A letter to the Anti’s
By Jay Hobscheidt
Folks, it’s high time we sit down and have a serious talk. Before we begin, I want to assure you that no matter what your background or where your beliefs lie right now, you and I are on the same page. We want the exact same things. We want safety, safety for ourselves and safety for our loved ones. We want to live without fear. We want criminals off the streets. We want to live in a world in which we could leave the keys in our cars and our houses unlocked. We want to send our children off to school without having to worry about them. We want peace. We ask ourselves time and time again how our world has come to this, and what can be done to fix it. I don’t care if you are a 2nd Amendment supporter or a firearm hater, a backwoods hunter or a downtown vegan, a concealed weapons carrier or a gun free zone believer, we need to work together as American citizens to find out the truth about what is going on in our country.
Each time we turn on the news and hear the stories about innocent people being gunned down, it makes us sad, but more than that, it makes us mad. I can tell you that personally, it makes my blood boil. I want to jump out of my chair and do something to fix things, but what should I do? I’m sure many of you react the same way. This is the point that we should all sit back down and catch our breathes. If we want to come up with the right answers, we have to have our wits about us. Many of the tragedies that we want to put an end to occur when someone does something horrific out of an emotional reaction to an event or series of events that has affected them deeply. Surely we can understand that reacting to these tragedies in the exact same manner, out of emotional knee-jerk reactions, can not be the best course of action. We have to be smarter than that. We have to use reason. We have to look at facts. We have to think things through.
First of all, we have to realize what we are really being faced with. A small percentage of our population is causing those of us in the overwhelming majority to run around feeling scared for our lives. We are looking for answers to questions that there are no answers for. We have to use our heads here, folks. We all want to live in a perfect world filled with peace and harmony and butterflies fluttering about in the warm springtime breezes. Unfortunately, the reality that we must live our lives in mandates that tragic events will inevitably happen. There will always be bad people. There will always be nut cases. Bad things will happen to good people. As much as I hate to admit it, my wife and my children could be the targets of a violent crime. Passing another law is not going to make them any safer. To paraphrase an Anatole France quote, we already have thousands of laws on the books when 10 simple commandments could pretty much cover everything. We need to quit wasting time trying to think up new laws and start spending our time enforcing the ones we already have.
I have a challenge for you, but first I would like to address those of you with preconceived notions that guns themselves are the problem and that getting rid of guns will put an end to all of the violence. I believe the main reason most people hold these types of anti firearm beliefs is because they are not fully educated on the subject matter or they are misinformed. This is why it is up to people like myself to help the public educate themselves. The overwhelming majority of people who own firearms do so for many reasons other than wanting to get themselves into shootouts, be "heroes", or take a human life. In fact, I can assure you that in my own case I pray to the Lord every night that I will never have to fire my weapon in defense of myself or my family. The media on the other hand, which by the way is where most people get the information they base their opinions on, is not interested in everyday, low key, mundane life. They want headline news, sensational stories, key words that will get people to watch, and ultimately, ratings.
Firearm ownership goes well beyond the gun itself. It is about a belief in our country, a belief in our founding fathers, a belief in the rights of the common citizen to be the source of power in this country, and a belief in what is right and wrong. We do not want to bring attention to ourselves, we are not looking for glory, we do not want to frighten other law abiding people, we do not want to advertise to criminals that we have firearms, we just want to have power available to us equal to that of our enemies, foreign and domestic. Quite frankly, the average people in our nation are our first line of defense from most threats. Let me ask you a question, who would you rather be the most powerful force in our country: the government, criminals, terrorists, or the people? I really hope you answered the people. If not, let me just say two quick things here. 1) The revolution that happened not much more than 200 years ago that freed us from a tyrannical government never would have happened without an armed population. 2) A quote from Admiral Yamamoto as he spoke to Japan's military leaders: "You cannot invade mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass." A comment from the internet website "The Sight" about this quote says "It has been theorized that this was a major contributing factor in Japan's decision not to land on North America early in the war when they had vastly superior military strength. This delay gave our industrial infrastructure time to gear up for the conflict and was decisive in our later victory." We can not become complacent in this country and believe these kinds of threats do not exist in the world today.
