Guns don't kill people: Really?

From time to time, I take my life in my own hands and write a column that I know lots of people will not like. This is one of those times.

The headlines in Milwaukee say homicides are up 80 percent. In Chicago they are up 23 percent. In Charlotte five more are dead in a drive-by shooting. The United States is on schedule to set a record of gun deaths in 2015.

I am not a gun person. I have many friends who are gun people, believe everyone should have at least one, and wonder about my sanity when I admit that I don't own one. The fact that more than 30,000 people were killed by guns in this country last year and that a gun in the home is four times as likely to kill a family member as an intruder are statistics we should ponder.

Some of our citizens believe that the Second Amendment to the Constitution that guarantees the right to own a gun was written so the population could protect itself against a tyrannical government. I used to teach government, so I am very familiar with the Second Amendment and know why it was included by patriot George Mason IV, who wrote it, and George Washington, who strongly supported it. It was so that Americans would be armed and ready to defend our government against potential invaders from the outside. Remember, in 1790, when the Second Amendment was written, the British were still just across our northern border in Canada, and we didn't have a standing army or even a police force at the time.

Here is an irony: We honor our men and women in the military, but have we considered that if having guns was really for the purpose of protecting ourselves from a tyrannical government just who the enemy would be? Logic should tell us it would be those same men and women we revere, marching under the stars and stripes with the president as commander in chief.

An American who needs a gun to make war on his government must be contemplating another Civil War. In the 1860s, that was brother against brother and neighbor against neighbor and more than 700,000 casualties. At least the Civil War was about real issues and not an imagined threat from our government.

Having a hunting rifle is one thing, but no one should be allowed to justify possession of hugely powerful guns that can massacre a crowd of movie goers, mall shoppers or school children quickly and efficiently because those guns might one day be needed to be turned on our own government.

Guns don't kill people? Really? What are certain kinds of guns but killing machines designed to kill people? Folks, we have to be smarter than this.

Mark Hopkins is a former Chaffee, Missouri, resident. He may be reached at presnet@presnet.com. Books by Hopkins may be found in the Chaffee Library.