I spent almost eight years in the US Navy. I was trained by our military to fix radar systems, communications, computers, and complex avionics equipment down to the component. I carried a secret clearance and knew a good deal about the nuclear weapons used on our aircraft. Now every time someone mentions guns, they say to me..."oh, but you were in the military, you know guns." I have news for you. Not everyone in the military, especially the Navy, was trained to use a weapon in combat. In boot camp we did shoot a .45 caliber pistol and learned how to take it apart to clean it, but that training lasted maybe a couple of days. We spent way more time learning how to fight fires, because in the eyes of the Navy, we were a hundred times more likely to encounter a fire onboard ship than an enemy we needed to shoot. In my years since the military, I do have a concealed weapons permit and own a couple handguns, but I just shoot for fun.
I have always been infuriated at the senseless act of someone using a weapon to kill another person. Today, I am compelled to add my two snarky cents to the discussion because I am tired of hearing hypocritical arguments. Let's apply the same effort used to prevent other repeatable deaths into repeatable deaths caused by the use of a gun.
As I mentioned, I do have a couple handguns and have fired a few semi-automatic assault rifles as well as a police AR-15 modified to be fully automatic. This is not a discussion on the semantics of words and their definition. My blog, my words, and I will use the word gun for all guns; rifle, pistol, assault weapon...all guns. For my discussion, every gun that shoots a bullet that will penetrate the human skin is potentially deadly.
I want to address 3 points here that I think are at the core of this issue, and I'd love to see your comments below if they contribute to a solution. If you want to "correct me" then don't bother because after all, it is my blog and my opinion.
1. Why does anyone want to own an assault rifle? Well for me the same reason someone wants to own a Ferrari or a car that goes way faster than is allowed or legal. You may want to collect them. You may want to shoot them because they are fun to shoot. Just because you don't want to use one yourself doesn't mean we need to get rid of all of them. Banning all guns is not the answer. The police don't need to be the only ones with guns, but they should have the most and the best. Just like our military. The United States has the most powerful weapons. That is the deterrent. Other countries have weapons, but we have the most and the best. Nuclear weapons are like fully automatic guns. If everyone has them, then we lose our power to be a deterrent. You can have assault rifles, but not fully automatic. Don't get too upset just yet. Hang in there until the end of the blog.
2. Stop saying "guns don't kill people, people kill people". The bullets actually kill people if we are going to play semantics. Read the coroners report if you really want to know the scientific cause of death. It won't say death by mentally disturbed person. Have you been to the airport recently? We have to take our shoes off now because someone used a shoe bomb. We have to empty our liquids because they could be flammable or used as a corrosive weapon. They haven't banned people from getting on airplanes yet. They restrict the weapons they use. As long as Liam Neeson isn't on your plane, it seems we are safe from being killed without a weapon on board. So if people kill people, they sure don't do it very often without a weapon.
3. Start somewhere with gun control. Stop saying it won't work just because the cure won't keep every single human from using a gun somewhere in some extreme situation. Be part of a solution. My answer is licensing. Why do we have a license to drive a car or operate heavy machinery but we don't require one to own a deadly weapon? You have to be licensed to fish or to hunt. I say we introduce a licensing program for semi-automatic weapons that includes every semi-automatic gun purchase starting tomorrow. To own a semi-automatic weapon you must be licensed. To purchase a semi-automatic weapon you must have a license. You need to show your license at a gun range to be able to shoot or to purchase semi-automatic ammunition. You have to renew every 5 years. Just to make it easy for current gun owners, if you own one now you are grandfathered in, but you will need that license to buy ammo. When they introduced the motorcycle endorsement to the Florida driver's license in 2008, you had to have it in order to ride a motorcycle, even if you had owned a motorcycle for years. For one year they allowed current owners to register and get the endorsement without taking the class. Same would apply here. You have one year to walk in and get your license without taking a class or a test. It won't fix gun control tomorrow, but let's not have short-sighted vision for this.
The most important part for me of this plan is ammunition. You can find a guy selling used or stolen guns out of his trunk, but you rarely see a guy trying to sell cheap ammo. Ammo is easier to control. In this new program, every box of ammo purchased goes on your license. An excessive ammo purchase should require a waiting period and trigger some kind of form to tell why you need 30 boxes of high-caliber armor piercing ammo. The next concern is how do we track the ammo usage? I don't know, but we should ask Starbucks to help. They can tell me how many "points" I earned on my card at any store anywhere in the country so we know it is possible. Get them to help with the technology. Gun shops have to be licensed to sell guns and ammo. Require them to subscribe to this tracking system as part of their license.
