The Question:
Regarding the national gun control debate, do you keep a firearm handy when you’re in your business?
52% - Absolutely
32% - Absolutely not
16% - Thinking about it
My Comments:
In our online poll last week we asked this question: “Regarding the national gun control debate, do you keep a firearm handy when you’re in your business?” Almost one third of our respondents said they were, “Never,” armed in their offices. More than half answered, “Absolutely,” they are armed in their business. And 16% admitted that they were, “Thinking about it.”
I’ll let the responses speak for themselves, but here are my thoughts on this issue:
The gun control debate is pregnant with paradoxes that make resolution difficult. For example:
- The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution gives Americans the right, in the modern vernacular, to keep and bear arms. But one product of this right is millions of firearms in America and many new ones manufactured every year. Consequently, it’s easy for the evil or the mentally ill to gain access to guns.
- We have centuries-old systems designed to deal with the bad guys, plus newly proposed restrictions. But to them, gun control will always be merely an inconvenience.
- Sophisticated counseling methods help identify the dangerously demented. But privacy and confidentiality issues impede an effective system to prevent them from hurting someone.
- In my home I should be able to protect my family from an intruder. But should that extend to being armed in public?
Most of the reforms currently being proposed are a fool’s errand. More background checks wouldn’t have prevented Columbine. Smaller magazines wouldn’t have stopped Aurora. If there had never been gun show sales, Congresswoman Gifford and dozens of others would still have been attacked in Tucson. Nor would banning assault weapons have stopped the unspeakable from happening in Sandy Hook. We now know that with each killer, family and/or professionals were aware of potential violence. Furthermore, none of the currently proposed reforms address the real reasons children are killed as innocent bystanders of gang drive-by shootings.
As I wrote last December in an article titled, What’s worse than evil? my concern is that politicians will legislate control of things, like magazine size, etc., and go home smug in the belief that they’ve prevented another Sandy Hook. But to paraphrase Cassius, from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” the fault, dear friends is not in our tools, but in ourselves.
Finally, I’m with the 53% of our poll respondents: If someone comes in my home or my office with the intent to hurt me or mine, I will be exercise my 2nd Amendment right - with extreme prejudice.
