Senseless tragedy supersedes business

I have never thought of or used LinkedIn as a political or social platform. However, it seems somehow wrong not to write about the latest tragic school shooting in our country.

I would give up every firearm I own in exchange for a guarantee that neither of my kids would ever die in a manner such as that which occurred in Uvalde, Texas.

I would give up every firearm I own in exchange for a guarantee that no child anywhere would die in a mass shooting.

I have my CCL. I carry a concealed firearm in every legal area allowed. I own one AR-15, and several .22 caliber AR-15’s. I do not believe that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees this right, but until laws are passed that place strict restrictions on gun ownership, I will follow the law.

In the years I have carried a firearm, it has been pulled from its holster one time, but has never been pointed at or even shown to someone in the middle of committing a crime. Given the comparison between the number of times I have carried a firearm in public and the one time the potential for use has arisen, I’m fairly sure giving up the right to carry a firearm would not create a negative consequence for me personally.

To those among us who believe that they are constitutionally guaranteed the right to bear arms, I will not disagree. This is an argument best left to constitutional legal scholars. What I will do is ask a simple question.

Would those of you who identify as believers in your legal right to carry be willing to accept stricter gun control laws if these laws could all but guarantee another mass shooting?

“Right or wrong” as to gun ownership is a ship that has sailed and been lost across the horizon. We live in a country where there are 120 guns per 100 people:

What can we do, from today forward, to direct the future of our society away from a culture of “easy guns”?

Our country’s latest mass shooting was perpetrated by a young man who purchased weaponry and ammunition on the day of his 18th birthday.

The obvious knee-jerk reaction is something along the lines of “raise the legal age to purchase a firearm”, or perhaps lengthen waiting periods between purchase and delivery. Maybe that is the right way to go. Perhaps our country needs a more specific ban on certain types of weaponry, limits on magazine sizes, or a more comprehensive and combined national database of firearms.

Perhaps personal firearms should be limited to shotguns, bolt action rifles, and handguns with limited magazines.

Perhaps most firearm should simply be made illegal to own by a citizen unless they have gone through significant hurdles (similar to obtaining an FF L license) to obtain a permit.

I don’t know.

The idea of society is one of greater good, common good, and the fact that in order to achieve these goals some number of individual rights must be given up. I would love to be able to go 100 miles an hour on the freeway, but I am restricted to a speed limit that best protects my fellow drivers.

I do not want to give up my right under current law to carry a firearm. If giving up that right means we improve the safety of our society, then because I choose to be a member of our society, I will do what is best for society as a whole and give up this right.

Whether you see mass shootings such as these as tragic but still refuse to see the logic inherent in smarter gun control or just think that more guns would help in the right hands, ask yourself if you are willing to trade lives, potentially lost in yet another mass shooting, simply so that you can keep a pistol on your hip or an AR-15 in your house?