When will people wake up and figure out that passing more gun control laws, or stricter gun control laws will only have an impact on those who actually choose to follow the law.  Think about it, isn’t it already illegal to kill people?  Aren’t the laws concerning murder pretty well established?  Is there something ambiguous about the our laws against murder?  I think most will agree that we have made it pretty clear that murder is illegal, and yet we see it happen every day.  We see it with guns, true, but also with knives, baseball bats, pipe, cars, even bare hands.

I started this post right after the tragedy in Oregon and saw gun control advocates start in with the ‘if there was less access to guns this wouldn’t happen’ posts.  I also saw numerous counter-arguments saying ‘if guns were allowed on school campuses the shooter could have been dealt with more quickly or wouldn’t have felt so safe staging his attack’.  I will admit (if you can’t already tell) I lean towards the latter argument.  I do not believe that making guns more difficult for anyone to acquire will solve the problem of murder by firearm.

As I stated in the opening, murder is against the law and typically comes with a pretty severe punishment and is normally vigorously investigated and prosecuted and pretty much everyone knows this.  And yet, we see murders committed every single day, why?  Because criminals have no regard for the law, little care for the life, or lives, they wish to take, and no concern or thought for the inevitable pursuit and prosecution by law enforcement.  With this attitude in criminals, why would anyone think that making it more difficult to buy a gun would in any way inhibit said criminal?

I do believe that laws that apply to purchasing a firearm through a gun shop should apply to anyone selling and buying a firearm.  When purchasing a gun at a gun show, the same background check and requirements should apply as purchasing at the storefront.  Of course, the government needs to get serious about providing the promised real-time lookup of criminal and psychiatric records.  It won’t matter if background checks are enforced across the board if the system utilized to make these evaluations is broken, as it is currently.  Passing more restrictive gun laws will not fix this problem any more than further restricting murder would have any impact on the murder rate.  Yes, close any loophole that allows a gun to be purchased without a reasonably thorough background check but I don’t think for a second that doing so will have any significant effect on murder rates.

I lean towards mandatory training covering the proper use, care and respect for handling a firearm.  In many of the accidental deaths, a total lack of respect for firearms seems to have led to complacency in gun safety.  Mandatory training could save many lives lost.  By keeping guns out of the reach of toddlers and children who have no idea the danger involved, we could avert many accidental deaths.

I also believe that ‘gun free zones’ encourage, almost beg, criminals to plan and carry out their attacks in these places.  Coincidentally, these are also places of high concentrations of now defenseless targets.  Why is it a surprise that someone looking to commit murder would do so in an environment that has lots of people and little to no chance of resistance?

Recently, today in fact, I read about the debate between allowing open carry or concealed carry on school grounds.  That is a whole different discussion that I may take up at a later date.