Gun Control

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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 their 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

• Malia Zimmerman, "Illinois gun restrictions unfairly target foster parents, lawsuit claims", Fox News, 14 Jul 2016
• The Dignitary, "E21 - Gunz, yo!", YouTube, 22 Oct 2015
• "Howard Stern weighs in on gun control debate following Orlando attack", Fox News, 17 Jun 2016
• Keely Herring, Louis Jacobson, "Is Barack Obama correct that mass killings don't happen in other countries?", Politifact, 22 Jun 2015
• Stephen A. Diamond Ph.D., "Extreme Embitterment: The Anger Epidemic Rages Eastward", Psychology Today Blogs, 15 May 2015
• Awr Hawkins, "Washington Post: Gun Violence Declining, Except in Gun-Free Zones", Breitbart, 4 Dec 2015