Now, to those of you who currently believe that the carrying of concealed firearms by the general public is not the answer, I have a question for you. Why do you want to limit the constitutional rights of law abiding citizens in a vain attempt to curtail the efforts of a relatively small group of criminals? That makes no sense to me. A criminal has no regard for the law and threatens the well being of every day citizens, so in response you want to limit the rights of every day citizens? Please explain to me what that accomplishes. This is the problem in our country today. Someone breaks a law, so to make ourselves feel better, we stack on another law. Now, the deed that was already illegal just became more illegal. Well, surprisingly enough, someone commits the same crime again, so we pass a third law to try to stop it. Now, this thing that once was illegal is now three times as illegal. What have we done? Nothing as far as the criminal is concerned, and taken away our rights as far as the law abiding citizen is concerned. And people wonder why crime is so bad today. Now, you may be wondering why a law abiding citizen would want to carry a concealed weapon in the first place. Well, other than for the reasons mentioned above, in my own case it is for the one in a million chance that I might need it to save the life of myself or someone else. I also wear my seatbelt to save myself from the one in a million chance I will be in a serious enough wreck that only a seatbelt would save my life, and, I have smoke detectors in my home for that one in a million chance that a fire breaks out in my home while my family and I sleep. A firearm, a seatbelt, and a smoke detector are all tools I utilize for my safety that I will probably live out my entire life without ever having to use. BUT, in the off chance that I ever do need one of them, I will be so glad is there. In my opinion, better to have something and not need it than to need something and not have it.
But isn’t it the job of the police to protect us, you ask? Well, yes the police are there to protect the public, but they can not be watching over each and every one of us 24 hours a day. Even with the wonderful law enforcement network and well trained officers we have in place in this country, the police are still primarily a reactive body, not a proactive one. The main function of the police is to apprehend criminals after they have committed a crime and get them off the streets before they can hurt someone else. Now, while in most cases this is good for you and me, it doesn’t work out so well for the actual victim of the crime, does it? The only people each of us can count on to protect us is ourselves. If you find yourself being threatened by a violent attacker, the police may only be minutes away from you, but more than likely the attack is going to be over in a few seconds, not a few minutes.
Now, for your challenge. I challenge each of you to educate yourself as I have on this subject before you make a decision on what we should do as a society to make ourselves and our loved ones safer. If you still believe that gun control is the answer, show me some facts and prove me wrong. I could give you statistics, but just like homework when you were a child, you will learn more if you do the work yourself. Make your decisions based on proven historical facts, not knee-jerk emotional reactions to horrific events out of a need to just do something. Finding good, complete comparable data is a difficult task, but do your best. Compile a list of the cities in the U.S. with the most stringent gun control laws, then compare that with a list of cities with the highest crime rates. Do the same thing with other countries. Find out what places are mandated by law as “gun free zones”, then compare those places with a list of all of the locations of mass shootings that have occurred. There are some states that keep various records pertaining to concealed carry permit holders and the crime rates among them, study those. Research what has happened to citizens of countries which allowed their governments to disarm them. Research why leaders of foreign countries are pressuring the leaders of the United States to circumvent our 2nd Amendment. Research which types of firearms are most often used in violent crimes. Take one night off from watching American Idol and spend some time doing something productive such as educating yourself on this matter so you can become a part of the solution to the violence in our country.
After you have learned a little about the crimes that are taking place, start investigating how you can make yourself safer. Start right here in Omaha. Find out what the average response time is to a 911 call, then compare that to response times nationally. After you have accumulated that data, find out the average length of time a violent attack lasts from start to finish. Research how many violent attacks have actually been stopped because of police interventions.
Finally, before you start calling for the banishment of certain types of firearms, educate yourself about those guns before you make a statement that you may later want to retract. If you have never been around a gun, contact me and I will give you some basic safety lessons and allow you to fire various types of firearms for free at a local range. I will provide the firearms and ammunition. All you have to do is prove to me that you have no felony convictions and are legally able to possess a firearm.
Ultimately, it is up to each of us to be responsible for our own well being, so each of us needs to do our part to understand what the most appropriate steps are to making ourselves as safe as possible. Do not base your opinions on emotions or what-ifs, base them on facts. Do not take someone else's word for what we need to do, educate yourself and make your own decision. I am not trying to force my beliefs upon you, I am simply offering you some free education so that you can help make the world that my family lives in a safer place.
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