A Gun for a Gun?

I found myself in the new Cabela's in NWA this weekend. Cody and I were buying a Christmas present for his father when we wandered into the gun section of the store (at Cody's request). I am not a gun person. I was not raised around guns. My family owned a gun that was never brought out of its hiding spot because my parents did not think guns and kids mix very well. Sunday afternoon in that store I paid a lot more attention to the folks interested in guns than I would have on a normal basis. After unthinkable happenings like what occurred in Connecticut, it is impossible not to reconsider the attitude and laws our country has about firearms.

As I looked around the store, I saw a whole lot of the same thing. I saw a lot of men. I saw a lot of camouflage. I saw a lot of shirts with sayings like "Git r done" and "If it flies, it dies." I saw a lot of tattooed forearms. I saw more than one Confederate flag. I saw a lot of wide eyes and goofy smiles on the faces of adults who looked like a kid on Christmas morning. I saw people browsing toys, not carefully considering the purchase of a dangerous weapon. I saw a lot of people who did not need a(nother) gun. I saw a lot of people not considering a semi-automatic weapon for any other reason than it looks cool and it would shoot stuff real hard. In that store, I couldn't help but feel like I was witnessing a microcosm of America. A society that wants guns to play with, not to defend ourselves with. A society that wants guns to show off in a shed in the backyard, not to hunt animals with. A society that feels more powerful or like more of a man if you can list the plethora of weapons you own. A society that has lost track of owning guns as a necessity, rather than for fun.

Before we get all up in arms (pun intended), know this. I most definitely believe that people should be able to own guns. On a regular basis, I want the government to dictate as little of my everyday existence as possible. I understand the Constitution, and I know that it includes "the right to bear arms." However, I don't think our Founding Fathers had in mind semi-automatic assault rifles specifically designed to kill a lot of people in a little amount of time as the type of arms they were guaranteeing their predecessors to bear. Assault rifles are not necessary for normal people. They should not be legal. I realize that making them illegal will not keep people from getting them, but I think the message of the law is more important than the actual implementation thereof. We need to start changing our attitude about guns. Our current situation is clearly not working for us.

School shootings scare me. They scared me as a student, and scare me more as a teacher. I don't think there is anything anyone could have done to stop that crazy person from entering that school in Connecticut last Friday. However, I know that the answer to decreasing gun violence cannot be making guns more accessible. We cannot answer violence with more violence. We do not need to arm teachers. More guns must equal more gun deaths. I don't know the answer, but we owe it to all of the people who endure terrible tragedies like in Newtown, CT or Aurora, CO or Littleton, CO to look for some different answers.