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The men who fought to free our country understood the need for protection in times of crisis. The opening fight of the Revolutionary War was fought over gun supply's held by rebelling colonists. Without those weapons and ammunition the community was at the mercy of the British government at whose hands the colonists had suffered injustice after injustice. Just as without weapons in the hands of our average citizens we are at the mercy of the dangerous criminals who would harm us.

While the common cry we hear today is for the weapons to be taken away from everyone in a bid to stop people from being killed, I say the cry should be to arm the populace so that such tragedies can be cut short. The civilian police were never intended to stop every crime, they were put in place to enforce laws after the fact, and keep civil order. The framers of the Constitution knew very clearly that true safety could only be achieved by an armed populace trained in the use of weapons and given a mandate to protect themselves in the time of danger. There were no police on the frontier. You had to protect yourself and your neighbors from hostile indians and criminals. That is why calling someone a coward in the old west could get you shot, if you were a coward people could not trust you and would shun you. The result is that western culture did not tolerate cowardice or its implication. But I digress.
If you look truthfully at the most dangerous things in the United States you quickly come to the realization that swimming pools and trampolines far outweigh the dangers of guns. For that matter, your far more likely to die from malpractice by a doctor than from a gun. People are going to kill other people, there is no way to stop it. The human condition is that of a pack style predator trying to live in a herd mentality. The result is that occasionally we get a person who fails to adapt. Let us be reminded that a few men with box knives killed 3000+ people in a matter of a couple of hours. Had there been armed citizens on that plane, 9/11 would have been averted. It is not the weapon that is dangerous, it is the person wielding it.
The reality of the situation is that only when there are armed citizens nearby who are willing to fight to stop evil will evil take only a few victims, if any at all. By disarming the populace you are guaranteeing only the criminals will have the means to do harm. In the case of the mall shooting in Utah recently, if that off duty policeman had not been there, who knows how many people that man would have killed. As it is, he was taken down by an armed civilian. All you have to do is look at Washington D.C. to know what will happen if we take guns away. The murder rate there is far higher than it is even in Baghdad, and that is a war zone.
Lets not take away the guns. Instead let us arm willing civilians who are properly trained to use guns. Crime will decrease. Criminals don't want to die to steal your purse. Criminals don't want to die trying to rob your home. They want easy, fast money. Numerous interviews with criminals have revealed that a prominent signs reading "NRA member" makes them leave even an enticing home alone. Criminals don't want to die. But an unarmed population becomes prey. Let us not become a society of sheep among wolves, instead let us have teeth of our own. A .45 1911 makes a damned impressive tooth.

Learn more about this author, Keith Distel.
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