It’s outrageous.

Tuesday, March 13, 2001

It’s outrageous. A gun show in a school in Wells. I don’t care how &uot;traditional&uot; the stupid thing is, move it to a more responsible location.

We’ve had plenty of examples of how schools, students and guns don’t mix. But that doesn’t seem to matter to some people, I guess. The thing is, I’m not really all that upset with the organizers of the gun show itself. What they’re doing, however irresponsible, is completely legal. In my mind, the real &uot;villains&uot; are the school board policies that allow a gun show on school grounds. The real &uot;villains&uot; are the gun-buying public, who are so infatuated with weapons that we don’t really seem to care where we buy them or what sort of message this sends to children – Guns

at school, maybe they’re not so bad. Is that really what organizers, school officials and gun-owners want children to think?

Equally outrageous is the current effort to expand the rights of gun-owning Minnesotans to carry concealed guns on their bodies or in their vehicles. Police officers are already paranoid during &uot;routine&uot; traffic stops. Are we trying to make their jobs even more difficult? I think that people carrying concealed guns are much more likely to make police officers and the rest of us nervous than they are likely to use their guns to defend their lives. And another question: are all of these people buying guns for &uot;self-protection&uot; really ready to kill another person, when that becomes necessary? It’s the willingness to use the weapon that brings security, not just the possession of it.

Do I have the right to be free of guns, anyway? If the state legislature makes it easier for people to carry guns with them wherever they go, does my church have the right to keep guns outside the sanctuary? If I were a small business operator, would I be able to keep guns off the premises? Will owners of bars and restaurants be able to disarm their patrons? Will schools be able to enforce their ban on guns, or will that ban only apply to students? Turning ourselves into a gun-toting society raises a lot of questions and concerns that aren’t going to go away.

It may cost me some friends, but I can’t be silent when it comes to guns and kids. I don’t want to take my neighbor’s guns away from them, not even the neighbors that speed on their way to work and home (so much for law-abiding), but I don’t see where the constitution eliminates the responsibility for those gun-owning neighbors to demonstrate they know how to use, clean, and store their weapons. I don’t see anything &uot;well-regulated&uot; about current gun laws. I don’t understand why people in some parts of the country need to be able to buy more than one gun a month. What are all of these guns for?

Back in frontier days, guns were used to hunt for meat and to protect isolated farms and ranches from predators and the outlaws of the day. But even so, most people didn’t own guns, contrary to what we see in the movies and hear from the NRA. Gun ownership didn’t really become a big deal until the times of social unrest after WWII, especially during the 1960s. And despite the large number of guns floating around in our country, fewer than 40 percent of American households currently own even one gun. If you don’t trust me, check the statistics collected by the US Government and other organizations that have spent time and money actually researching the &uot;facts&uot; about gun ownership in the United States.

In the end, I suppose it comes down to our ability to use common sense when it comes to guns and gun ownership, or whether we should just go ahead and believe the bumper stickers. The only armed societies I see in the world today are disintegrating (perhaps I should include our own in this definition); they are most certainly not polite. And unfortunately for the leadership of the NRA, most of our problems with gun ownership lie with accidents, and misuse by children, not with criminals. Gun ownership carries responsibilities, and the state is well within its rights when it turns those responsibilities into regulations for gun owners.

David Behling’s is a rural Albert Lea resident. His column appears Tuesdays.