I have to confess that I usually don't think about guns one way or the other. My family has guns, but none of us are active sportsmen, don't go to shooting ranges for recreation, but have them more for self-protection or killing critters. I don't care if people, out in the county, shoot guns on their own property but believe that shooting feral hogs from helicopters is a stupid idea. I usually never see anyone carrying a long gun, and if there are people who are carrying concealed handguns, I don't notice it. I like it this way.
When, last year, I read about some yahoos who decided it would be a fine idea to carry long guns into places of business, I considered there was something wrong with them. Why would people deliberately carry a gun into, say, a restaurant where families eat, simply to make a point? That includes open carry handguns as well. The people that I know that have talked about this seem to put this in the context, not of self-defense, but of being a para-police vigilante.
I do remember when the mass killing occurred at Luby's in Waco. Pretty horrifying that people tried to crawl under tables to escape. Or killers who decide to march through an office building and assassinate the workers. Or the murders that have taken place at schools. Would flaunting a weapon in front of the wanna be killer have stopped him (or her) from doing it? The folks that advocate open carry, including handguns in holsters or long guns, believe it would or at least, that not so many people would have died because the open carrier would have shot the offender quickly.
The question to me has to do with gun control. I was listening to a panel discussoin regarding gun safety on a radio show yesterday and one of the participants said that other countries do not have these problems.And, according to President Obama, the answer lies in gun control.
We don’t have all the facts, but we do know that, once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.
Now is the time for mourning and for healing. But let’s be clear:
At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.
I say that recognizing the politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now. But it would be wrong for us not to acknowledge it. And at some point it’s going to be important for the American people to come to grips with it, and for us to be able to shift how we think about the issue of gun violence collectively.
The fact that this took place in a black church obviously also raises questions about a dark part of our history. This is not the first time that black churches have been attacked. And we know that hatred across races and faiths pose a particular threat to our democracy and our ideals.