Saturday, January 08, 2011

MORE GUNFIRE; WHO IS TO BLAME?

SPECIAL POST

The shooting of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, a Federal Judge, and several others in Arizona has been solved, but the question remains as to why this tragic event happened.  The anti-gun lobby will be quick to blame guns, but the simple fact is that guns don't have the ability to pull their own triggers.  They will then counter that, if guns were not available in this country, the shooting could not have occurred.  But, they will be the first to insist that knives are needed in the kitchens of America. 

What I find incomprehensible is that there apparently were no citizens in the immediate vicinity who were carrying concealed weapons and who could have fired on the assailant and saved some injuries and maybe some lives.  The fact is that in locations where larger percentages of citizens are carrying guns, the crime rates are lower.  I agree that the shooter appears to have some mental issues and should not have had a gun in the first place, and I will be interested to find out where he got the gun.  Still, sane people who are slicing onions suddenly go berserk and stab their husbands.

There is no justifiable excuse for pulling out a gun and shooting someone other than fear for one's life or self-defense.  Yet, these things happen.  My position is that having more trained and capable citizens carrying guns would reduce such violence.  That's why I carry mine wherever I go, except where it's against the law.  Thank God I have never had to use it; I don't want to.  But, had I been there during this shooting, mine would have been out and it would have been used.

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