Gun Control Laws Are Missing the Target.

     Additional gun control laws are being deliberated now.  It is too soon to be making these decisions after recent tragedy. They would leave law-abiding citizens defenseless. Many new restrictions have come because the public misunderstands the meaning of “assault weapons.”

     Plenty of time needs to be taken when a decision is to be made that affects many people; in order to think it through to make sure it is the right thing to do. Acting out of emotion or on impulse can be detrimental, especially when it affects the entire country. The President is trying to get Congress to pass the law because of tragic events that have happened. The entire country is heartbroken over these tragedies but see different solutions. Just as in the time following personal tragedy it is advisable not to make any major decisions, these national tragedies have happened too recently to be deciding something of this proportion. The emotions involved are too effecting and can blur the truth of good reasoning.

     The President, and those in Congress who agree with him, strongly believe that controlling guns means that there will be fewer murders in the United States. Statistics show that murder rates actually tend to be higher in places with tight gun control laws. These laws disarm the good people who follow them. This leaves law-abiding citizens vulnerable and defenseless against criminals who have guns in spite of controlling laws, because for some weird reason, outlaws, by definition, don’t really follow laws. Where is there logic in trying to form laws to reign in those who are already outside of the law? Shouldn’t we instead more strongly enforce those we currently have by prosecuting the lawless? 

     Some people think that assault weapons are the same thing as automatic weapons. They would be wrong. For one thing, fully automatic weapons were banned decades ago! The press is often uninformed about the differences in guns. Then, they refer to both fully automatic and semiautomatic guns as fully automatic assault rifles. Fully automatic and semiautomatic guns work very differently. 

It seems to me that we are approaching this entire ordeal from the wrong angle, at the wrong time, and for the wrong reasons. Even if they did pass a stricter gun control law, it would not do much good, if any, in situations similar to the recent tragedies. 

Comment on a colleague’s blog

On Katy Kullenburg's "GOVERNMENT: Past & Present":

The first issue that jumped out at me when I read this was "one of the main points in the constitution is the freedom of religion and separation of church and state." Where in the Constitution does it say anything about the separation of church and state? Guess what, it doesn't! The phrase "separation of church and state" is derived from a letter written by President Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to Baptists from Danbury, Connecticut, and published in a Massachusetts newspaper soon thereafter. In that letter, referencing the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Jefferson writes: "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State." The only thing the constitution says about religion that might lead people to believe that what Thomas Jefferson said refers to that phrase in the Constitution is "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."(First Amendment)

Now I would like to address the statement “although they say that it is completely wrong because it is what is stated in the bible there are many many scriptures which ban certain things that people practice anyways.” The verses about beards and mixed cloth have to do with Jewish rituals. Other verses that state laws that people “break,” such as in Leviticus 11 where God tells them what they can and cannot eat, are resolved later, as seen in Acts 11:5-10.

I understand what you meant when you said “Although this would be a valid point for a Christian it has absolutely no meaning to someone who is not.” For a society to survive, there must be some level of morality. If people don’t realize that what they are doing is a sin, why would they feel guilty about it? It makes me think of something I read once: “Gun laws would prevent shooting sprees? Please tell me more about how criminals follow laws.” I think that is a somewhat similar idea.

Just because people break God’s law doesn’t justify breaking others.