Gun uncontrol: guest blog by Sam Gurr

I grew up around guns. Everyone and their mother had one.

People weren't talking about shooting people, they were talking about hunting or shooting cans.

But then I was growing up in a small town. I was never afraid of guns until I moved into a city.

In a small community people get to know each other. And even though there were people that hated one another, they weren't running out to shoot each other.

When I came to Vegas, that sense of community was gone. Vegas was small by city standards back then, but it was big enough to drive the population apart from one another.

I felt like I was on another planet.

By the time I was in high school it was not uncommon to see someone waving a gun around or throwing it in your face.

And later in life I went to New York City.

Millions of people walking around trying to pretend everyone around them doesn't exist.

It was a shock to the system for me.

Half of the people I know on social media are very much against the existence of guns. And the other half are religiously promoting The Second Amendment.

Everyone is hell bent on trying to get people to take a side.

The part of The Second Amendment that everyone keeps referencing (about the 'regulated militia') isn't about rednecks against the government...they were acknowledging that the government needed a militia to defendthe people...and they also wanted to make a way for the people not to fall victim to corruption and dominance.

Obviously this vague definition has become mute.

The government now has an army and technology that no one else will ever be able to acquire.

The general population will never be able to acquire their own nuclear arsenal.

So what do you want from me?

I have two guns. One revolver and a little shotgun that could kill birds.

I know there is zero chance of defending myself from the government, but I do have a tool to help me protect my family and myself within my home!

All the posts I see over and over look so one sided.

If they force me to give up my guns, I'll make my own weapons to defend my family and myself.

And there should most definitely be laws to prevent certain people from being able to acquire them legally, (knowing the background of a person AND the people they associate with) but I can't see that requirement having a huge impact on the way things are going.

Go ahead and pass those laws; people disconnected from community don't care about laws.

The world of nature and humanity has always been cruel and incomprehensible.

So what comes next? You can't force people not to be crazy. You can't make laws to have less people in a specific area.

I think that if you want to fix what people are pointing out to be this problem in American, you won't like the solution...

...with freedom comes the price of people possibily doing things that are harmful to you and your family if their values are different from yours. This is tolerated by the law until lives are endangered. 

You have to accept that people are chaotic and that you will never be able to control that tendency.

You can do your best to stand your ground (should that moment come up in your life), or vote for people who try to pass laws to protect you (if they would ever tell the truth about what they'd try to do for you).

I won't willingly put my life (or my family's life) in other people's hands.

And it will never make me feel safer knowing that certain types of murder are against the law.

Murder has always been against the law, but it still happens.

I will say that I can hope for a future where everyone can coexist peacefully, but that just sounds like a crazy fantasy.

I just hope that the next day will be okay.

Sam Gurr lives in Las Vegas, NV. He wrote a mini-biography and an opinion on Facebook in previous IFSF guest blogposts.