Guns Do Not Kill People, People Do

Although I am in no way an activist for or against gun control, it is time those who argue that guns kill people are brought back to reality. While in theory the statement may be true, the gun did not load itself, take aim itself, and fire itself. A person, a human being, loaded the gun and fired. Granted, I have heard recently of a puppy that jumped on his owner’s gun in such a perfect way that it fired and shot the owner in the leg, but a human still loaded that gun.

When we discuss suicide we often times refer to it as ‘killing oneself’. We do not say that Joe was killed by a gun. The gun did not raise itself to the exact position in which it would be discharged. It did not load itself and cock the hammer. The gun did not squeeze its own trigger, resulting in the death of an unknowing person.

The gun is not put on trial for murder. It can not be sentenced to a lifetime in prison for taking the life of an innocent person. There is a person always behind the gun in every case of voluntary murder or suicide.

I have been around guns my whole life. I learned how to properly clean, load, aim, fire, and maintain a gun before I was five years old. In my adult life, my father-in-law would shoot himself and my father would be shot and killed. There is not one person that can say that either one of those cases the gun was to blame.

Some will argue that without a gun those things would not have happened. That is also not true. While I am not about to lobby for the 1,000 ways one could take his or her own life, I think everyone can judge for themselves that there are more ways to do these things than fire a gun.

If we were to take away the American Right to Keep and Bear Arms then we better destroy every household kitchen knife as well. A knife cannot stab a person without a person standing behind it any easier than a gun can shoot a person without a human squeezing the trigger.

Then we will have to ban the automobile. How many lives are lost to car accidents each year? I am not about to even try and make an assumption, but I am willing to bet that their are more lives lost in traffic accidents, also consisting of pedestrians hit by cars, than there are people who lose their lives to guns.

The point of the entire matter is not even one that is correct by the Constitution of the United States. It was fifth grade knowledge that we learned cause and effect and that for every action their is a reaction.

A dog can bark as loudly as it deems necessary, but unless he actually bites you there is no harm done. A cat can hiss at you for an hour straight, but unless she actually bites or claws you there is no harm done. A gun can be pointed at you all day long, but unless someone squeezes the trigger the bullet will never leave the chamber. This is all in the same sense that you can bang on a keyboard for an hour, but if the computer was never turned on, your words are forever lost.

Guns do not kill people, it is people who kill people while using a gun, or a knife or a vehicle, or, unfortunately, many othe rmeans not needing to be discussed.

Idiotic adults who let their children play with guns without properly showing them how to use them, care for them, and make sure they are not loaded are the ones who kill people. It takes a millisecond to hit that safety button, or safety catch as it is sometimes called, but a lifetime of grieving for the ones who don’t bother with it.