Time for Change
I am adding my voice to the chorus of people calling for significant gun reform in the US, a country that seems to be in greater denial than the river in Egypt. My personal beliefs aside, this is an emergency management issue, and one that will continue to be a problem until the citizens of the US decide to make a change.
Before I get too deep into it, you're likely wondering what makes this an emergency management/emergency preparedness issue. One of the treatments for an identified risk is prevention, stopping something before it starts. No matter how angry someone gets, it is incredibly hard to kill 17 people at once if you don't have a gun. Good social policies, ones that enable people and help people to move forward in the world, are also good emergency management policies. If you look after people, provide the necessities, and make them safe then you've already made them more resilient and better able to deal with an emergency.
There is no good reason for a private citizen to own a handgun or semi-automatic weapon of any type. NONE. Hunting rifles are a different story, and I have many friends who are hunters. I have no desire to stop anyone from pursuing a hobby (or in some cases, lifestyle) like hunting. In fact, many of them rely on the meat from hunting to feed their families and communities. It is time for America to admit that they have an addiction to guns, and to seek serious help for that addiction.
There are all sorts of arguments out there about 2nd amendment rights, to which I say that it isn't reasonable to expect the founding fathers to mean the right to a weapon that fires 45 rounds/minute. When your guns take 20-30 seconds to reload, then that is your frame of reference. I suspect that the founding fathers would write the 2nd amendment very differently today.
The other argument that is out there is the "good guy with a gun" argument that says only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun. This is a logical fallacy, because if the bad guy doesn't have a gun to begin with, then you don't need the good guy with a gun. The truth here is that the "good guy with a gun" is actually a second active shooter, one with unknown training, equipment, and who is likely not nearly as capable of keeping perspective on the situation as a well-trained police officer.
I'm aware that there are many Americans who don't subscribe to gun culture, and who are desperately calling for gun reform. I, and many people from around the world, stand with you and support your efforts to weed out this rotten part of American culture. Until the image of the gunslinger is purged from American culture, there will be no change. The rest of the world has figured it out...right now the US hasn't, and they look bad because of it.
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Don't get me wrong, I honestly don't see a need for automatic weapons. But to say there is zero need for anyone to have handguns, I fully disagree with. I am a disabled woman. Asking me to trust in my ability to handle a shot gun to protect myself with it is the same as just telling me to go ahead and commit suicide because rest assured, if the gun didn't kill me when it knocked me into the wall, you can bet the bad guy I was aiming at will do the job while I am laying unconscious on the ground.
I got my first gun at 8 years old and was never allowed to touch it without daddy being there till after I was 15. I am now 60. That is 52 years that my gun never disobeyed me and shot a single person. It was trained exactly like I was to respect it. Did I have to pull it a few times in my life. Yes, it saved me from rape/murder (whatever they had in mind) on 3 different occasions. Yet, it has never been fired except on practice ranges.
Have you ever heard of Kennesaw Georgia? I live less than 50 miles from there. Back 30 some odd years ago, they passed a law that every head of household had to own a firearm. I thought they were crazy. But a strange thing happened. Violent crime basically disappeared. Last I heard there had not been a murder there for a very long time.
I find it so hard to believe that no one saw the guy in Florida had some major problems. But from what I am hearing, it sounds like a lot of people didn't want to get involved and let this guy slip through everyone's radar. We need to stop blaming the guns and start blaming the breakdown in the system that should have seen something coming.
Sorry for the late reply, I've been sick as a dog for the last few days and am just catching up now!
Before I say anything further, I first want to say that I'm sorry you were threatened with rape/murder, but that I'm glad you never had to experience it. That is something that I would never wish on anyone. The fact that you had to suffer through the threat is something that I find abhorrent and wrong, and I hope that the perpetrators were eventually brought to justice.
I'm not denying anyone the ability to own a gun, but the privilege of owning and carrying an easily concealed deadly weapon is something that should be limited to very few, highly trained, and selected people who have a legitimate need. Those other than police officers who should be allowed to own and carry a handgun would be limited to those who are engaged in high-level VIP protection, and who do so with the explicit permission of their local authority. If you own a handgun and want to fire off a few rounds at the range, then go for it...but that gun stays at the range when you're done.
It is only when it comes to guns in the USA that people seem to believe that adding additional risk on top of a risk is an appropriate solution. When there is a risk (such as the one posed by guns), you take away that which is causing the risk, you don't add more of the risk.
While in this case there were some things that got missed, it is a lot harder to kill 17 people and injure dozens more with a knife. I'm not sure how to explain to the gun lobby in the USA that someone's right to own a weapon doesn't supersede another person's right to live. It is only in the USA that there's this far-out belief that the only solution to guns is more guns.
I'm legitimately at a loss here...
Obviously, I disagree. My Dad was military, my husband was military, my only child is a Security Officer (not a guard)(yes he is armed) for the Dept. of Revenue. I have been trained, much more than the average person. The thing is, crime is not committed by the majority of people. You are asking law abiding citizens to give up their right to protect themselves and their property, because of the minority of the population that commits crime.
If you do a little research you find that in 2013 (the latest data I found records for) there were 698 people in jail or prison for every 100,000 citizens. That is .698 of a percent. Less than 1% of the population have committed crimes serious enough to be incarcerated. Of that number statistics disagree on how many are in for non-violent crimes, but as high as 60% are believed to be in for minor crimes (weed) So you are asking the 99+% of the law abiding citizens to give up the right to protect themselves, because no one has the time or the resources to spot the few who MIGHT cause problems.
Everyone had guns when I was growing up, you didn't hear about mass murders with automated weapons. You rarely heard about a murder period. There has to be a reason for the difference. Might be because tv and movies were not filled with the glorious lifestyle of drug dealers. Everyone could afford medical care, few people did without food because we took care of each other and everyone in the neighborhood grew food. We weren't made to feel like pond scum because we couldn't stretch a tiny paycheck to make ends meet.
I have never shot anyone and hope I never have to. But you can rest assured if I ever shoot someone, it will be because they are planning on killing me if I don't. I won't give up my gun because if we do, the only people who have guns will be the criminals because they will never give up theirs. I refuse to depend on an officer that might make it here in 20 minutes to take care of me.
Plus, I have to wonder why you think people couldn't kill others with a rifle or shotgun? The body count might have been lower, but since you are including pistols in your argument, it sort of defeats your argument because it is hard for someone with a pistol to cause as much damage as this kid did. The incident in Florida was horrible and it never should have happened. But, you are letting the emotions of a mass shooting by an obviously insane person who showed signs of major problems for years prior, roll over into "get rid of all guns except rifles and shotguns.
The logic behind that leaves me at a legitimate loss.
It's the same logic that has worked over and over again in other civilized countries...the proof is that good gun control works. With all due respect (and I do mean that...I do have great respect for you and your experiences), I'm going to disengage from this conversation because it won't get either of us anywhere. That being said, thank you for having a civil conversation about it, and I do hear your arguments. I (and the majority of the world) just happen to disagree with them.
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