Sometimes the Truth Simply Doesn't Connect with Our Beliefs
Most all of us are familiar with the concept of gun control. I myself have thrown in with the other faction: the gun owners, but paradoxically, I choose for personal reasons not to own a gun, and right now I don't think I can have one anyway because I am on probation. But either way, I support the right of the average American to keep and bear arms. Before you make your ultimate decision, please read this story.
Sadly for some families, the eventuality of guns being placed in unworthy hands leads to unnecessary violence in the home. Even more damaging to the body and mind is the constant threat of violence that the ownership of said weapon underscores. I am familiar with this.
My father was a gun owner. The rumor in the family is that he killed two men -- one drowned in a lake, and I didn't get the details on the other. All I know is that they didn't die because of guns. But they were killed by a gun owner -- where does that leave the rest of us?
I can remember spending my twelfth Christmas in a place called Safe Harbor. It's a women's and family shelter. My father had threatened my mother, my sisters, me, and my grandparents with gun violence. He said that he was going to shoot us all. He blamed us kids for ruining his life, starting with me, and he told my mother that he was going to kill us all, then kill her parents. We fled to my uncle's house and called this shelter, and shortly thereafter, we were gone from his life -- for three days only.
http://safeharborsc.org/
I remember an evening my father got drunk and started in with the threats again. My mom piled us into the car, and out the rear window I saw my father holding a .22 rifle and watching us drive away. I wonder how close we came.
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This man, this gun owner, was a pet killer too. He threw a kitten against our apartment wall when I was a tiny infant. He killed between 30 and 50 dogs over the course of my childhood. I couldn't begin to count the number of cats, either. He killed most all of them. My friends, my companions, my familiar spirits, dead because of his guns. Where does that leave the rest of us?
This man eventually died of a drug overdose (at least that is what I was led to believe), but before that happened, he had tried to commit suicide by means of (you guessed it) one of his guns. He took a .22 up the hill behind his house, but he took the wrong kind of bullet with him because he was drunk, and the weapon didn't fire. He almost killed himself with a rifle.
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My husband's friend was recently shot in the face and in the side by a gun owner. The friend was working at a coffee shop and this man just came in and shot him up, along with a bunch of other people in Seattle. No one else had a gun and no one was able to stop the rampage. The friend had to call 911 with his face blown apart. It was all a horrible mess. So where does that leave the rest of us, again I wonder?
I still don't realllllly know deep deep down how I feel about guns. And that is why I don't own one. But do you think the real reason is, whatever is wrong with that person could be wrong with me too, and I am just afraid to own one?
I don't think anyone should be forced into having or not having a gun. It's like worshiping the god damned nuclear bomb for chrissakes.
/EndRant