Tragedy in CT - Letter from a gun owner

LoneRooster

LoneRooster

New member
I know this may be a bit off topic but I wanted to start a post regarding the recent tragedy in Newtown CT. It has made me sick to my stomach. The horror that happened that day is incomprehensible. As hunters I know we all value our right to own firearms. I also realize that each one of us may view what that right to bear arms means in many, many different ways. Recently there have been many articles and news stories published that are talking about universal gun reform, the ban of specific types of firearms and there have even been articles written that describe gun owners and 2nd amendment supporters as people who place their right to arms over the lives of children that were lost. I find this appalling. I know this is political and likely controversial but I tried to write something up that would hopefully appeal to common sense and that hopefully many other gun owners could relate to. I titled it letter from a gun owner.. I have copied the link below.

http://letterfromagunowner.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/letter-from-a-gun-owner-121812/
 
Very nice post. Thank you. I myself had to deploy my handgun to protect a woman from gang rape and, perhaps, death for both us. Fortunately, the mere presence of my gun was enough. Fortunately, they went away without a shot being fired. Whew! Praise be for personal firearms and the 2nd Amendment.
 
LoneRooster very nice letter and very well written. I share the same feeling as you do, lets hope that a country we can get together to try to solve this from happening again.

Chris
 
Well thought out and presented, very nice job LoneRooster.:10sign:
 
Good post sir!

I found myself thinkng about the shootings and it came to me how the press has their shorts in a bunch about it, but they have for years turned a blind eye to the millions of babies destroyed in the womb by abortion. I guess if a kid can somehow make it into this world through that gauntlet, they become more precious? I think this is a sad commentary on our media, our politicians, and our society. Lets not think about how many crimes are prevented by the presence of a firearm, and lets not address the problems parents face when they have a child such as this and can not get any help from the government, i.e. mental illnesses. Lets also not let a good crisis go to waste (The Democrat Montra!). A government that fears its people being armed is probably doing things it should not be doing or it wants to.

If you had two schools side by side and could pick which one your child attended which one would you chose?:

The one on the left sports a "GUN FREE ZONE" sign and the one on the right has a sign that states "WARNING ANY ATTEMPT AT HARMING OUR STUDENTS WILL BE MET WITH LETHAL FORCE!"

I'd bet that any number of qualified firearms instructors would step up to volunteer their time and abilities to train numbers of teachers to protect their students. In Israel they carry automatic weapons! The gun is not the problem...People who want to kill people ARE the problem! Guns, knives, hammers, rocks, sticks, fertilizer, gas, lye, etc.,etc., etc. are lethal weapons... only when in the HANDS of humans!
 
EXACTLY. guns are not the problem. people are. do our rifles sight themselves in? no, we do. do our wonderful shotguns pattern themselves? no we do. it was a tragedy what happened to those kids, but it should never affect our gun owning rights. or our right to buy ammo at fair prices.
 
:10sign::10sign::10sign::10sign::10sign::10sign:
love it! And totally honest God fearin "Truth" many can not see from this perspective. Many of us go offensive or defensive. Guilty my self. It is especially so when one believes so much in something involving freedom. Thank you sir, I hope the entire Nation sees your awesome read. I will blow it up and hang it in my kennel building if you dont mind.
 
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I appreciate the kind words and I am glad many of you share my sentiments. I am sure there are many people who do not and I understand that. Please do share with as many people as possible. I think the more people can view us gun owners and 2nd amendment right supporters as real people with real concerns the less others will be able to vilify us. There are a million sides to this story and my goal was that this shows a different view that might not be so obvious to many who oppose firearms.
 
I shared it on my FB. I hope all my friends take the time to read it.
 
