SOME THOUGHTS ON "GUN CONTROL"

by Bob Walsh

It used to be "gun control." A lot of people found that term to be meaningless, offensive or both. We then moved on to "common sense gun laws." That assumes the legislature has common sense and used it. This would be a false assumption.

We have now moved on to "gun violence" and "gun safety laws." Safety sounds good and gun violence sounds bad, right?

I own a lot of guns and have never once been attacked by one, either mine or anybody elses. I have never heard of a person being attacked by a gun.

Modern handguns are safe. They do not go off by themselves. They do not fire if dropped. They do not go off due to routine normal handling, even if you are stupid and handle them while they are loaded. Rifles can sometimes go off if dropped with a live round in the chamber. Shotguns will often do so. That is why anybody with any brains and any training knows you do things like unload when you are climbing a fence and don't leave a loaded gun laying about the camp. (I have seen two reliable reports of hunting dogs "shooting" their owners by stepping on or knocking over a loaded, cocked weapon in a camp environment.)

So, what is gun violence? If a bad guy comes up, points a gun at me, shoots me and takes my wallet that is gun violence. I think we can all agree on that. What if he just threatens to shoot me? Is that gun violence? What if I pull out my own gat and shoot him? Is that gun violence? If a nut with a machete is chopping people on the subway and a cop shoots him is that gun violence? If a cop shoots a bad guy who is shooting at him are they both guilty of gun violence? If a cop shoots at an active shooter, misses and accidentally hits a good guy is the shooting victim a victim of gun violence? If so who is the perp, the active shooter or the cop?

I think it would be amusing if we could get the anti-gun clowns to actually tell us what the hell they mean. But since they can't even figure out what an "assault weapon" is other than it looks scary, I am not holding my breath on that. My own guess, for what that is worth, is that what words mean is not significant to good liberals. Interfering with gun rights to the extent possible and ensuring that the number of honest, law-abiding citizens who actually own guns is as small as possible is the object of the exercise. Intellectual honest has nothing whatsoever to do with it.