sir,
i was once in the neighborhood of your beliefs about guns, gun rights, and the place of these in our society. i am no longer there.
i am a 7th or 8th generation native of texas. my ancestors have been being born there so long that if sam houston had lost the battle of san jacinto and the revolution i would be a mexican today, unless the states found some other way to steal it. i grew up around rifles and shotguns, learned to use and respect them from an early age. even now i am proficient enough to add venison to my freezer if i wish and shoot a round of 24 at skeet or bring back a brace of dove if i wish something truly gamy. i am a gun owner, possessing a winchester model 94, a remington model 1100 12 ga., and a ruger redhawk .357 magnum.
in the late 70s and early 80s i approached gun rights from the same stance as i did any other civil rights and civil liberties but over the course of the 80s leading into the early 90s it seemed to me that the nra as well as some of the magazines which had been geared more to the outdoor life of hunting and camping started taking on a more and more strident, almost cult-like aspect. it was the response to columbine which led me to reject my former paradigm of gun rights = civil liberties.
as time, and fatalities, have gone by there is less and less i see about the situation that is reasonable. if gun owners and their lobbyists can’t find a sane middle ground with intelligent reforms that would put modest restrictions on gun ownership, enforceable responsibilities on gun owners, coupled with serious licensing requirements for possession, there is going to come a day when the majority of americans who either do not own guns or who are much less attached to the guns they have are going to demand, in such a way that the politicians will have no choice but to listen, that SOMETHING be done. that something may be an australian style confiscation regime of certain types of firearms, in which case we may get to “suffer” along with them the lower murder rates and lower suicide rates they’ve had. that something may be a japanese style restriction to shotguns or air rifles and only after classes, background checks, mental health reviews, and months long waiting periods. i don’t know what that something will be but i don’t think there will be a better chance for coming together on a compromise that might still be effective but would be an actual compromise. then again, i never imagined america would respond to the murder of 20 children with a big shrug.
i’m personally much less attached to my firearms than i am to the safety and welfare of our people. the win 94 would be the hardest to give up because it was my father’s, but even with that . . .
