If more guns made us safer, the USA would be the safest place in the world. Neither terrorists nor war can match the 12,000+ people a year killed in America by Americans with guns. Good gun control starts in the same place as world peace, in the home.
I was introduced to fire arms by my grandfather. During the great depression, a box of 10 rounds meant food on the table for 4 months. Bolt action or breech loading rifles held 1 round. Before pulling the trigger, the target had to be sure. There was no money to spend on wasted rounds. If you need more than one bullet, you’re not a hunter.
I do keep my grandfather’s several old rifles. Most no longer function. They are family history to me. I have the 20 gauge double barrel shotgun my great grandmother used to kill 2 bushwhackers, my great grandfather’s murders, with 2 rounds, when ambushed near Pinion Hills New Mexico. (Cowboys may have been tough in the old west, but the pioneer women were truly dangerous when riled.) I also have the bolt action single shot .222 that was used, in season and out, to provide food on the table during the depression when my mother was very young and living in a tent. There are others pieces but I have never purchased ammunition for them as they are not functional. This is not gun culture, it is American culture where guns were tools for survival.
In contrast to my great grandmother gun control. She, in self defense, shot to death 2 bushwhackers with 2 rounds while seated in a buckboard wagon and being jostled by nervous horses. Consider the following.
Spraying 50 rounds around a home can pierce the walls killing your spouse, children, parents, grandparents, out the window killing the neighbors, and your dog all without reloading or thinking.
Hollywood has given people the false concept that random spraying of bullets is a reasonable replacement for taking aim. A responsible gun owner practices safe handling of their weapon. Aiming and hitting your target can be done in less time and more effectively than an AK47 can wildly discharge 10 rounds.
Spaying 50 high-powered rounds of ammunition around your home with an assault weapon is best described as “reckless discharge of a gun”, not “self defense”. The bullet must not be allowed to pierce the target, the wall, your neighbor’s window, and the neighbor’s child. I would feel safer if my neighbor did not have an assault weapon. To responsibly use a gun is to know where every bullet you fire is going to stop. To know this the gunman must select a gun suited for the task and aim it carefully.
Assault weapons have no place in the home, in neighborhoods, or on the streets.
I live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. I refuse to live in fear of being invaded by zombies. Zombies invading my home are more likely than a group of terrorists targeting my home.
Barking dogs stop burglars. With my trusted companions, 2 Labrador mix dogs always vigilant, I sleep at ease knowing they will warn me of any intrusion to my home and warn away would be intruders without bloodshed.
Angus Croix 