The recent and troubling mass shootings in both Tuscaloosa and Aurora, Colo. has certainly brought up thoughts about our Second Amendment. Message boards are awash with anti-this and pro-that arguments as events like this cause us to ask questions.
It makes you wonder “what if someone was carrying a concealed weapon with them to the movie? Would they have been able to take down the shooter before more lives were taken?”
The same goes for the Tuscaloosa shooting, where by some miracle, no one was killed. And what about the shootings in Auburn or Virginia Tech?
Why not support a person’s right to carry a weapon in the event that someone goes crazy? It seems to be happening so frequently these days.
The other very valid side of the argument is who is to say the person carrying the weapon, presumed sane and capable, isn’t the one who has the mental breakdown and decides to pull a similar horrific scene?
Opponents of guns say things like this happen because any “idiot” can go buy a gun.
I’m not saying everyone needs to be walking around with a pistol in their pocket. I certainly don’t think everyone in a movie audience should be fully armed in case someone opens fire, causing everyone to open fire and turn the scene into the OK Corral.
But it is impossible for law enforcement to be everywhere to protect us. It’s unfortunate reports are not made as widely when licensed gun holders do use their concealed weapons to protect themselves and others against gun-wielding criminals. It happens a lot. Most recently in Florida, two men walked into an Internet cafe with a gun and baseball bat and a man with a concealed gun protected himself as the men scrambled to get away and were shot.
Perhaps the people who are avid gun supporters have a very good point in “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
People are constantly opposing a person’s right to bear arms, saying guns are why we have so much violence in our country. It’s like blaming fast food restaurants for being the reason behind the country’s obesity epidemic.
We tend to look for something else to blame instead of getting to the root of the problem.
If we didn’t have cheeseburgers at fast food restaurants, people would find another way to kill themselves slowly through over-eating, and people would find another way to kill each other if guns didn’t exist. Mankind has been doing that since recorded history began.
But how does a person begin to understand why a person makes the decision to throw tear gas into a movie theatre and begin shooting at random? Could there have been anything done to stop that from happening, even if we took away the right to bear arms? I don’t think so. We’re always so focused on finding a reason “why” when things like this happen, and generally the answer is simply not there. Sometimes bad things just happen.
parent posted at 10:06 am on Fri, Aug 10, 2012.
Just the thought of a number of armed people trying to shoot at a shooter in a movie theater is crazy. It was dark; people were running everywhere ;and smoke was everywhere; certainly not a situation in which random people with gun permits should start shooting trying to hit a deranged shooter. Aa scenario like this would have probably cost even more lives.