LoneRooster said:
I appreciate the kind words and I am glad many of you share my sentiments. I am sure there are many people who do not and I understand that. Please do share with as many people as possible. I think the more people can view us gun owners and 2nd amendment right supporters as real people with real concerns the less others will be able to vilify us. There are a million sides to this story and my goal was that this shows a different view that might not be so obvious to many who oppose firearms.
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Brother you seem like a good guy. I read your letter with an open mind. I certainly appreciate the sentiment and care you put into writing it. Let me start by saying a have a concealed carry permit. I work in a very dangerous part of KCMO. My wife, fairly liberal, was pretty happy when I got it when it became available. I carried even before legal, I figured if I needed to use it I would and figure it out later. I hope, like you, that I never have to use it. That being said, it saddens me that I have to carry it. I do think that the laws that we have need to be enforced better. I really liked your idea of having a permit and storage facility being part of owning certain guns. As far as flagging people with mental health, that would be hard to enforce How would you handle someone who had a mentally ill child or relative that only came by once and a while? I Would like to know how you think the 99% you speak of get their illegal guns? They come from theft of legal guns, straw buyers, illegal sales. There's big money in guns. They are traded in the neighborhoods i work in like baseball cards. We have an over abundance of guns in this country. This is a fact. There should be a responsibility with gun ownership. It should be a priviledge that is taken seriously. I certainly hope there can be a civilized discussion on this issue without the typical name calling crap that goes on here. Leave political crap out too. Just because some of us want some better laws and/or enforcement of current laws, has very little with being un-american. This tragedy is going to change many things. I think the NRA will have to change over this also. We will see. I certainly hope so.
 
carptom1 said:
Brother you seem like a good guy. I read your letter with an open mind. I certainly appreciate the sentiment and care you put into writing it. Let me start by saying a have a concealed carry permit. I work in a very dangerous part of KCMO. My wife, fairly liberal, was pretty happy when I got it when it became available. I carried even before legal, I figured if I needed to use it I would and figure it out later. I hope, like you, that I never have to use it. That being said, it saddens me that I have to carry it. I do think that the laws that we have need to be enforced better. I really liked your idea of having a permit and storage facility being part of owning certain guns. As far as flagging people with mental health, that would be hard to enforce How would you handle someone who had a mentally ill child or relative that only came by once and a while? I Would like to know how you think the 99% you speak of get their illegal guns? They come from theft of legal guns, straw buyers, illegal sales. There's big money in guns. They are traded in the neighborhoods i work in like baseball cards. We have an over abundance of guns in this country. This is a fact. There should be a responsibility with gun ownership. It should be a priviledge that is taken seriously. I certainly hope there can be a civilized discussion on this issue without the typical name calling crap that goes on here. Leave political crap out too. Just because some of us want some better laws and/or enforcement of current laws, has very little with being un-american. This tragedy is going to change many things. I think the NRA will have to change over this also. We will see. I certainly hope so.
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Great post Carp.:10sign:
 
This was posted on another forum. Thought provoking.

"I propose that these mass shootings cannot be deterred.

There are hundreds of millions of guns. A wholesale ban today with life imprisonment for a first conviction of possession of a gun wouldn't even make them vanish. There would remain hundreds of millions of guns, even if Congress made hundreds of millions of us criminals with the stroke of a pen.

There are millions of disaffected, disconnected, socially retarded young males with cripping social issues and some internal trigger that cause them to act violently. In the past maybe society was closely knit enough to pressure these men into interacting with others. Now we live in a depersonalized society where you can basically choose not to interact with others, or only interact with them online. People cease being "humans" and just become "others", other screen names, other characters, other bodies. The shooters obviously put no value in human life. They decide they want to die, and rather than offing themselves and remaining anonymous forever, they choose notoriety.

How can we stop this? We cannot. How can we diagnose this sort of behavior? Absent massively intrusive oversight and a LOT of false alarms, we cannot. How many young men like violent video games, blood sports like MMA, aggressive music, weapons and military themed stuff, and sometimes feel rejected by women or misunderstood by society? Oh, only about 75% of them. We can't imprison a generation of boys. We can't raise our sons to be our daughters. We can't appoint some ****tard guidance counselor to "talk it out" and expect 5000 generations of traits boys were required to have - violence, aggression, independence, a tendency to bottle things up, survival traits, to go away. Its ****ing idiotic.

In the past young males were expected to be married by age 25, at the very latest. Families had vastly more involvement and influence in their childrens lives than families today. Extended family I mean. Men really didn't have the option of being "loners." You could get away from home by joining the military or the priesthood, either way, you subordinated yourself and you needs to others. There was no "oh poor me" pity parties for disaffected young men. And if they had violent tendencies, they could go see real violence in war and for most of them, it was a bitter draught indeed.

How do we solve this? We can't. Its a multifarious issue with no one cause. Its not predictable, by anyone. Its not Congress' issue to solve. They are gonna try, and they are gonna fail. You cannot legislate morality. You cannot add more layers of regulation and control in DC and expect the mindsets and behavior of people who have grown totally numb to the inherent value of human life to give a **** about your new laws. Nothing will be solved. Understand that our lawmakers are impotent to prevent these shootings, sobering and painful as it may be."
 
