America’s Control Problem

November 10, 2015 9:47 pm Published by 8 Comments

America, we have a gun problem, and I feel the need to speak up. I don’t usually talk about political issues, but this is more than a political issue. It’s a question of life and death.

The title of this picture is "Kids Playing with Guns." A perfect illustration of America's unhealthy Gun Culture.

The title of this picture is “Kids Playing with Guns.” A perfect illustration of America’s unhealthy Gun Culture.

The Philadelphia Inquirer on October 25th ran a piece about a civil court ruling against a gun dealer in Milwaukee. The dealer was found guilty of breaking the law by knowingly selling a gun to a straw buyer. A straw buyer, in case you aren’t aware, is someone who buys a gun for another person who could not make the purchase on their own. These guns often end up in the hands of criminals, as it did in this case. The result of the gun dealer allowing the sale in question was two police officers being injured by that same gun.

drop side crib deaths gun deaths         The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms law, passed in 2005, gives those who make and sell guns nearly complete immunity from any responsibility for what is done with their guns.
          Just to give some contrast here, if a child’s car seat was found to be responsible for injury or death, there would be little question that the manufacturer or seller, depending on what went wrong, would clearly be held accountable. But the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms law means, as far as guns are concerned, the companies hardly need to worry about culpability.
          In the decade since that law was passed, there have only been two successful civil cases that were able to bypass this law, and the Milwaukee case was one of them. There is something wrong with this picture.
BANG          Many who oppose gun control will tell you the adage, “Guns don’t kill people, people do.” Let’s take a look at that. The lawyer who won the Milwaukee case argued against that idea, pointing out that, for the criminal to use the gun to shoot the officers, there had to be a gun, a trigger to pull, in the first case. To put it another way, a famous musician has said that if guns don’t kill people, why do they give soldiers guns when they go to war? Why not just send the people?
          As many of you know, my husband was murdered with an axe. If there had been no axe nearby for the disturbed man to use, then my husband would have survived that day. Guns are designed to kill, and nothing more. If you say guns don’t kill, then what’s the very point of making it in the first place? Yes, it takes a person to pull the trigger. But if there is no trigger to pull, nobody is going to get shot.
Innocent_Targets_Partners          It seems vulgar to me to talk so openly about people being shot, injured and killed. At this point in American history, however, there is so much gun violence that we must talk about it, vulgar or not.
It’s time we had a serious discussion about guns, and leave the slogans behind. People are dying every day who don’t need to die. If another country was killing as many of our people as die from guns every year, we would be at war with them. Why do we put up with us doing the killing ourselves? This is madness, and it needs to end.
          As soon as anyone talks about guns it seems that people immediately get upset and think we mean to take all guns away from them and they can’t go deer hunting. Well, I’m not suggesting such a thing. And I fully understand that you have a constitutional right to own a gun. I’m also sure that the writers of the constitution never would have dreamed that it would come to this. If you want to go deer or turkey hunting you don’t need an automatic military rifle with 30 rounds of ammunition.
Screen-Shot-2014-05-09-at-9.14.19-AM          I had a phone call the other day from a gun shop employee asking if I would like to buy a gun. When I told her that I had no gun, in fact had never touched a gun and was not interested in buying one now, she said, “You live by yourself and you don’t have a gun?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, aren’t you scared someone might come to harm you?”
“Oh, I lock my doors.”
“But if they break in?”
“If someone wants to shoot me I’m not going to shoot them. I’m going to say, ‘You can shoot me if you want to and if I die I’ll go to heaven but you, you will have to give account to Almighty God for what you did.'”
The caller hung up.
She doesn’t know that even if I had a gun I could probably not hit the target. I have trouble just playing miniature golf.
gun violence crucifiction          I’ve traveled to many other countries and I often feel safer there than here. I think we could learn from these governments because they make it much more difficult to own a gun. Even the policemen in many places have batons rather than guns and the crime rate in those countries is way lower than America. There is a huge amount of political spin – or even outright disinformation and lying – which is applied to firearm-related data. Sometimes it can be difficult to know what the truth is. There are some facts, however, that are unquestionable, no matter which side of the debate you are on.
          In the Vietnam War, from 1961 to 1975, about 58,000 Americans were killed. This is equivalent to about eleven deaths per day. In 2013, gun violence in America claimed more than 33,000 lives, or about ninety gun deaths per day. At this pace, the number of Americans killed across fourteen years of open warfare in Vietnam are killed on our streets and in our towns in just twenty one months. These facts are very accurate, and you can research them yourself.
ht_moms_demand_gun_sense_nt_130415_wg       And it is not just mentally ill individuals who are causing the problems, as some gun-control opponents believe. There is so much anger in this country. We don’t seem to have a clue about what to do with disappointment or hurts. We are racists. We lash out in violence. Birds fly, fish swim and people sin. God has set government to keep that sin in control. Every day we hear of theater shootings or school shootings, park shootings etc.It’s very sad. Hats off to this lawyer and his civil suit for moving in the right direction.

