Not “Gun” Violence

To the Editor:

Let’s start by saying that the term “gun violence” is a misnomer. There is just violence. Period. It’s very telling that we don’t call death/injuries by drunk drivers, vehicle/drunk violence, or death/injuries by knives as knife violence, or death/injuries by drugs, drug violence, the list goes on and on. All of them cause death and injury to men, women, and children. So why the specific term only for violence by guns? My opinion, the term “gun violence” is an emotional trigger specifically designed to soften people up so the government can push for gun confiscation.

To the gentleman in last week’s letter who stated, “denying access to firearms to people not qualified to use them will not affect the millions of sane U.S. residents who are entitled to such access.”

Wrong. It already does. Quite frankly, any restriction on guns goes against the Constitution of the United States. So we’ve already gone down that road with the requirements for registration, licensing, etc. Don’t be deluded into thinking that putting more regulations in place will somehow stop deranged, psychotic, mentally disturbed people from getting guns and killing. It won’t.

Guns have never been the problem; people are the problem. In many of the cases, especially in mass shootings, evidence has been found, after the fact, that there were signs the person was unstable. But nobody said or did anything. And the gentleman’s statement “We have the power to reduce significantly the tragic loss of life that takes place in this country due to gun violence.” Really? It’s interesting that this gentleman and politicians who promote stricter gun laws never say anything about the daily and weekly murders in places like Detroit, Chicago, New York, etc. All these cities have some of the toughest gun restrictions in the country. They do nothing to curb the violence. Criminals and people intent on killing don’t care about the law! So the only thing registration does is restrict gun ownership for legal gun owners. The fact is people who want to kill will find a way to do so.. Gun violence only comes to the forefront when there is a mass shooting. And in each of those cases, had there been licensed gun carriers around, it’s likely the end result would have been much different.

Now you know why the vast majority of gun owners remain strongly against any kind of restrictions on guns. The restrictions don’t work.

A side note, the reason the Founding Fathers put the 2nd Amendment into the Constitution was two-fold; one was to protect the 1st Amendment; the second, an armed citizenry will never be enslaved.