By Becca Carlson
Despite what Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor from the popular 90’s TV show “Home Improvement” said—we don’t always need more power. Especially in the case of guns.
Don’t get us wrong. We don’t want to take guns away from hunters. We respect their right to hunt, especially in cases of providing food for their families (not so much for the sport of it—just our opinion). Some of us have relatives that hunt, and they use rifles. They hunt deer, rabbits and ducks. They aren’t annihilating herds of buffalo with the guns they use.
We don’t want to take guns away from folks who wish to protect their homesteads. But handguns, rifles and shotguns are totally adequate for defending your home and the purpose of self-defense.
Semi-automatic and automatic weapons were designed for one reason— to cause mass human casualties. That may be necessary in war but not on American soil.
Some would argue that these types of guns are “just fun to shoot.” That’s not good enough for us. We’ve been told that dropping acid is “just fun to do,” yet it’s still illegal. So, it seems there is precedent to control or ban certain activities that may be “fun” in the name of public health interests.
In that case, why are legislators so resistant against passing laws to ban the sale and ownership of automatic and semi-automatic arms?
Is it monetary influence or political pressure from supergroups like the NRA? Speaking of the NRA—it is the National Rifle Association not the National SemiAutomatic Association, right? Why do they care? What’s in it for them?
Follow the money, they say in investigative journalism. Who really benefits from the sale of these types of weapons?
We know who loses.
American students lose. Children in schools who are trying to learn and grow—they lose. Families, friends and communities torn apart by such heinous and, yeah, we’ll say it, evil acts. They lose.
Even families of the perpetrators who must live with the guilt by association or wondering if they could have prevented it. They lose, too.
Again, who really gains from keeping these guns on the market?
The right to bear arms is written in the American Constitution. However, let’s be reasonable and responsible when deciding how much power you actually need for lawful purposes.
And another thing, legislators don’t seem to realize (or care) that these high school protesters marching in the streets of their hometowns, at the capital, and the White House are now 18 (or turning 18 very soon) which makes them eligible to vote.
According to the US Census bureau, “Millennials, or America’s youth born between 1982 and 2000, now number 83.1 million and represent more than one quarter of the nation’s population. Their size exceeds that of the 75.4 million baby boomers.”
Seems like it would be wise for lawmakers to hear them out, or they just might be voted out.
More power to them.