I've never really given much thought to gun control, and figured if you wanted to own one that was your business. However, in light of Tony Shipley's latest push for landlords' rights to be cast aside in favor of gun owners' paranoid need to have a gun, I thought it was time to weigh in on the subject.

First off, my father was killed with his own gun. He was a former Marine who served in the Phillipines area during WWII, and  was certainly capable and well trained regarding all types of firearms. However, guns and bad judgment collided when he got into an argument with my mother when I was less than a year old.  The gun was in the car, they argued, and he was shot and died later that day. I lost my father, his guidance and love, and any semblance of a normal future. In addition I lost my mother, and though she was found not guilty, her mental state went downhill.  Thank goodness my aunt and uncle adopted and raised me.  I always knew, and always avoided guns, but I was forever stigmatized and always wondered what it would have been like if my father had been around to teach me his music, look after me, and just to have my real Daddy.

Years later, when my daughter was around 4 years old, we were living in an apartment in Kingsport.  One night I heard a loud noise, and minutes later my neighbor knocked on the door. She explained that her husband had been cleaning his gun, and it discharged.  She wanted to see if it had gone through the wall.  We found the bullet in the folds of one of my dresses in MY closet, as the bullet had gone through their wall, through mine, and made two holes in the dress before stopping. My daughter was playing in that room! The neighbor grabbed my dress and the bullet and went to "show" her husband. I had to be at work at 5 AM and went on to bed shortly, but when I got off from work the next day they had moved out.  No apology for endangering the life of my child, no reimbursement for the dress I never saw again, and the landlady had to pay for wall repairs out of her own pocket. The neighbor with the gun was a policeman and highly trained in weapons handling, but we were still endangered. I bet most of those legal gun owners have half his training. I don't feel that he discharged the gun on purpose and his later actions were mostly knee-jerk to avoid getting into trouble over what happened, but it still happened.

The point here is that the gun owner is not the only one with rights. What about my daughter's right to play safely inside our apartment? What about my right to not have my wall shot through and my dress to be replaced when it should never have happened at all! What about my landlady's right not to have her tenants put in unnecessary danger and her right to not have to repair bullet holes in the wall? There have been many instances reported where guns went off accidentally, and the more guns there are, the more it will happen.

As study done by Charles Branas at the University of Pennsylvania found that gun carriers were 4.5 times as likely to be shot and 4.2 times as likely to get killed compared with unarmed citizens. When the team looked at shootings in which victims had a chance to defend themselves, their odds of getting shot were even higher. An article at New Scientist stated that "While it may be that the type of people who carry firearms are simply more likely to get shot, it may be that guns give a sense of empowerment that causes carriers to overreact in tense situations, or encourages them to visit neighbourhoods they probably shouldn't."

I was not then, nor have I ever been overly concerned with the possibility of someone breaking into my house.  I certainly felt "safe" that I had a policeman living next door, but his legal weapon turned out to be the greater danger.

And Tony Shipley has no qualms about expanding that danger to more citizens and their children so he can garner the approval of the NRA members.