Today I’d like to welcome Connie Miller Pease to the blog to talk about gun control.  Connie is a fellow HopeSprings author. Her new novel, Mrs. Covington’s Sunday School Dropouts is definitely on my “To be read” list.   Welcome, Connie.

guest blog by Connie Miller Pease

I don’t like guns. I never have. As a young mother, I asked my husband to either keep his gun hidden and inaccessible or out of the house. However, if my husband is gone for any length of time, I either want a dog or a gun with me. I’m also an NRA member, the same NRA that demanded background checks twenty years ago. Does that sound conflicted? It is no more so than the conflict we see in our country over gun control.

Let’s first agree on something. There is such a thing as a duty to protect. It is part of what makes strong character. Those who are unwilling to protect will answer to God for their apathy or cowardice. Protecting people is a good thing. Protecting a nation is a good thing, too, but that’s another essay.

We have the interesting problem of good morals regarding protection being juxtaposed in such a way that they call for opposite actions. Moral standards being what they are, we are pulled into emotional arguments with folks we should work with rather than against. Most people don’t want to live by the law of the rope and the rifle. Most understand that the safety of neighborhoods varies greatly from place to place. Most agree that if terrorists, criminals, and the small percentage who, due to mental instability, are a threat to others could be disarmed we’d be safer: Safer from their guns, not from the people, themselves. And that is the crux of the problem. Guns aren’t the only method of harm.

Think for a moment. If guns are somehow limited, does it prevent an abusive husband from killing his wife? A lost soul from hanging herself? A terrorist from setting off a bomb? That first bamboo tube using gunpowder was used for both harm and protection. The same can be said for all types of guns since then.

Most of us prefer disagreements, even great ones, to be settled through reason over rifles. But, if we are honest, we understand that there are people in this world who would rather destroy than discuss.

Some sources list 20,000 federal, state, and local gun laws. Others say that only 300 of those laws are relevant. Three hundred still sounds like a lot of laws to me. It reminds me of the book of the Harry Potter series where Delores Umbridge (Remember her? The head mistress in the pink suit?) decrees rule upon rule until the wall holding them all crumbles under their weight. A lack of laws and regulations isn’t the problem. On a practical level, the problem is the unwillingness or inability to implement what’s already there.

The larger issue is this: In our desire to protect, we are distracted by loud arguments to remove a very effective means to stop those who are a threat. We make room for the potential of disarming courageous citizens who would stand between the innocent and the criminal, or the free and those intent on removing our freedom. Picking and choosing which law-abiding citizens can’t have guns won’t remove them from those who want to do harm. Those people won’t obey our laws nor will they honor regulations. It will only remove the means of protection from them. Besides, the real issue isn’t a weapon. If all the weapons in the world were removed, evil would still exist. The true problem is the heart.

Character referenced from: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling, published by Bloomsbury in the UK and Scholastic in the US, June, 2003.