Time for sane discussion on guns
How do we step away from the massacre at the Harvest Festival concert Sunday night in Las Vegas and not get swept up in the knee-jerk reaction to ban all guns in America?
Usually when this happens, people start saying, “Oh, it’s too soon to talk about that, we don’t want to politicize what happened.”
Well, it’s time to stop doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. It’s time for some serious talks, not about banning all guns, but smart discussions about what most people agree should have been done long ago.
Having someone hammer out a hotel window and begin firing down on a crowd of unsuspecting concert-goers is an anomaly.
Unfortunately, shootings like the one in Las Vegas, Sandy Hook and Orlando grab our attention and are followed quickly by non-productive shouting matches. We dissect the shooter’s life, mourn the loss of life and then we return to our normal, everyday lives.
On a normal day, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, 30 people in America were murdered each day by someone with a firearm in 2014. The average between 2011 and 2015 was 32. If you include any gun-related death in America, it jumps to 93 per day.
Those normal, everyday numbers alone should be enough to push a non-troll discussion forward, but they haven’t.
We have to get past the same old discussion-killing talking points in order to move forward.
Yes, we can find someone who would like to ban all or most guns. Just like we can find someone who believes the Earth is flat or that people landing on the moon was fake news.
Most people are not trying to rid the world of your family’s shotgun or your hunting rifle. They are not that important.
And most levelheaded people are hardly looking to have you turn in the handgun you keep at home for protection. Several people may argue whether having a gun in your home actually makes you safer, but we are sure they would agree that it is a choice you should be free to make.
If you are worried about this becoming a slippery slope, remember, Supreme Court rulings on the Second Amendment have thankfully stopped attempts to ban guns.
We know there are no perfect solutions, but it’s time we come together and have a sane discussion.
The goal should be to make it safer and to make it harder for mentally or emotionally unwell people to get their hands on the guns that make it easy to kill so many people so quickly.