I'm Just Sayin' - Gun salesman of the year: Barack Obama

Talk about it

Have you been to Cabela’s or Fleet Farm lately? Did you notice the firearms racks or the ammunition shelves? They are virtually empty — all due to Washington, D.C. taking advantage of the latest “crisis” to push forward Executive Orders and potential legislation about the legality of certain firearms, their components, and ammunition.

If you were a conspiracy theorist, you would almost imagine that Ruger, Winchester, Browning, and Smith and Wesson were behind this, along with President Obama, because their sales are skyrocketing.

The big picture view of all this borders on the verge of silliness. I have stayed out of the debate in order to give it some time to see what politicians and the anti-gun lobby will try to do, and my instincts were exactly correct. Emotion and irrational thought are ruling the debate. Both sides of this issue need to promote a national discussion about regulating firearms within the bounds of what the U.S. Constitution allows. Americans should not be subject to laws and regulations enacted as a “knee jerk reaction” or for “political expediency” in order to appease certain ideologies.

I have been a gun owner and hunter since my early teenage years. I first shot a firearm at age 10 and shot my first pheasant at 13. So I have been around guns all my life and never viewed them as anything sinister but certainly dangerous, and for sure life-threatening if in the hands of people with evil intent. I always believed that it is the people using a weapon that are dangerous, not the weapon itself.

Most certainly, there should be a national debate on what should be allowed in the hands of felons, drug dealers, criminally insane individuals, and people with potential mental health issues regarding the use of firearms. However, there are already more than 20,000 laws at state and federal levels that address these issues. So, just passing more laws or issuing Executive Orders from the “Gun Salesman of the Year” is not going to stop the evil use of firearms.

We already have laws requiring registrations and waiting periods, but there are ways to get around these and that needs to be tightened up. Make no mistake about it, guns will still wind up in the hands of people who want to use them for evil intent. The “bad guys” will not follow the rules.

Connecticut has very strict gun laws, but the shooter in the Newtown, CT school shootings didn’t follow the rules. The weapons used weren’t his. The firearms and ammunition were legally purchased and owned by his mother. As another example, consider the city of Chicago. It has what is considered the strongest gun legislation in the country, yet there were more than 500 murders in Chicago last year where guns were used by the perpetrator.

It is not helpful to demonize the NRA on one side and ridicule the anti-gun lobby on the other side. We are all in this together. The patriots who created the Constitution made a specific Amendment to forever protect the right to own firearms. They had firsthand knowledge and experience of a king who wanted to take their gun protection away from them.

I don’t trust politicians who are trying to do the same… but then, I’m just sayin’.

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“A free people ought not only be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.”

– George Washington

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DuWayne Paul of Alexandria is a regular contributing columnist for the Echo Press.

Tags: opinion, columns