By John Ruane
The great irony of this massacre in Newtown, Conn., is the fact that Americans are now going out and buying guns at record numbers because they want to be able to defend themselves against the next Adam Lanza, or whoever confronts them with a gun.
But it's not just the need for a gun to defend themselves that is causing the mad dash to gun stores. Sellers say the real motive for the frenzy is because so many people want to be able to buy the AR 15 with the 30-clip magazine before the government bans them.
The semi-automatic AR 15 is the most popular rifle, the same type of gun used to kill those young children in Newtown. So having a hand gun to defend oneself isn't enough. Now they have to be Rambo, firing off 30 rounds in a matter of seconds.
The people buying those guns, do they consider how many kids find those guns and shoot family members, friends or, in this case, 20 small children and six adults? Adam Lanza was unstable, but that doesn’t help. The mentally unstable young man had access to guns. That's the point. What about others who are mentally stable and have a gun at their disposal? What happens when they lose their temper for whatever reason?
Lanza is being defined as a genius IQ kid who had emotional and mental issues. He was upset about something to the point where he killed his mother, who was supposed to be the only person who could calm him down. He couldn’t buy a gun. No, but he had access to his mother’s guns. Access! Think about that, all of you who are running out to buy your AR 15.
We know of a police officer in our area whose teenage sons got into an argument and the one teen knew where is father’s gun was kept, found it and killed his brother. We see this man and his wife in church every Sunday suffering, and it's been three years. What do you think is going through that police officer’s mind? If his sons didn’t have access to his gun, it would have been a fist-fight and not a shooting. If your reasoning is - that’s them and it won’t happen to you, that’s a risky game you are playing.
If we could ban all guns, that would not solve all the problems, but it would most certainly cut them down considerably. Can older people, or people who feel threatened, use stun guns instead? If it’s a matter of protection, then a stun gun will serve the purpose. But there is more going on here. We can’t take the guns away from the hunters. Why? This is the issue I’ll never get over. A group of men in this country have to go out and kill innocent animals for sport, so the rest of us have to suffer so they can feel like big men mounting their trophy deer heads on the wall. The hunters will justify their hobby every way they can, but the truth is they are part of the problem.
And if it's just about the hunters and their rifles, how do you explain the semi-automatic weapons like the AR 15 that are being sold, like the one Lanza used to kill those poor kids? His mother was a kindergarten teacher with guns. When asked what kind of people buy an AR 15, a gun store owner said, "Anyone and everyone." The kindergarten teacher packing a semi-automatic weapon supports that comment.
I recently had this debate with a friend. I said if they aren’t going to ban guns, then everyone should go out and get a gun and America can once again become Dodge City in the 1800s, everyone ready to draw at a moment’s notice. Is that really what we want? My friend says if everyone carries gun, there will be more shootings because people will lose their tempers and some will go for the guns, just like the teenage boys of the police officer. He’s right.
Here’s a study from the University of Pennsylvania. It basically states that when people have guns, they feel empowered and it leads to shootings.
The only answer, the one Mike Royko called for during his time as a columnist for the Daily News and Sun-Times, is to ban guns.
Otherwise no-one can be surprised about horrific shooting events like in Newtown.
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John Ruane is an author of three books and president/CEO of Ruane Communications in Chicago. |