In response to your obviously opinionated editorial promoting a ban on AR-15’s and similar firearms, while having respect for, if not concurrence with, your opinion, a more realistically thoughtful piece coming from a newspaper Editor might be better received than a rant right out of the Bloomberg/Soros playbook.

I’ll be briefer than a response deserves to be considering the length of your tirade.

First of all, while the saying has been repeated over and over again, it remains true that “guns don’t commit murder, PEOPLE do.”

Secondly, making felons by the stroke of a federal pen out of the millions of law-abiding innocent citizens who legally and responsibly own the type of firearm to which you’re referring would be totally undemocratic (tyrannical, in fact) and certainly a violation of the second amendment (which you seemingly have little respect for anyway). If we could prevent crime through legislation, we should be a crime free society as we speak, but the “bad guys” unfortunately don’t have much regard for the law, or for human life, or for any concept of decency.

And third, I haven’t heard of anyone advocating for a ban on automobiles because some drunk crossed the center line killing innocent victims in a head on collision … and it happens every day! Obviously, the drunk is the culprit, not the vehicle. Of course you could advocate for a prohibition on alcohol as a solution, but that’s been tried before and the alcohol still flowed for those who sought it out.

I realize that these thoughts are superficial reactions to equally superficial thoughts that you expressed, but I think a great deal more consideration has to be given for an appropriate response to the problem at hand than the emotional knee-jerk reaction which has been expressed to date in the heat-of-the-moment.

Our culture, our society, is suffering from broken families, a lack of values raising our children, violent video games, and a rampant excess of social media abuse … all of which negatively contribute to the present state of the world we live in. Our companies no longer value their employees, and thusly employees no longer feel loyalty to their employers or co-workers… all contubuting to violence in the workplace.

There are no instant fixes to the issues before us. Anarchy, socialism or other political idealologies are not solutions. It isn’t easy to create cultural change, and at best it’s an evolutionary process. The violence inherent to our present society hasn’t occurred with the flip of a switch, and it won’t be repaired in that simplistic manner either. Even the most avid gun control advocates eventually admit that none of the laws they creatively dream up would have prevented any of the mass killings. Bad guys only employ the legal system to try to excuse the mayhem they instigate.

And how can anyone truly believe that the NRA breeds murderers and criminals. They were founded on the principle of firearms safety, education, and responsible gun ownership in order to prevent harm. Neither they, nor our 2nd amendment rights have ever hurt a soul. In fact, quite the opposite, but please save that argument for another day.

Also, let us not forget that it took a responsible citizen with an AR-15 to stop the Texas Church shooter. He’s an unsung hero. Had you been a survivor of that massacre, you’d be singing praises for his pro-active appropriately armed intervention.

Respectfully,

Bob Meeker

Tar Heel