A NEW DAWN IS RISING

It seems everywhere I turn, coffee shops, grocery stores, standing in line at department stores, on the radio talk shows, all the cable news channels, you name it, somebody’s talking about gun control. And that makes me wonder about how many guns are really “out there” right now? How many people who have no interest in hunting or target shooting own guns for protection? How many people who haven’t any experience or training own guns today? We have a rifle and other than when we bought it over thirty years ago, I can’t recall ever having held it. I’m not sure why we even still have it. Ash doesn’t hunt nor do either of our children. When our daughter comes home she always has her police revolver with her; however, it goes into the lock box and that’s where it stays until she’s ready to leave for home.

Am I a gun “proponent?” Not really. However, I am not opposed to gun ownership for hunters or self-protection. I have a friend who boasts of owning nearly five hundred different types of guns. What type of guns he has I don’t know. Just the fact he owns so many seems insane to me. I think many of you may have heard of or even know him. Tom Blair is more than a gun “enthusiast,” he’s on the fringe of being obsessed with not only owning guns but the entire national argument regarding the government and the Second Amendment and his “right” to possess as many guns as he chooses.

While I agree that our constitution guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” it does not give every Tom, Dick or Harry the explicit “right” to stockpile an arsenal nor does it give anyone who is not mentally fit the right to have an assault weapon or a multiple magazine filled with hundreds of bullets. First of all, assault weapons were not around when the Constitution was being drawn up. But had they been around, I am willing to bet my eye teeth that of our forefathers and the brilliant men who declared what were “unalienable Rights,” not one would have agreed any citizen should be allowed to own a machine gun or any gun of any sort with the capability to kill dozens with one round. For my money, I’d be willing to bet our forefathers would not have allowed manufacturers to make them for anyone but our own government militia, aka military. But the central reason I do not believe the men who founded our country and drew up our Declaration of Independence would condone our government or us, as its citizens to allow us to march onward after we have seen and experienced so much violence and not at least give everyone pause to reconsider we need some measure of new gun control is in large part due to a misinterpretation of what they wrote and our modern day version of what our Founders actually meant.

I am not a Constitutional scholar, for sure. So I ask all of you to read the following and think about what it and they really meant when they wrote this as part of the Declaration of Independence.

“ WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariable the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.”

Granted, at the time, our Founding Fathers were establishing why they were revolting against the King of England. However, the laws established dictated what we as a FREE people MUST do when a law within our government no longer provides the majority with their ability to enjoy the “Unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” that are endowed by our Creator.

In my mind when any of us fret or worry because we no longer have any security at all in knowing our children are safe to go to school or whenever our teenagers cluster to meet friends at the mall or a movie theatre or just go to a hamburger joint down the street, yet we still have the fear some whacko was able to buy an assault weapon with a magazine capacity large enough to wipe out dozens of people or a gang of drug thugs are “sending a message” then it is most definitely time that WE, THE PEOPLE make certain our government does something about it. Not the NRA, not the manufacturers who only make more money whenever something horrendous happens. I believe in the Second Amendment and that every sane, rational citizen should own a gun for protection and for hunting game if they want to. Not because they NEED TO. Therein lies the difference.

In today’s world – especially in the United States where we witness, memorize and essentially live with violence twenty-four-seven, 365 days a year, we are an extremely violent nation. Face it, folks, we as a nation are not generally known as a “passive” bunch of folks.

Controls about what types of weapons, how much ammunition is allowed within a certain amount of time to be purchased and above all WHO should be able to purchase guns or/and ammunition are needed. That is, unless you want to live in a society where everyone is strapping on a holster every day, everywhere.

But we’ve come to the crossroad within our country. We need to calmly and rationally figure this out for the betterment and most of all the security of knowing our homes, streets and most of all our children will remain safe whenever they leave to wherever they go.

Personally, I don’t want to “carry” or wear a gun holster. With my luck and clumsiness, the person I’d end up accidently shooting would be myself. How about you?

Questions and comments are always welcomed. Email: sooasheim@aol.com or snail mail can be sent to: P.O. Box 123 Fargo, ND, 58107 or P.O. Box 1026, Moorhead, Mn, 56560.