Hmm. I’ve never been ‘reasonable’, and I’ve never been sorry about that either.

Sorry, but gun owners are done being “reasonable”

As gun owners, we often find ourselves as something of a political football. We’re the group that has the most at stake when it comes to many gun control laws.

By and large, we don’t support them. After all, we know that it’s not as easy to buy a gun as it’s often portrayed in the media and we know how criminals actually get their guns.

Many people know that we don’t support these laws. That doesn’t stop them from thinking we should.

I’m not even sure why this is an issue that continues to be debated, argued and defended. Background checks and time limits are not taking away anyone’s rights. To own muskets and flintlock pistols is your right. Even a dueling pistol could be tucked away should the need arise to awaken at dawn for a meeting with your wife’s lover in a field. This event would need to be planned and witnessed, with the winner going to prison of course.

I can’t imagine gun owners not being appalled by what has occurred repeatedly at the hands of the irresponsible few. It seems to me the responsible gun owners would support stricter controls knowing that, if the gun violence continues to play out, severe gun laws will be inevitable for all.

Taking guns out of the hands of unstable and violent shooters would save some of the 38,000 Americans who die from gun violence every year in the United States. That’s worth more than a thought and a prayer.

And yet, how would you take guns “out of the hands of unstable and violent shooters” universally? We already have numerous laws on the books at both the federal level and state level that are meant to do just that, and yet, nothing.

But then again, the author can’t imagine gun owners not being appalled at what happens. Well, we are appalled. No rational human being could look at something like a murder and not be appalled.

Where she goes off the rails is the idea that we should somehow support stricter gun control because of it.

The truth is that we were reasonable in 1934 and in 1968. We set aside our rights for the greater good and gun owners watched as the gun they bought at a hardware store in 1930 become a heavily restricted weapon that they had to get permission to buy. They saw laws passed in 1968 not only not reduce violent crime but seemingly encouraged it to skyrocket.

Time and time again, we played nice. We gave a little ground so that we would seem reasonable. Now we have background checks when we go to buy a gun and we’re told that simply isn’t enough.

Well, you know what? We’re done being “reasonable.”

We’re finished with it because none of this is reasonable. No one wants to stamp out advocacy for communism, despite all the unmitigated evil that philosophy has illustrated and the untold suffering it has dropped on the human race, all because free speech matters. Yet we’re supposed to step aside and allow our right to keep and bear arms to be ripped to shreds in the name of appearing reasonable?

This from someone who still equates the Second Amendment to muskets?

And where’s the fact that none of this stuff has actually worked? We watched gun control be passed at state levels for decades as violent crime soared, yet when gun laws started being liberalized, we saw the rates decline. While correlation doesn’t equal causation, the truth is that if the lack of gun laws caused crime to increase, we should have seen the opposite.

We didn’t.

The truth is that this demand that gun owners acquiesce to every demand by gun control advocates is what is truly unreasonable and we’re done. We’ve long been finished.