(no subject)
I know that this is long, but I made it public and deliberately did not put it behind a cut because it was important to me to say.
I read an article awhile back by Neil Gaiman called Why Defend Freedom of Icky Speech. It struck quite a chord with me, because a point he made applies to how I feel about quite a lot of civil liberties.
"If you accept -- and I do -- that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don't say or like or want said."
and
"The Law is a blunt instrument. It's not a scalpel. It's a club. If there is something you consider indefensible, and there is something you consider defensible, and the same laws can take them both out, you are going to find yourself defending the indefensible."
I've been seeing a lot of comments about how terrible guns and gun owners are, in the wake of the mass murder in Aurora, CO. That people who own guns are violent, reactionary, ignorant, uneducated, and bigoted. Those comments hurt me, especially from my friends. Do you think that I am those things? Do you think that I am violent and reactionary, ignorant and bigoted? The girl who loves Doctor Who, Sherlock, and The Vampire Diaries? The girl who likes to sew, loves to find a bargain, will help you paint your house or move heavy things? I call my two rescue cats Boogerface and Miss Priss. I take the trash out for my dad every Tuesday because it's getting harder for him to get around. I'm no angel - I'm often moody, I like to be alone, I hate to cook, and I'll put things off with the hope that they'll just go away. But I'm also awesome. I'm smart, strong, talented, geeky, and often hilarious. And I am a gun owner.
I am a gun owner, and I am proud to be one.
I grew up in a culture where the possession and use of firearms was normal. The overwhelming attitude towards guns and gun safety was respect. I can't emphasize enough how important this respect is. Respect that a gun is a deadly weapon, and is capable of taking life. If you are shooting at a firing range, you have to have complete respect for the range master, for the people around you, and for their safety. If you are a hunter, you have to have respect for the safety of your fellow hunters, and for the fact that an animal's life was taken to feed you. If you are a soldier, you have to respect your equipment and your fellow soldiers, because at some point you will have to choose between their lives and the lives of your opponents.
I learned the rules of gun safety from the time I could walk and talk. Treat every gun as loaded, all the time. A gun is never unloaded unless you unload it yourself. Never aim at something you do not intend to fire at. Know where your gun is pointed at all times. Know what is behind your target. Be aware of what the people around you are doing. A gun is not a deterrent, and should never be used as a threat. A gun is a last resort choice to defend yourself or others against imminent death or grievous bodily harm.
My problem with gun control is figuring out something that works. When you can figure out an effective way of keeping guns out of the hands of people who will use them to murder people without impinging on my civil liberties, then I would love to talk about it. Really. I mean it. I don't see a path to that, especially not through rules and regulations. We can't turn back the clock and make guns not available. Even if we could, I wouldn't. There is a solid reason that the Colt was called "The Great Equalizer". A 71 year old Florida man can defend himself against two armed thugs a third his age. An 18 year old mother shoots an armed intruder in Oklahoma, to protect her three month old baby, when police response is 20 minutes away. Would you take away the rights of those people to defend themselves?
When you want to protect someone's rights, sometimes you have to protect the rights of people you don't like, too.
Would allowing concealed carry in Aurora have prevented this man killing as many people as he did? Maybe. I actually don't think so. He wore body armor and used a tear gas canister to impair the visibility in an already dark theater. Those are truly terrible circumstances to try and defend yourself against someone.
I've seen some comparisons between him and the senior gentleman in Florida. I don't think the situations are at all similar. I think there are a lot more similarities between this and the July 2011 attacks in Norway. The suspect sought out a location where there were a lot of easy targets, that didn't have a good way to get away or defend themselves. This is not a home invasion or an armed robbery or an assault. This was one of the rare situations where someone sought out a way to kill a large number of people for reasons that made sense only to them.
Should there be a law? A law is a deterrent. Deter is defined as to discourage or restrain from acting or proceeding. A deterrent is not the same as a prevention. If someone is truly determined to acquire a firearm, a deterrent is not enough. A law is not going to prevent this happening again.
Should people with mental illnesses be disqualified from having guns? I have a mental illness - I have depression. I take medication for it daily. I worked an armed post at a prison for two and a half years - a job where under very specific circumstances, corrections officers are authorized and required to use deadly force. Should people with PTSD be disqualified from owning guns? There's an awful lot of soldiers in our country that are trained to use firearms that struggle with mental and emotional trauma. So I don't agree that mental illness should be a disqualifying factor. The stigma of mental illness is another issue entirely, but the more we are afraid of mental illness, the less people will seek out help. Nor do I think diagnosed mental illnesses are the problem here. I found this article on why mental illness does not generally have a correlation with mass shootings to be very interesting.
There are so many strong feelings on both sides of this issue. It is so frustrating to be certain that your opinion is correct, and that someone who disagrees with it just doesn't understand. If you are one of my friends who supports gun rights, I hope that you will take a deep breath, set aside your frustration, and show people that you're not the things that we're accused of. I know that you are smart, affectionate, passionate, deeply caring people. I hope that you will look at the people you know who support gun control and realize that the people you don't know who support gun control are just people. If you are one of my friends who supports gun control, I hope that you will take a deep breath, set aside your frustration, and look at the people you know who are gun owners and realize that the people you don't know who are gun owners are the same as the people you do know - they're just people.
I hope that instead of derision and accusation, that we can reach out to each other with compassion and respect. We will never solve this problem through accusations, anger, and laws. We have to take care of each other, and even when we don't agree, attempt to reach for understanding.
I am a gun owner, and I am proud to be one. I respect you, and will do my best to earn your respect in return. I'm just a regular human being, just like you. This was important to me to say. Thank you for listening to it.
