More UNSENT Email -- Gun Control & Common Sense

So, I almost sent this off to my family the other day. By family, I mean my mom, my dad, and my little sister, whose husband, it turns out, is one of those people that just went out and bought an assault rifle as if it were an emergency, because he may not be able to buy one soon...

But it started out with my sister sending us all some YouTube video of various random movie stars sharing their view in favor of gun control, juxtaposed by another clip spliced in immediately afterwards of that that same celebrity shown in various movie scenes with a movie prop gun shooting up a city full of bad guys, or good guys or what have you.

My entire, ultraconservative, gun-toting family, whom I love dearly but do not see eye to eye on many things with them on, was already well into the hee-hawing and backslapping, basically with comments exactly like this: "Blah blah blah stupid lib-tard THIS" and "hypocritical idiot THAT" and "just goes to show you that liberals always blah blah...THE OTHER."

It didn't seem to occur to anybody that since it was their JOB to star in a fictional depiction, for which they each were likely paid millions of dollars, there is no hypocrisy or conflict in their fictional characters from the movies actions' and their real life viewpoints on common sense legislation for handheld killing machines. I typed a few smaller emails, one or two sentences each, with comments like "Are You Serious?"... And then I typed the following email. The emails that I sent which were one sentence long provoked such heated and strong responses from them, that I thought the better of sending the following message, and JUST as I was about to hit send........ I decided to save it and see where the conversation went. But here is the email that never made it out of my draft box.

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To be fair, nobody wants to ban guns altogether. Nobody. Its one of the major false characterizations used by the NRA to stir up fear amongst their members about the intentions of the “dreaded gun control lobby.”

In reality, Gun Control, for the vast majority of people who favor it, the solutions are actually incredibly common sense. You can go claiming that this is just a first step, and that they really wanna ban ALL guns, but you’d be entirely wrong. You just need to ask anybody in favor of gun control. 95/100 people are in agreement with these basic principals, and so claiming that ANYTHING at all is a slippery slope to a ban on all guns ownership is not a valid argument against these principals. Does anyone you know really have an issue with these same princpals:

1)      A ban on purchasing guns that are not normally used in self defense (IE: Handguns) or Hunting (IE: Hunting Rifle, Shot Guns)—Automatic weapons, assault rifles, etc. I mean, without some sort of common sense rules surrounding weapons ownership, why should it be illegal for me to own my own nukes? After all, the second amendment doesn’t even mention guns. It just mentions the right to bear ARMS. So why can’t I drive a tank to work and own my own nukes, and put land mines all over my property. I mean, isn’t it my right right--my constitutional right—to purchase ex-soviet BackPack Nukes to use in case of emergencies? Isn’t it my constitutional right to mount a rotating bulletproof pod with a fully automatic marine sniper rifle that eats up strips of 1800 or so .72 caliber shells every minute onto the top of my Jeep. I KNOW its my constitutional right to own a Gatlin gun and keep it loaded by my front door… Right?

2)      Banning clips for semi-automatic weapons that contain more then 10 rounds, or that contain more than the gun was designed to carry without having to reload a new clip.

3)      Banning sales on armor piercing bullets, exploding bullets, etc that do not have a legitimate hunting or standard home-self-defense purpose.

4)      MOST IMPORTANTLY: Banning the egregious loopholes that allow the sale of any guns of basically any type at gun shows without a background check. A gun show is where the guy who killed 29 at Virginia Tech got his guns, its where the Columbine killers got their guns, and its where the vast majority of unregistered weapons that make their way down to the hands of the Mexican Cartels, mass killers, and gangbangers get their guns. Also, limit gun sales to 2 per State-ID per month, so that you don’t get the people who CAN pass background checks going in and buying 60 or 70 guns at a gun show, with Mexican Cartel money, and then just handing them off to the cartels, which is what currently happens. Nobody that isn’t a licensed gun dealer needs to buy more than 24 firearms a year for personal use.

5)      Require that when there are children who either LIVE at the house, or any children are going to be present that may not be yours, that legitimate gun owners lock up all firearms in a lockable gun safe. Period.

And truth be told, that is about it. I have never talked to anybody from *this* country that wants to go further then this. And the vast majority of gun control advocates online, in the press, and elsewhere take issue with the mischaracterization of their positions as the desire to ban guns, because its this false idea that is so effective at scaring people into feeling like “You can’t be a true patriot in favor of GUN CONTROL!” --- Which I would state was actually the case, if gun control meant the outlawing of all gun ownership. I am 1 million percent in favor of gun ownership myself. But I don’t think anybody wants their next door neighbor to be the guy who has to have a house full of extremely dangerous military grade weaponry, 200 round clips, and armor piercing bullets in order to be happy; Nor does anybody want to know that their neighbor is the guy who sells hundreds and hundreds of guns that illegally make their way into the hands of cartels, gangs, and mass murderers through a collector’s loophole at every gun show that comes to town.

Its all about weighing one’s right to privacy against the public safety. Stating that criminals would still get their hands on guns, and that mass murderers would still get their hands in guns *EVERY SINGLE TIME* they wanted to, is untrue—considering most of these murderers get them through the Gun show loophole, and not a legitimate source. Eliminate these sources and make gun sellers at least a little culpable if they break the law, and then that gun is used to murder somebody… (And as long as they can show paperwork proving a gun was sold to a legitimate buyer or a buyer who could not be legally denied a sale, then there is nothing to worry about.

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Is this not  a common sense approach that even, I think many conservatives who have not been corrupted by the NRA's goading on the subject, could probably agree too?