It’s Just Too Easy While It’s Getting So Hard.

According to the General Social Survey, a recent poll found that the number of US homes with a gun has steadily declined since the 1970s. Only 34 percent of US households reported owning a gun in 2012, down from the 50 percent who reported owning one in the 1970s.

The rate is the lowest it has been in decades, if the poll is accurate…and why shouldn’t it be? The GSS is the largest project funded by the Sociology Program of the National Science Foundation. Except for the U.S. Census, the GSS is the most frequently analyzed source of information in the social sciences. This isn’t the 1950s anymore when pollsters had little clue as to how to conduct accurate polls. Now, 60 years later, we do, so regardless of whatever ones handpicked numbers say about guns…gun ownership is down.

However, population and gun purchases are up. There were 215 million people in 1975 and today there are 315 million people. 50% of 215 million is 107,500,000. While 34% of 315 million is 106,760,000. So we have a smaller percentage of people with guns but still the same number of gun owners. And while those owners who counsel all of us to go out and get a gun so that the world can be a safer place, in reality they appear to be the ones who are still buying all of the guns. So we have more guns even though we have fewer people as a percentage with guns.

But that’s not the problem anyway because most gun owners are peaceable people who mind their own business and do their best not to start any trouble. They just happen to like guns. And they have the right to own them.

The problem is that the world has gotten so much more crowded (The U.S. population has nearly doubled since 1955 when I was born) while at the same time becoming much less friendly. 50 million people are hungry, 11 million people have no work, 45 million people can’t get healthcare, half a million are homeless, millions of others have inadequate housing, childhoods are less safe and secure, gang membership is up, the gap between the rich and the poor is widening and all of this is leading to a much more frustrated and angry society on one end with a much more intolerant and indifferent society on the other.

And in between, guns are just so easy to get.

I, and most others, don’t need a gun now…but if things fall apart and our lives become fragile and full of stress and we become ill or feel disenfranchised or get angry at the world or fall apart emotionally and mentally… then buying a gun and going on a rampage is one of the easiest and least expensive things that we’ll be able to do…isn’t it?

We have the right to bear arms… but why do we have to make it so easy to get arms in the first place?

If our world keeps trending in the direction that it is now then in the near future there will be many more hungry, homeless, jobless, ill, disenfranchised and angry people in our world than there are now…

So why do we make it so easy for a citizen to obtain a gun in this ever more crazy, unfriendly, and immoral world? How do we infringe upon a citizens 2nd amendment rights if we ask them to wait a little bit while we try to determine if they are perhaps  a few screws short of a hardware store. Where in the 2nd amendment does it say that citizens have the right to bear arms without a background check? And who does it benefit by giving someone a gun without at least so much as a how do you do?

From now on we should simply honor our founding fathers and stick to the letter of the law…or in this case the amendment…to wit,

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

You and I can get our guns as soon as our membership in the local state militia… is approved!

 

---