V-John..I agree with you..this is more about society and the lack of moral integrity that seems to be present. Noone can call anything like it is anymore for deemed backlash for being not PC or to insensitive. Everyone in society is "special" and "gifted" in their own way. There is no self responsibility, know self-accountability and a dire lack of faith (religious or not) and community bonding. Our culture in America has changed drastically in the past 50-40-30-20 years and these violent crimes have increased drastically over that time period. I think it is a direct relation to the values in the home and society that have been lost. I do not know how you fix it but start in your own.. Unfortunately with a society that is crippled with a sense of entitlement and always wanting something from someone else that seems somewhat impossible to do.
 
Lots of good, thought-provoking material here. However, Carptom1 I strongly disagree with a couple of your statements and I find them quite troubling. You say that we have too many guns and "that's a fact". This statement implies there is a correct maximum number (which we are now beyond) of guns 'allowed'. What is that number? Who gets to decide? How do we know when we have the right number? Do we have too many cars then, too?

Another statement I find troubling is your opinion that gun ownership should be a privilege, that comes with responsibilities. The ability to own a gun is a RIGHT, not a privilege. As law abiding citizens, aren't we responsible for obeying ALL laws, gun-related or otherwise? Are gun-owning citizens the problem, or is the problem CRIMINALS who don't give a damn about any laws? If the criminal who murdered those children violated 41 gun laws, would the magical 42nd law prevent it?

Too often we want to blame inanimate objects for bad things that happen. WE don't want to blame the scumbags that do such horrible things. A gun is a tool which cannot do anything on its own. Guns are used in crimes to take life and property; guns are used in self-defense to save life and keep property; guns are used for pleasurable recreational activities and for necessary chores; guns are used for war. The end use of a gun is NOT dependent upon the number of, type of, or status (loaded or unloaded) of the gun. The end use of a gun is dependent upon and determined ONLY by the PERSON who picks it up and puts it into operation.
 
marshrat said:
Lots of good, thought-provoking material here. However, Carptom1 I strongly disagree with a couple of your statements and I find them quite troubling. You say that we have too many guns and "that's a fact". This statement implies there is a correct maximum number (which we are now beyond) of guns 'allowed'. What is that number? Who gets to decide? How do we know when we have the right number? Do we have too many cars then, too?

Another statement I find troubling is your opinion that gun ownership should be a privilege, that comes with responsibilities. The ability to own a gun is a RIGHT, not a privilege. As law abiding citizens, aren't we responsible for obeying ALL laws, gun-related or otherwise? Are gun-owning citizens the problem, or is the problem CRIMINALS who don't give a damn about any laws? If the criminal who murdered those children violated 41 gun laws, would the magical 42nd law prevent it?

Too often we want to blame inanimate objects for bad things that happen. WE don't want to blame the scumbags that do such horrible things. A gun is a tool which cannot do anything on its own. Guns are used in crimes to take life and property; guns are used in self-defense to save life and keep property; guns are used for pleasurable recreational activities and for necessary chores; guns are used for war. The end use of a gun is NOT dependent upon the number of, type of, or status (loaded or unloaded) of the gun. The end use of a gun is dependent upon and determined ONLY by the PERSON who picks it up and puts it into operation.
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Maybe I just like to argue, or maybe it's because I 'm the only one at work because of the snow, but I will weigh in one more time. Marshrat, I am fine that you are troubled by a couple of my comments. I too get troubled at times about some of these issues. Possibly me stating that there are too many guns and that's a fact, was wrong to say. Let me rephrase that to state that that is just my opinion. My problem is not with guns, AR's, machine guns, bazooka's or any other gun. My issue is that after a tradgedy such as this, every moron with a credit card can go down and purchase a gun with less effort than obtaining a drivers license, or getting a hunters safety certificate. It took my boys two eight hour days to obtain their hunters safety and learn some safe gun handling they were already taught at home. The last gun I bought took twenty minutes at Cabela's, and I could have done it at a gun show in the time it took to count out the cash. I do realize that most of us on here take care with securing their firearms. Many do not. They may have a right to own a gun, but probably have no business. I have never spoken of BANNING any guns,clips or anything else. My problem is that there is very little that is put into making these people responsible gun owners. Safe shooting, storage and the like. The other one that always troubles me is the statement " If it wasn't a gun, it would be something else". That is a pretty simplistic statement. Sure you could use a rock, knife, tire iron etc. Why do you think that rarely happens here? Easily obtainable, cheap guns. I am a carpenter by trade. I have many tools to build things. Hand saws, electric saws, hammers and nail guns. I almost exclusively use nail guns today. Many young carpenters can't hardly drive a nail. You know why I use them? They are more efficient and make us faster. We can all quote a story of someone in our city being saved by the use of a firearm. Great! I carry. I think it is awesome when some criminal punk get's his due. Can we all quote a hundred tradgedies of gun's from ignorance or missuse/storage? I can. If some class or certification prevents a couple of these, it was worth it. To me it is not a knee- jerk reaction to simply this tradegy. It is a reaction to the killings that go on everyday. Many of them in the neighborhoods where I work. All of these people are not deranged. Some guns were legally obtained. Many were not. Again where do these felons/criminals get the guns? Many peoples answer to these crimes are to flood the country with more guns after something like this happens. I don't know what the answer is, but that doesn't seem to be working either. Some of this maybe could be changed by a little stricter law on the front end, including maybe some better education or classes in order to obtain some gun's. Again just my opinion.
 