          And may we, as a nation, find the courage to follow him.

Crosses are set at the Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012, in memory of the school shooting victims in Newtown, Conn. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

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This post was written by Grace Fabian

8 Comments

  • Lorraine Taylor says:

    I thought this article was thoughtfully and well written. It all makes sense to me. Good argument about the need to make it harder to purchase guns.

  • Kenneth McIntosh says:

    Thank you Grace, for speaking the truth. I hope this well stated and important post gets widely circulated.

  • Kathie says:

    Interesting perspective Grace, which gives me “ammunition” for the ongoing debate with my Army vet step grandson, and other family members who have guns to protect their homes and families. Love your blogs. Kathie

  • Gus Whom says:

    If I’m in my home and being broken into…I sure want someone with a GUN to come to my rescue!! What countries only use batons RATHER than guns….Lap Land? or some other remote area? I think those days are gone forever in the societies we live in today. I, too, am horrified at all the shootings! But I think the Gun Laws already in existence should be “enhanced”. There should be a waiting period for every person buying ANY kind of a gun until they are VERIFIED to be who they say they are: fingerprinted, blood tested, place of employment given (or former), how long employed at that place, five people for references (and these people verified also with their fingerprints on record…and there are so many many ways that could enhance our present gun laws. Yes, this WOULD be very time-consuming… but so what!! It should be time-consuming! Make it very hard!!

  • Susan Sawyer says:

    Thank you for packing so much good information and expression of the problem into this blog. The time has long ago come for us to act responsibly as a nation. We know the lobbyists are strong, the rhetoric is even stronger, the manipulation of data and arguments daunting but we can speak with our signatures on petitions, our support or non-support of candidates and by continuing to research and know facts related to this issue – to counter the mis-statements and misinformation so frequently encountered. That is what we can and should be doing.

  • Howard Hacker says:

    I would think you would be concentrating on hatchet control in Papa New Guinea

    • Grace Fabian says:

      I am not sure why you used the word ‘hatchet’. Edmund was murdered with an axe. Of course, if we knew then what we know now, we would not have kept the axe in the work room. We only had the tools there because they were being repeatedly stolen when we left them in the garden shed. We never dreamed that any of the tools would be used as a murder weapon. And, of course, if we had to do it over again, we would have kept the tools under lock and key someplace. Also, I don’t live in PNG any more. I live in America, and this is where I see the gun and death culture that results in so many murders every year. When the Australians, under a U.N. mandate, went into Papua New Guinea, one of the very first things they did was to talk to the people about the dangers of their bows and spears. They certainly didn’t suggest that, to keep the peace and prevent violence, everyone should have more spears and more arrows. As the Gospel was spread throughout Papua New Guinea, the people stopped using their weapons for killing each other, and instead only used them for hunting.

  • Ashley Morgan says:

    I know this is an older article, but you make some very good points.

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Grace Fabian
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