When Guns Leave Orphans And Motherless Children We All Should Care

115,551 people in America are shot in murders, assaults, suicides, suicide attempts, unintentional shootings, or by police intervention each year. 38, 826 of those die each year. It’s statistics until it touches close to home.

2021 Was A Bad Year

2021 started badly in Galesburg Illinois, my hometown. In January, we set a new record for shootings and murders in a month. While the rest of the year was particularly hard when you start the year with the word murder on your mind you’re already having a bad year.

By the end of February of 2021, I had the unfortunate privilege of knowing not one, but three different people who were murdered. Two women and one man. They say that people who live by the sword also die by the sword. Well, two out of the three didn’t live by the gun so dying by one was senseless.

Feelings About Guns

In America, the consensus is that we have a constitutional right to bear arms. I honestly don’t disagree, but at some point, the right to bear arms in our country has gotten out of control. They’re everywhere and easily accessible. But, I guess it’s been that way for a long time.

The entire time, for more than two decades, that I put on a uniform and carried a gun on my hip, I always prayed I’d never use it because of the ramifications. Yes, I would have done what was necessary to make it home to my family at the end of the day. But that is an act that is going to change a person, no matter how tough they believe they are.

Last year, a young mother was shot and killed in front of her child. Jealousy, rage, and cocaine-fueled anger of another mother brought about a tragic ending to a love triangle. It left a small child traumatized and without a mother to raise him. It also left two other children to be traumatized as their mother will spend the rest of her life in prison.

What Protects Guns In America?

Fighting along partisan lines will continue around the subject of gun controls. While many Republicans don’t want to discuss gun control measures, the Democrats tell anyone that will listen that the influencers within the pro-gun lobby in the U.S. should be curtailed and stricter gun laws passed.

When you consider that the right to bear arms was meant for us to protect ourselves from harm and to protect us from a tyrannical government, any argument that leads people down the rabbit hole of thoughts of losing control of their guns becomes a heated debate. But, at the end of the day, what wins the argument is money.

Pro-gun organizations outspend gun control advocates by a larger margin every year. The NRA spending accounted for half of all gun rights lobbying in 2018. Well, maybe there’s a point to why they spend so much.

Why Can’t It Be A Simple Answer?

To date, I’ve known nearly 30 people that have been shot and killed or committed suicide. It’s nearly an even split with 16 suicides and 12 murdered by handguns. Not one of the people that I’ve ever known to die from a gunshot has been shot with a rifle, an “assault” style rifle, or a military rifle.

Perhaps instead of looking at the laws about the AR-15, our leaders should be looking at the other factors in senseless gun deaths. The fact of the matter is that taking mass shootings out of the equation, the majority of gun-related deaths are from handguns and shotguns.

What About Real Solutions

Real solutions involve looking at the reasons for such tragic decisions that affect our culture. Why is it so easy to pick up a handgun and throw away your life? What is the cultural issue that has taken us to this sentiment that it’s easy to act out with a gun? As a youth, if we had a difference with someone that was going to get violent, it wasn’t handled with a gun. We would punch it out, knock each other around, and half the time we’d be friends a year later.

Why is it that so many young people have such little respect for their own lives that they would go to prison over a tragic decision like taking a life? It serves no purpose for them in the long run. Their lives are effectively over. Is it that the system has become so weak that prison is less scary than living a life in the real world? Have we failed so many young men and women that they just don’t care?

Effecting stronger gun laws makes sense. But, there needs to be more than just life in prison on the other end of the equation. Without taking a long hard look at why the culture of guns continues to affect our society, there will never be a time when don’t hear about some tragic event with a gun that ended someone’s life before they got a chance to live it.

My Conclusion For What It’s Worth

The first person I knew that was shot was killed in California at an ATM over 20 years ago. He was shot in the back of the head over the 20 dollars he had just withdrawn. The killer didn’t even ask for the money, he just walked up, raised the gun, and shot him. He did it right on camera, with no regard for even getting away with the crime.

The first person I knew murdered last year was shot repeatedly by her boyfriend's jealous ex-lover. She was a sweet kid, she’d been to my house, was friends with my son, swam in my pool, and was always a very polite young lady when she was growing up. She’d grown up, was trying to live her life, and raise her son.

For whatever reason, even though I have carried a gun most of my adult life, I’ve never been a big fan of guns. Sure, they serve a purpose as a last resort of defense against those that would take the lives of innocents, or the life of the person carrying a gun. After seeing so many young people in the world lose their lives over senseless violence carried out with a gun, I would hope that someday our two-party system can come together in Washington and pass real, meaningful gun legislation. Legal or illegal weapons are simply far too easy to obtain in a world that can’t handle their grievances with one another without using a gun.

That’s my rant, for what it’s worth.

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