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The real issue in my mind is not what weapon is used. Normal people do not do things like this.

Control / Help/ Watch the crazy people and this does not happen..............

Focus on effective solutions, not the easy emotional stuff that has little or no positive effect on the problem.
 
Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but owning a gun doesn't make people criminals. Criminals have something else going on in their head that most of us don't.

Gun ownership is a Constitutional issue, and I know we all know that. But do we really? Earlier in the fall I helped my daughter with a school project. I asked people I came in contact with throughout my day what the purpose of the Constitution is. 93%..."to tell us what we can do and what we can't do" or a variation on that theme. Most people haven't even READ the Constitution , let alone the Bill of Rights!

Lots of people bash the NRA as some mean, wicked, blood-thirsty organization. I wonder how many people know the reason the National Rifle Association was founded...it was to provide safety and marksmanship training for people who made the decision to exercise their 2nd amendment rights.

I get really tired of guns being blamed for crime. Guns are inanimate objects which cannot do ANYTHING on their own. A gun doesn't know how many bullets it has in it, whether or not a clip is attached, whether it has a plastic stock that looks evil or a beautiful wood stock; it has no idea where it is being pointed or what the intent of its use is. Guns are used to take life by criminals; guns are used to save life in self defense of criminals; guns are used in war; guns are used for pleasurable recreational activities. The end use of a gun is not dependent upon the gun; the end use is determined by and dependent upon the intent of the person that picks it up.

The 2nd amendment, as well as all the other amendments, was written by our founders to limit the power of government, not limit the rights of the people. The 2nd was written so that the people would always have the ability to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. It has nothing to do with hunting. The intentions are clear to anyone who takes the time to read the Constitution and/or the Federalist Papers. And for those of you who might respond with "oh c'mon you paranoid nut, those were old times. That can't happen today", Hitler came after that, as did many other tyrants and dictators.

To those who have said we can't just stick our head in the sand and sit by and do nothing, that is exactly what we are doing now! Our society has become one which relies more and more on 'government' to save, protect, serve, pay for us. We are a soft society, and have become a bunch of sissies. The government (police, etc...included) CANNOT protect us from day to day crime activities, but we expect them to. Something bad happens and we all get on our iPhones and dial 911, FB our friends, Twitter this and that, but were scared to death of the very things that we can protect ourselves with...firearms. Maybe we can just throw our phones at the scumbags, or maybe there is an "app" for iPhone personal security.

We don't have a gun problem in this country, we have a CRIME PROBLEM, much of it related to drugs. And now we even have a couple states that just legalized marijuana. Do whatever, marry whatever, everything and anything goes in this society, and don't offend anyone who's deranged by picking them out and either getting them help and/or putting them away where they cannot hurt themselves or anyone else. Nope...just take away rights..."We have to do SOMETHING! Even if it just saves one life!" Get real. Will the NEXT gun law be the one the CRIMINALS start obeying, or will it be the one after that? Which one of the rights and liberties we give up will be the one that finally convinces the scumbags to play by the rules?
 
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