I keep waiting for it to stop.
Surely ordinary citizens and the police and community leaders would have a handle on it, but they don’t. It happened again last week. A mother gunned down, protecting her children. It seems to happen at least once a week. Someone with a gun wounds and/or kills several victims. It happens so often that it makes the headlines one day and is buried deep in the paper the next, if it receives any mention at all. Often it’s a young man or a teenager. They get a gun, easily find bullets and for whatever reason, shoot others including enemies, sometimes friends and acquaintances, or innocent bystanders.
Most Americans realize we are a gun culture and we have a right to possess a gun, regardless of how much damage guns do. I don’t understand the strong emotional tie people have with the right to own a gun, especially when the only purpose for the gun’s existence is to kill.
A number of years ago, before my retirement, I was aware of the presence each Sunday at church of a new attendee. He was a handsome man with graying hair and an electric smile. After the sermon of the day he would come to the front of the center aisle with a happy exchange of kind words. Then one Sunday during the sermon I said something critical about guns. This man, who I could have called my new friend, did not approach me with a smile or kind words. The veins in his neck were throbbing. I had said something to upset him. He said everything was fine in this church except the criticism of guns. He went on to say that we have a right to own guns and he was adamant about it. I never saw him again in church.
What is it, pray tell, that makes gun ownership so very important to people? It holds a higher place in people’s minds than Jesus’ teachings on love. Guns leave little children without mothers and fathers. They leave wives without husbands and vice versa. Families and friends suffer needlessly. If ever the problems of the people of the world are to be solved, whether large or small, owning a gun is not the answer. I think that we human beings should agree that no one solves a problem with a gun.
It is my prayer that one day soon, Americans will relinquish their need to own a weapon. Many lives will be saved and just as importantly, people will have a deeper and more respectful relationship with their enemies.
Hello my dear Arthur,
I too believe strongly in the second ammendment. Our Constitution is being compromised on a daily basis.
Some people own guns in order to eat while other to protect themselves from the undesirable minds we have in this world today. If that mother had a gun she could have protected herself and her children.
I do believe that things do happen for a reason even though we don’t always see the big picture.
It is a sign of the times i am sure.
Love you much.
Cassie