It’s still amazes me to hear people call in on radio shows talk about how much better it would have been in Aurora, (or any other site in this country where a mass murder involving an assault rifle) if the people there were also armed with the same weaponry. I grew up in the 1960’s and 1970’s to the cry’s of people saying that television and the movies were too violent and would result in violent people, then in the 1980’s and 1990’s it was video games making people more violent. Well, I really don’t believe that violence on television, movies, or video games necessarily have a major effect on the violence of a culture. I don’t discount it completely, but I think the problem is actually simpler than that. Television, movies and video games are making people more stupid. They don’t seem to realize that in the real world, those with guns tend to fire back at you. Unless you are very calm, well-trained and of the mind to take another life, you will be shot and possibly killed, not the attacker who already is of the mind to take lives. That’s reality, that’s what the military and police train for on a regular basis. Watching television or playing video games don’t properly train you or prepare you for a real fire fight.

Military Boot camp is designed to essentially “brainwash” people into being able to go against their nature and be able to devalue human life to make them more effective killing machines. The only lives that matter are those in your unit, those outside aren’t to be considered human. Sadly, one of the reasons so many come back from war with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is because of the inability to accept what they have done in war, that they have taken human life. It’s not as easy as it would appear in the movies, on television or on a video game. And you cannot regenerate when you are shot, there is no reset, you can’t play again. And, being shot is painful and results in real blood.

So the NRA would like a place where everyone is armed because the more armed people out there, the less the possibility of shots being fired at you. Well, the picture above is of Somalia. Just about everyone there is armed with high-capacity assault rifles. Rifles provided by the gun manufacturers for whom the NRA lobby for. Is this really what we want? It is what the NRA’s leadership wants because that’s how they make money. Off the deaths of innocent people from the most effective instruments of close quarter mass destruction available.

Most responsible gun owners, to include those with military and/or law enforcement experience know that the answer is better gun control laws. In fact a majority of rank and file NRA membership support better gun control laws. They know that laws designed to keep assault rifles, high-capacity magazines, etc. out of the hands of criminals and mentally disturb is not taking all the guns away from law-abiding people. It’s making the streets safer by keeping those weapons out of the hands of people so inclined to take these weapons into a theatre, or school, or shopping center. Someone so inclined to do that represents a danger to the community and responsible gun owners recognize this and agree it must be regulated. They also know that vigilante justice by untrained, untried, inexperienced, but armed cherubs will only make matters worse in a fire fight.

More guns on the streets do not make the streets safer, it would only tend to make us more like Somalia. The only thing it would accomplish is more gun and ammunition sales and profits to the people Wayne LaPierre represents. Not rank and file gun owners, but the manufacturers who want you to buy more of their product.