Gun Control

To be brief, the statistics that are bantered about are misleading and fundamentally flawed, in that they fail to capture the overall effect on the protection of the life, liberty, and property of decent, humane citizens. It is also disrespectful to fail to consider that individual responsibility each person has to defend thei life, liberty, and property, and the life/liberty/property of their families.

As such, people should be allowed the tools to deal with reasonable threats on an individual and family level. A knife is not enough for such defense, and weapons of mass destruction are clearly too large and blunt to be handled at a tactical level. That certainly leaves a lot of grey area, (about the same amount as the second amendment leaves us with) but it also suggests a lot of areas where changes are necessary. There are too many stories of arcane legislative labyrinths that put reasonable people in jail for accidentally failing to jump through some ridiculous hoop, or, even worse, jail people who go from one state that allows people to defend themselves, to another state that doesn't allow people to defend themselves (by, say, actually bearing arms, or keeping them someplace useful, like the glove compartment while driving). These types of incidents leave gun owners fearful and distrustful. They polarize, and they definitely don't respect the rights of life, liberty, or property, let alone the right to keep and bear arms. Add to that, suggestions by our president that we have a one-sided conversation that must culminate in an apparently predetermined result, and you really have a hard time making headway.

TODO Expand opinion piece.

Some Other Resources

• http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/22/barack-obama/barack-obama-correct-mass-killings-dont-happen-oth/
• https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evil-deeds/201005/extreme-embitterment-the-anger-epidemic-rages-eastward