It's very simple, the belief that more guns is the answer is only going to lead to someone close to me ending up a statistic. I am not interested in going backwards in time to be a cowboy, or overtaking our government. People like John Lott are only going to cause more gun deaths in the United States. People like Piers Morgan are only trying to stop people from being slaughtered with assault rifles, and he's twitter slaughtered for it. I am not an expert on guns, and have never fired one. I understand the reasoning, and I have no problem keeping a gun in your home to protect your beautiful family. I won't even disagree that some murders wouldn't have happened, if the killer knew there were guns where they were going. If we could have security guards at every school like Wayne LaPierre VP for the NRA is proposing, that would be awesome! If you can get that done sir somehow, I am all for it, but that addresses nothing with gun control. It was clear after hearing LaPierre speak, and then again on Meet The Press, that the NRA will not budge on reducing clip size, or anything having to do with their precious guns. Lets be honest people, we are all crazy in our own ways, and any one of us has the potential to make a split second mistake during rush hour traffic. You have got to understand, for those of us who don't own guns, it's hard for us to just sit back and say,"evil people do evil things, and guns are not the problem." Would Adam Lanza have killed those children if his mother didn't take him to the shooting range and have three guns in her house, we'll probably never know. What we do know is that the United States has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world, and 60% of homicides in the U.S. come from guns. I'm pretty sure with all the gun control talk, we just went from 1st, to 1st with a commanding lead! We can toss gun violence graphs in other countries back and forth, but none of that will change people like me. We fought over the Presidential Election with our different views, but even if you lost, your family moved on and lived. There is only one view in my mind regarding guns, and that is to make sure I never have to feel the pain we have all watched and felt through these tragedies.

The worst part of this debate, is I can't get these friggin NRA ads off my post! Thanks for reading, and god bless!!!