I don’t understand the people who are applauding the companies who are no longer offering a discount to NRA members. I also don’t understand people who are calling for more gun control and the students who are walking out of school to protest for more gun laws. The gun laws that are on the books should have prevented most if not all of the mass shootings that have taken place over the years. There was a failure of law enforcement in all cases that allowed the shooters to legally purchase the guns. Creating more laws to punish the law-abiding gun owners when the laws already on the books aren’t being used and enforced is ridiculous. It is also ridiculous to penalize NRA members because of a mass shooting. The shooter was not an NRA member and the NRA does not condone what he did. They are just punishing every day, law abiding citizens because they own guns and support an organization that tries to protect their right to do so. I’ll probably get a bunch of nasty comments about this post, but I’ve kept my mouth shut and watched as this stuff has gone on. I’m just tired of being treated like a criminal every time there is a shooting because I own guns and look at things objectively.

If there was a law that wouldn’t infringe on people’s rights to gun ownership and it would prevent these shootings, I believe that the mass majority of gun owners would support it. Problem is that the laws are already in place, but the FBI, Government and State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies have dropped the ball too many times and allowed these things to continue even though the laws are already on the books to prevent people like these mass shooters from purchasing a gun legally. Most, if not all, gun owners support background checks and most states require background checks to purchase a firearm. This includes gun shows by the way. People talk about the “gun show loophole”, but it doesn’t exist in Colorado and it shouldn’t exist anywhere.

When you get going down the path of banning guns based on cosmetic features or because they are semi-automatic, that is where people have issues. An AR-15 shoots the same caliber bullet as a mini-14 and any other .223 caliber rifle. Many .22 long rifles are available in semi-automatic and used for squirrel hunting. Many shotguns are available in semi-automatic and they are used for waterfowl hunting. There are also high-powered, big game rifles that are available in semi-automatic platforms. If you say to ban all semi-automatic guns, you are punishing many hunters and banning many guns that have never been used to conduct a mass shooting. So how do you ban a gun or a type of gun without punishing so many law-abiding gun owners who have never committed a crime? I don’t see an answer to that question and it’s not right, so that is why people are against it.

The answer lies in security for these schools, not trying to take the tool away from the murderer. If you take that tool away, they will find another tool to use to carry out their evil acts. Many institutions have much less precious items in them than our children, but they have much better security. Courthouses, banks, sports stadiums, airports, hospitals and other businesses have tighter security than schools, but none of them have our precious children in them to protect. Teachers who get proper training and volunteer to carry a gun on school grounds should be able to do so. If we trust them to teach our children, shouldn’t we enable them to protect them as well in an emergency? In my line of work, we wear PPE or Personal Protective Equipment. This consists of things like work gloves and safety glasses. We say that the PPE is our last line of defense. An armed teacher would also be a last line of defense. They would only use the weapon if the prospective shooter was able to get through all of the security measures and attempted to carry out a school shooting. I don’t believe that people are advocating to only arm teachers. There needs to be an “all of the above” approach to this problem. There should be no open campuses. I had a problem with that when my kids were going to school. Anyone could just walk in or out of the school at any time. My kids would skip class and the school would have no idea where they were. The schools need to be accountable and know where the children are at all times while the kids are in school. The doors need to be locked and people need to be buzzed into the school to prevent any random person from just walking in and selling drugs, shooting up the school or any committing any other illegal act. The schools should be able to lock down sections of the school to prevent any armed suspect from entering certain parts of the building. All schools need to have bullet proof glass installed to prevent anyone from shooting their way into the building. If a shooter manages to get through all of these safety precautions, then we have the armed teachers to react as a last line of defense. If we do all these things, I would be willing to bet that we would never have another school shooting and if we did, the body count would be much less.

I’ve done research in the past on gun control and how it doesn’t work. #1, Criminals don’t obey the law. That means that no matter what laws are passed in reaction to this shooting, criminals will break them and continue to do bad things. Cities with the toughest gun control laws in the U.S. have the highest rate of gun violence. From what I’ve read, Countries that have banned guns have higher violent crime rates than before the guns were banned. The criminals just find another tool to use. Many crimes are prevented by gun owners without even firing a shot. Criminals flee when their intended victim is armed. Going back to #1, how many laws do these shooters break before ever firing a shot? The Newtown, CT shooter killed his mother and stole her gun before he went to the school. That means that he had already stolen and committed murder prior to going to the school. Both of those are illegal, so how would additional gun laws have prevented that shooting? The perpetrator of the recent school shooting in Florida had been reported to the FBI and the local Sheriff’s department many times, but they did nothing. If the laws on the books had been followed, he wouldn’t have been able to purchase a firearm and the shooting would have been prevented. The list goes on and on. The church shooter in Texas shouldn’t have been able to purchase a gun, but the Air Force didn’t report his dishonorable discharge and his arrest record to the background check network. If the system were fixed, many of these shooters would not have been able to legally purchase their guns. As I said, enforce the laws on the books before passing any additional laws that just take rights away from law-abiding gun owners.

I’ve also heard the proposal to raise the age limit to purchase a rifle from 18 to 21. If people aren’t responsible enough to purchase a rifle until they are 21, then how are they responsible enough to vote for our president or elected representatives? If they aren’t responsible enough to purchase a rifle until they are 21, how are they responsible enough to join the military and carry a weapon into battle? The drinking age is 21, but how many 21 year olds make bad decisions when they drink? As far as I know, this most recent shooter was the only one who would have been prevented from legally purchasing a rifle if the age limit was raised. The columbine shooters were 17 and 18, so the 17-year-old couldn’t legally purchase a gun, but he managed to get some. These people build pipe bombs with legally purchased supplies. A single pipe bomb is capable of killing many people, so if they can’t get a gun, they can use bombs and knives among other items like hatchets and hammers. If a person is driven to take lives, they will find a way.

Sorry if you disagree with my opinion. I’m not trying to start a fight or argument. I’m simply trying to offer solutions without infringing on people’s rights. The right to own firearms is protected by the Constitution and the founders put it in there for a reason. They wanted us to be able to protect ourselves from a tyrannical government. Many things that are considered the law of the land are not protected by the Constitution, but people consider things like healthcare insurance a right. The same people who want to take away the right of gun ownership “for the sake of our children” are the same people who will defend Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood and “a woman’s right to choose”. According to statistics that I found, over 60,000,000 (https://nrlc.org/uploads/factsheets/FS01AbortionintheUS.pdf)

babies have been aborted since 1973. If they really wanted to protect the children, why aren’t they up in arms about so many babies being aborted before they even have the chance to live?

My last point is this; most, if not all, of these mass shootings wouldn’t have been prevented by additional gun laws. Since this is the case, why are people asking for a solution that won’t solve the problem? Gun control is not about guns, it is about controlling the people who haven’t broken the law. It’s a nanny state agenda where the government knows what is best for you because you don’t know what’s best for yourself. They feel the need to protect us from ourselves, but again, it’s about controlling us. Columbine happened in 1999. How much more secure are our schools today than they were almost 20 years ago? The answer is not much. The solution lies in securing the school facilities, not more gun laws. After 9/11, we put concrete barriers up around our National Guard Armories to prevent any vehicles from being able to drive into the building or get close enough to blow up the building with a car bomb. Schools should have this level of protection. Our National Guard Armories have two sets of doors to get in the building and you have to be either buzzed into the building or let in by a person on the other side. Why don’t our schools have this same level of security? There is a problem that needs to be fixed and it is the security measures available to our schools, not changing or adding gun laws.