We have done so much to prevent people from blowing up airplanes. We have done a lot to keep people from drunk driving. When will we do something....anything...to prevent these mass shootings?
I have always been infuriated at the senseless act of someone using a weapon to kill another person. Today, I am compelled to add my two snarky cents to the discussion because I am tired of hearing hypocritical arguments. Let's apply the same effort used to prevent other repeatable deaths into repeatable deaths caused by the use of a gun.
As I mentioned, I do have a couple handguns and have fired a few semi-automatic assault rifles as well as a police AR-15 modified to be fully automatic. This is not a discussion on the semantics of words and their definition. My blog, my words, and I will use the word gun for all guns; rifle, pistol, assault weapon...all guns. For my discussion, every gun that shoots a bullet that will penetrate the human skin is potentially deadly.
I want to address 3 points here that I think are at the core of this issue, and I'd love to see your comments below if they contribute to a solution. If you want to "correct me" then don't bother because after all, it is my blog and my opinion.
1. Why does anyone want to own an assault rifle? Well for me the same reason someone wants to own a Ferrari or a car that goes way faster than is allowed or legal. You may want to collect them. You may want to shoot them because they are fun to shoot. Just because you don't want to use one yourself doesn't mean we need to get rid of all of them. Banning all guns is not the answer. The police don't need to be the only ones with guns, but they should have the most and the best. Just like our military. The United States has the most powerful weapons. That is the deterrent. Other countries have weapons, but we have the most and the best. Nuclear weapons are like fully automatic guns. If everyone has them, then we lose our power to be a deterrent. You can have assault rifles, but not fully automatic. Don't get too upset just yet. Hang in there until the end of the blog.
2. Stop saying "guns don't kill people, people kill people". The bullets actually kill people if we are going to play semantics. Read the coroners report if you really want to know the scientific cause of death. It won't say death by mentally disturbed person. Have you been to the airport recently? We have to take our shoes off now because someone used a shoe bomb. We have to empty our liquids because they could be flammable or used as a corrosive weapon. They haven't banned people from getting on airplanes yet. They restrict the weapons they use. As long as Liam Neeson isn't on your plane, it seems we are safe from being killed without a weapon on board. So if people kill people, they sure don't do it very often without a weapon.
3. Start somewhere with gun control. Stop saying it won't work just because the cure won't keep every single human from using a gun somewhere in some extreme situation. Be part of a solution. My answer is licensing. Why do we have a license to drive a car or operate heavy machinery but we don't require one to own a deadly weapon? You have to be licensed to fish or to hunt. I say we introduce a licensing program for semi-automatic weapons that includes every semi-automatic gun purchase starting tomorrow. To own a semi-automatic weapon you must be licensed. To purchase a semi-automatic weapon you must have a license. You need to show your license at a gun range to be able to shoot or to purchase semi-automatic ammunition. You have to renew every 5 years. Just to make it easy for current gun owners, if you own one now you are grandfathered in, but you will need that license to buy ammo. When they introduced the motorcycle endorsement to the Florida driver's license in 2008, you had to have it in order to ride a motorcycle, even if you had owned a motorcycle for years. For one year they allowed current owners to register and get the endorsement without taking the class. Same would apply here. You have one year to walk in and get your license without taking a class or a test. It won't fix gun control tomorrow, but let's not have short-sighted vision for this.
The most important part for me of this plan is ammunition. You can find a guy selling used or stolen guns out of his trunk, but you rarely see a guy trying to sell cheap ammo. Ammo is easier to control. In this new program, every box of ammo purchased goes on your license. An excessive ammo purchase should require a waiting period and trigger some kind of form to tell why you need 30 boxes of high-caliber armor piercing ammo. The next concern is how do we track the ammo usage? I don't know, but we should ask Starbucks to help. They can tell me how many "points" I earned on my card at any store anywhere in the country so we know it is possible. Get them to help with the technology. Gun shops have to be licensed to sell guns and ammo. Require them to subscribe to this tracking system as part of their license.
We have done so much to prevent people from blowing up airplanes. We have done a lot to keep people from drunk driving. When will we do something....anything...to prevent these mass shootings?
Comments
Post a Comment