We need to enforce the laws on the books, and keep guns out of the hands of the mentally unstable. The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. The places all of these shooters target are always gun-free zones. The places where criminals know people will be armed, they almost always stay away from!

I really like the debate on this important issue, as it seems I learn something new every day because of it. But others have far more wisdom than I do, so I’ll just make this one point.

People who want gun control don’t truly want gun control as much or as badly as they think they do.

People against gun control often say “The thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

So many in favor of more gun control hate this saying. Yet how many of them, when faced with immediate potential violence, will reach for the telephone if at all possible and dial 9-1-1?

Those same people who call 9-1-1 are actually calling for someone they think or at least hope is a good guy with a gun to come in and rescue them from their own lack of preparedness for the situation! Yet they fail to realize that the US Supreme Court has held that law enforcement officers do NOT have a duty to protect them! And besides, even in the best of neighborhoods in the US, average response time from placing a call to an emergency dispatch center to actually seeing a police officer who can help is about 3-5 minutes. And that’s on a GOOD day! But with many violent crimes, that’s about 2-4 minutes too long.

But this whole thing about relying on somebody else to watch out for one’s own mistakes is what got this country into the whole foreclosure and banking nightmare of people losing their homes in droves! It’s a mentality of trusting someone else to do a better job of protecting them than they could and should do for themselves.

Whether it’s gun access and preparedness or mortgage shopping and financial preparedness, the end result is the same. Most people are looking for someone else to keep them safe instead of doing what it takes to be able to protect themselves.

A saying that stands out in my mind that explains this quite well (that I cannot remember where I’ve seen it right now) is . . .

“Most people are walking around holding their umbilical cord in their hand, looking for a place to plug it in.”

(By the way, my favorite gun-related saying is “I carry a gun, because a cop is too heavy.”)