In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre we had best wake up from our collective coma or we will surely perish from it. It is time for thinking people to acknowledge the peril we face from the unchecked viral proliferation of mass killing machines. Guns have become our e-bola virus, highly contagious with a 90% mortality rate. (Only one victim out of 27 survived the Sandy Hook shooting.) E-bola wipes out families and villages and if, God-forbid, it breaks out into the mainstream, it would be like the opening of Pandora's proverbial box. But guns have gone viral, and they are killing our society. There are so many arguments and arguers against gun control that it seems impossible we will ever agree on limiting them. But I would like to address the ones I've seen and then make a proposal.
1) To limit the ownership of guns in any way is a basic infringement of our second amendment rights.
Let's look at the second amendment.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
What is a well regulated militia today? Is it the United States Army Reserve, an organization set up to perform only part-time duties, but that has been a mainstay of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan during the longest uninterrupted period of war in our history? That militia is armed by our government. Or is it the Aryan Nation that claims no allegiance to the United States and arms themselves? The concept of private citizens protecting themselves from our own military with their own weapons as a guarantee of a secure free state is ludicrous. Will our assault rifles secure us against drones and tanks? Or maybe we should be allowed to own those too. The founding fathers bought and sold slaves and wrote that into their Constitution. Times have changed.
2) Guns don't kill people. People kill people.
Wrong. Guns do kill people. It has been shown that the animal kingdom is divided into two broad categories of "predator" and "prey." (On Aggression by Konrad Lorenz.) Predators are aggressors with natural weapons of sharp teeth, talons and muscles. When predators fight within their own species the fight to a ritual death, (a dog clamps his fangs around the jugular vein of his opponent, but the fight stops there.) There is an innate neurological tabu against killing a member of its own species. That makes sense. Predators are skilled at killing and prey are skilled at escaping. If predators had no innate mechanism to stop them from annihilating their brothers, it would portend the end of that species. Prey are not so prone to those same inhibitions. Their skills are defensive and so they have not developed those biological fail-safe stop gaps to the same degree. Humans are prey. We have no natural weapons. Our teeth are vegetarian choppers. Our eyes are relatively weak. Our nails are short and we aren't very strong or quick. We've survived because we have a brain that presumably is more ingenious than our predator foes. We can think and evade. We still do have an inborn resistance to killing our own kind, but it is relatively weak. When confronted with the option of killing another human being face to face, one on one, or running away, most of us would do the latter. (The peer pressure of an army is enough to change that equation for most human beings.) But as the killing distance between us increases, the biological imperative becomes weaker, and killing becomes easier. Guns allow that distance to exceed our genetic balance, to say nothing of bombs and drones. So yes, people kill people. But they kill far more with guns than they ever would with fists or knives.
3) We need guns to protect ourselves from the bad people out there.
Yes, there are bad people out there. There are angry people, violent psychotic people, violent depressed people and psychopaths. What would save more lives, arming everyone to the teeth (as we are now,) or removing the vast majority of those weapons from our society. In 2008 and 2009, 5,740 children and teenagers were killed by guns and 34,387 were wounded. Those are just the children! If we live in a world where every single person needs a gun to protect his life from someone else with a gun, then it is a psychotic world we live in. In the 30 years since statistics were first gathered in 1979, 116,384 children and teenagers were killed by guns, 42.7 times the number in a group of other high income countries!!! What is wrong with us.?
4) Gun control wouldn't stop the problem.
There is no rational argument for automatic weapons at all. Self protection, hunting and target shooting, the three reasons that gun advocates have for owning weapons, can all be satisfied with revolver pistols and bolt action rifles. The only reason to own an automatic, or semi-automatic gun is because "it's fun" or because it kills easier. Well excuse me, but shooting a rocket propelled grenade may also be fun, but too bad, you can't do it legally. Buy a Wii.
And isn't it a little nuts that you can't drive a car without passing a written test and a driving test, but a 5 year old can use an assault rifle if his parent lets him.
So, what do we do? There are enough guns in the United States to arm every man, woman and child! And anyone can get them. Let's make them illegal. It might take years. It may take decades to save 10,000 children. But what if one of those children were yours?
Please sign my petition and pass it on. Maybe there is a silent, sleeping majority out there that is as outraged as I am. Maybe it just takes one voice to wake it up and make it go viral. And maybe that virus will defeat our e-bola.
Petition by iPetitions
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