I spent four years in the military, during which time, I found out something very scary about myself. I didn’t want to kill and I didn’t want to be killed, not even by myself. The mess, the ugliness, and the pain and horror for those left behind was enough for me to balance right and wrong. Guns are wrong. Living is right.
Ok. So, there are so many more problems for the living in living. Yah. We gotta negotiate between right and wrong hundreds of times everyday. Is it a surprise to read a recent AP article, “Surprising fact: Half of gun deaths are suicides.”? (Jun 30, 9:18 PM (ET) by Mike Stobbe.)
The issue is clearer if you understand an old adage in the construction industry: Give the hardest job to the laziest man and you find the easiest way to get it done.
Men and women are good at rationalizing their options. A career promotion that takes a mother 30 miles from her home is not desirable no matter how much the pay is. A father who loses his children in divorce, loses everything that he has lived for. A husband whose wife tells him the marriage is over often knows that his future is over. Alimony, child-support, visitation issues, temporary restraining orders, jail, and more undesirable outcomes; this is not the life that any of us want to live.
Put a gun into the mix and you can see why rational people make seemingly irrational choices everyday. To them, the choices are not irrational. The choices we all make reflect the reality of the physical and social environment in which we live.
While the Supreme Court has affirmed gun ownership in a landmark ruling last week, that does not help or explain the abuse of guns by gun owners. 55 percent of 31,000 firearms deaths were suicides in 2005. For the last 20 out of 25 years, gun-related suicides accounted for 40% of gun-owner deaths.
25 years after my military service and making my own personal decision to never own a gun, Justice Antonin Scalia revels in the glorification of the right to bear arms. “The high court’s majority opinion made no mention of suicide. But in a dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer used the word 14 times in voicing concern about the impact of striking down the handgun ban.“
I don’t know what is right or wrong for our country. But, I do know what is right and wrong for my family. Guns are wrong.