I read an article awhile back by Neil Gaiman called Why Defend Freedom of Icky Speech. It struck quite a chord with me, because a point he made applies to how I feel about quite a lot of civil liberties.
"If you accept -- and I do -- that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don't say or like or want said."
and
"The Law is a blunt instrument. It's not a scalpel. It's a club. If there is something you consider indefensible, and there is something you consider defensible, and the same laws can take them both out, you are going to find yourself defending the indefensible."
I've been seeing a lot of comments about how terrible guns and gun owners are, in the wake of the mass murder in Aurora, CO. That people who own guns are violent, reactionary, ignorant, uneducated, and bigoted. Those comments hurt me, especially from my friends. Do you think that I am those things? Do you think that I am violent and reactionary, ignorant and bigoted? The girl who loves Doctor Who, Sherlock, and The Vampire Diaries? The girl who likes to sew, loves to find a bargain, will help you paint your house or move heavy things? I call my two rescue cats Boogerface and Miss Priss. I take the trash out for my dad every Tuesday because it's getting harder for him to get around. I'm no angel - I'm often moody, I like to be alone, I hate to cook, and I'll put things off with the hope that they'll just go away. But I'm also awesome. I'm smart, strong, talented, geeky, and often hilarious. And I am a gun owner.
I am a gun owner, and I am proud to be one.
I grew up in a culture where the possession and use of firearms was normal. The overwhelming attitude towards guns and gun safety was respect. I can't emphasize enough how important this respect is. Respect that a gun is a deadly weapon, and is capable of taking life. If you are shooting at a firing range, you have to have complete respect for the range master, for the people around you, and for their safety. If you are a hunter, you have to have respect for the safety of your fellow hunters, and for the fact that an animal's life was taken to feed you. If you are a soldier, you have to respect your equipment and your fellow soldiers, because at some point you will have to choose between their lives and the lives of your opponents.
I learned the rules of gun safety from the time I could walk and talk. Treat every gun as loaded, all the time. A gun is never unloaded unless you unload it yourself. Never aim at something you do not intend to fire at. Know where your gun is pointed at all times. Know what is behind your target. Be aware of what the people around you are doing. A gun is not a deterrent, and should never be used as a threat. A gun is a last resort choice to defend yourself or others against imminent death or grievous bodily harm.
My problem with gun control is figuring out something that works. When you can figure out an effective way of keeping guns out of the hands of people who will use them to murder people without impinging on my civil liberties, then I would love to talk about it. Really. I mean it. I don't see a path to that, especially not through rules and regulations. We can't turn back the clock and make guns not available. Even if we could, I wouldn't. There is a solid reason that the Colt was called "The Great Equalizer". A 71 year old Florida man can defend himself against two armed thugs a third his age. An 18 year old mother shoots an armed intruder in Oklahoma, to protect her three month old baby, when police response is 20 minutes away. Would you take away the rights of those people to defend themselves?
When you want to protect someone's rights, sometimes you have to protect the rights of people you don't like, too.
Would allowing concealed carry in Aurora have prevented this man killing as many people as he did? Maybe. I actually don't think so. He wore body armor and used a tear gas canister to impair the visibility in an already dark theater. Those are truly terrible circumstances to try and defend yourself against someone.
I've seen some comparisons between him and the senior gentleman in Florida. I don't think the situations are at all similar. I think there are a lot more similarities between this and the July 2011 attacks in Norway. The suspect sought out a location where there were a lot of easy targets, that didn't have a good way to get away or defend themselves. This is not a home invasion or an armed robbery or an assault. This was one of the rare situations where someone sought out a way to kill a large number of people for reasons that made sense only to them.
Should there be a law? A law is a deterrent. Deter is defined as to discourage or restrain from acting or proceeding. A deterrent is not the same as a prevention. If someone is truly determined to acquire a firearm, a deterrent is not enough. A law is not going to prevent this happening again.
Should people with mental illnesses be disqualified from having guns? I have a mental illness - I have depression. I take medication for it daily. I worked an armed post at a prison for two and a half years - a job where under very specific circumstances, corrections officers are authorized and required to use deadly force. Should people with PTSD be disqualified from owning guns? There's an awful lot of soldiers in our country that are trained to use firearms that struggle with mental and emotional trauma. So I don't agree that mental illness should be a disqualifying factor. The stigma of mental illness is another issue entirely, but the more we are afraid of mental illness, the less people will seek out help. Nor do I think diagnosed mental illnesses are the problem here. I found this article on why mental illness does not generally have a correlation with mass shootings to be very interesting.
There are so many strong feelings on both sides of this issue. It is so frustrating to be certain that your opinion is correct, and that someone who disagrees with it just doesn't understand. If you are one of my friends who supports gun rights, I hope that you will take a deep breath, set aside your frustration, and show people that you're not the things that we're accused of. I know that you are smart, affectionate, passionate, deeply caring people. I hope that you will look at the people you know who support gun control and realize that the people you don't know who support gun control are just people. If you are one of my friends who supports gun control, I hope that you will take a deep breath, set aside your frustration, and look at the people you know who are gun owners and realize that the people you don't know who are gun owners are the same as the people you do know - they're just people.
I hope that instead of derision and accusation, that we can reach out to each other with compassion and respect. We will never solve this problem through accusations, anger, and laws. We have to take care of each other, and even when we don't agree, attempt to reach for understanding.
I am a gun owner, and I am proud to be one. I respect you, and will do my best to earn your respect in return. I'm just a regular human being, just like you. This was important to me to say. Thank you for listening to it.