Neighbors and friends, first, let me say I am a certified “concealed carry” handgun owner, and I would like to share a few basic thoughts on Guns in America. I do not own a long gun of any kind.
In the 1700s, we were a country mainly of rural outposts. Self-defense was a necessity and our founding fathers allowed for that in the Constitution giving us the “right to bear arms.”
Now, as a more developed country, we have a very different population make up. Mainly metropolitan, in congested city settings with law enforcement nearby.
Since those early beginnings, and with advances in technology, one individual using a semi-automatic rifle can now act as a one person army, inflicting substantial loss of life on an innocent community.
Had our founding fathers been able to foresee this evolution in weapons, I’m quite certain they would have made stipulations that made sense for gun ownership in today’s society. That, however, did not happen, and now we as a nation must take the necessary corrective steps.
Case in point: in 1996, Australia experienced the Port Arthur Massacre on the heels of many previous mass shootings. Port Arthur then became their watershed moment which spurred them, as a country, to outlaw semi-automatic, self-loading rifles. Their mantra: “We do not want to go down the path of America.” Gun licensing was also tightened and a mandatory gun buyback program for banned weapons was enacted.
In 2002, Australia further restricted gun laws by limiting barrel length, caliber and capacity of sport shooting rifles. All changes that to them, made sense in a free sport shooting (non-militarized) society.
Now, in a recent year with a population of roughly 24 million,
