Guns, Guns, Guns!

"Guns don't kill people; people kill people". If I ever see that idiotic statement again after what happened over the past weekend in Arizona, I may have to kill someone myself, with my bare hands. The one & only purpose of guns is to kill, period. Seriously, do hunters go into the woods intending to only wound an animal, maybe just to see it writhe in agony for their amusement? Do soldiers go into war hoping to stop the enemy by shooting them somewhere on the body where the wound wouldn't be fatal? Or are these hunters & soldiers, as well as the police, using rubber bullets, just to stun perhaps? As stupid as those questions sound, it couldn't sound as stupid as that opening statement does.


I guess there are responsible gun owners, such as hunters, whether or not I approve of the "sport" of hunting or not. Two of my uncles were hunters, & they owned actual hunting guns, not handguns or semiautomatic weapons. Why can't we pass laws outlawing every kind of gun other than those expressly intended for hunting? How could the NRA object to that? I would bet that the overwhelming majority of hunters are not even members of the NRA, anyway.

I don't like guns, period- any kind of guns. Obviously, they are necessary to the police & the military, but that's about it, as far as I'm concerned. Even if hunters & those concerned with "personal security" (whatever the hell that actually means) are included with the former as gun owners, the question remains about exactly who should & should not be allowed to own guns, & what types of guns. Who exactly would qualify as a responsible gun owner, anyway? Shouldn't it be someone who can pass not just a background check for past criminal behavior, but someone who has no mental health issues & actually knows how to properly use the gun in question? As much as I hate even talking about this, & believe that the second amendment has been misinterpreted (not hard to do, since it seems quite ambiguous to me), unless we are going to completely outlaw guns, which I would love but know isn't going to happen in the near future, we do need way better regulation not only concerning who can own them, but what kinds can be owned by individuals. Nobody needs an assault rifle or a semiautomatic weapon to either go hunting or for personal protection, & I don't think handguns are necessary at all.

The Republican Party has always been the party who oppose any regulation of guns, & I've always wondered exactly why that is. Yes, they undoubtedly get big campaign donations from the NRA & other pro-gun lobbies, but since we're not talking about completely banning guns, but simply regulating them, I just wonder if there's something else going on there. I can't begin to speculate what it could be, but it's very curious to me. Why would anyone think that it's ok for a mentally unbalanced person with no weapons training to own an assault rifle, for instance? I just think that's odder than hell- makes no kind of sense.

Putting aside the question of why the political climate in our country has become so full of hate & intolerance (that's being beat to death right now, & I think you can guess what I think about it, anyway), this situation with guns being so readily available to anyone who can afford to buy one, especially at gun shows, is intolerable to me. I think it's incredibly stupid & irresponsible. I'm afraid that the Democrats have been complicit in letting this situation get as out of hand as it now is, & someone has to finally step up to the plate & say "enough". I really admire the sheriff in Tucson who just put it on the line & said what most politicians are too cowardly to say about the climate of violence today. What's really strange to me is that most law enforcement people support gun regulation, & yet the politicians of both parties sit on their asses & let shit like what happened in Arizona occur, perhaps on a smaller scale, all over the country, over & over. Am I missing something, or are they all just cowards?