Posted on 12/15/2013 4:48:49 AM PST by real saxophonist
Bangert: Shooting at childhood school creates conflicted feelings about guns
So I’m intently watching the TV in our newsroom about the Friday afternoon shooting at my high school, Arapahoe, where I graduated in 1972.
I watch the view from a TV helicopter as students are lined up in rows around the school, to go through police checks. Although I haven’t been back in the school since my sisters’ graduations, memories quickly come to the surface of classes, friends, teachers, athletics and the school newspaper.
I watch as students and families are told to go to the nearby Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, which our family attended for more than three decades. More memories: Sunday school, confirmation classes with Pastor Fingerlin, being an acolyte (the one who lights the altar candles at the start of the service), and my sisters’ weddings.
And then an email pops into my inbox:
“Dear Randy,
“We’re giving away the top quality Colt 6920 AR-15 rifle pictured below!”
The email continues for several more sentences, and it’s signed by Dudley Brown, executive vice president of the National Association for Gun Rights. Brown encourages me to “click here” for my chance to win the rifle. Brown also is director of the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners association, the statewide gun rights group based in Windsor. I’m not sure how, but apparently I’m on the RMGO email list.
Once again, I’m confronted with my conflicted feelings — this time, in a more personal way — about gun ownership and the Second Amendment.
I was a gun owner and hunter as a young teen, even before I started attending Arapahoe. I’m still a gun owner and hunter. More memories: Hunting pheasants in eastern Nebraska with my grandpa, dad, uncle and cousin, and more recently hunting in eastern Colorado with my son and friends.
I don’t like the idea of the government taking away my guns, or my ammunition. But Friday’s Arapahoe shooting isn’t the first time I’ve been touched personally by the horrific tragedies associated with guns.
Just a few weeks ago, a co-worker’s 16-year-old son committed suicide with a gun. My son’s best friend throughout his school years also committed suicide with a gun, also at the age of 16.
Working in a newsroom, we hear about many tragedies involving youths and guns, some in our own backyard. We’ve had a couple sad examples in Weld County recently: The younger brother of a gun owner who picked up a gun sitting on the kitchen table and accidentally shot himself in a neighborhood southwest of Greeley two years ago; and the news just last month of a 3-year-old who found a handgun in his parents’ bedroom and accidentally shot and killed himself.
I was glad when District Attorney Ken Buck filed charges earlier this week against the mother of the 3-year-old. Turns out she had left her toddler son alone in the house with the loaded gun. Irresponsible gun ownership needs to be prosecuted and punished, in my view, when it takes the life of a child.
But as time goes on — in the year to the day since Sand Hook Elementary School shooting — I am conflicted more and more about our country’s obsession with gun ownership.
The argument against active shooters and mass shootings is that we need more good guys with guns who are capable of shooting the bad guys. But as Weld County leaders brag in a news release about our 10,000th concealed weapon permit being issued here, complete with a photo of the young woman and the sheriff, I’m still waiting for a good-guy citizen to stop a bad guy. And I’m wondering when gun rights advocates will notice that more and more children are dying, because of their easy access to guns.
A quick search on the web yields some sobering statistics: In the year since Sandy Hook, 173 children under the age of 12 have been killed by guns across America. There have been 23 mass shootings in the United States since Sandy Hook.
I’ll admit I don’t know what the answer is. But I’m troubled by the memories — of high school, of church, of hunting, of gun deaths — and the increasing frequency with which those memories seem to mix.
Randy Bangert is editor of The Tribune. He can be reached by email at rbangert@greeleytribune.com or on the phone at (970) 392-4435.
There was a story earlier this year about a 14 year old boy in Houston who was home alone with his younger sister.
Two criminals carried out a home invasion of the 14 year old’s residence. One bad guy was breaking in the front door and the other was trying to break down the back door of the family home.
The boy grabbed his father’s AR-15 and killed one criminal and wounded the other. Randy, you gun-grabbing dumba$$, I hope you’re reading this. A good citizen stopped a bad guy.....two of them. There are millions of cases of good people defending themselves against dirtbag criminals every year in America.
That’s awesome! I went there, too (1986-1989). Had too much fun - and started a fraternity. (Yeah, I don’t want Randy’s feelings hurt...I believe he cares. I just hope he’s happy working for the Trib. Not sure I could live up there and survive that, myself...)
Randy,
This latest shooter legally bought this shotgun.
What is it you’d like to do that would stop that?
If you’d like to know what is broken and needs fixing, you might start by looking at the promotion of a Godless culture, promoting a consequence free life, broken homes, and government support for those unwilling to fend for themselves.
There are plenty of stories of the good guy stopping the bad guy with a gun.
The problem is that the news doesn’t pay attention since an avoided disaster doesn’t bring the ratings that a real (or faked) disaster brings.
More importantly, such instances are inconsistent with the state run media’s agenda.
Also, there is no way to know how many bad guys choose not to rob someone or burglarize some home for fear of the innocent being armed.
An armed populace has tremendously beneficial consequences that can’t easily be measured. But common sense dictates that such benefits exist.
And at the risk of being offensive, I really dislike any blaming of the gun, especially in cases of suicide. It’s not like one needs a gun to kill himself.
But there are lots of situations where a gun is absolutely needed for defense.
This writer pretends to care about gun rights but his analysis is just plain juvenile.
Well said.
“OBSESSION” with gun ownership???
Seems to me, we have the GOD-GIVEN right to bear arms and defend ourselves!
THAT is the point being completely ignored by these folks. This was yet ANOTHER gun-free zone, right? Or am I mistaken?
While I sympathize with the writer’s conflicted feelings, he still falls into the trap of blaming the tool rather than the tool’s operator. People do horrible things with guns. People also do horrible things with knives, staplers, cleaning supplies, cars, and a whole host of other equally common tools. Some of the worst atrocities in history were committed using nothing but a microphone and/or a pen. None of those things should be banned for being involved in horrible acts. The same holds true for guns.
It is a tragedy whenever a child is killed by someone using a gun, whether it is a case of negligent discharge or a deliberate murder. That’s undeniable. But it is just a much of a tragedy when the child dies because he swallowed bleach, fell out of a tree, got hit by a car... and no one screams for “bleach control” or “tree control” or “car control.” With those things we place the blame where it belongs: a person, or else an accident.
We can’t blame the “gun culture” for people being killed with guns any more than we can blame the “car culture” for auto accidents.
That definition of “mass shooting” is laughably broad. Most of those involve the commission of other crimes, and several do not happen in the same “spree” style as something like Sandy Hook or the Navy Yard.
And did anyone else catch the inaccuracy in their descriptions of the weapons used? They have 4 categories: handgun, shotgun, semi-automatic, and rifle. Semi-automatic doesn’t describe a class of weapon, it describes a method of reloading and firing a weapon; any of the above could be “semi-automatic.” Of course, the Left thinks anything with a trigger is an Uzi, so...
Same here. I’ve known a number of people killed by cars but that hasn’t created a knee-jerk reaction to ban cars.
The source of the author’s conflict is not the struggle between freedom to own guns or grabbing them. No, his conflict is between his already settled intense desire to grab guns and his desire to continue in his line of work.
This is stupid but it makes me laugh every time I see it:
LOL, I just replied directly to your post - didn’t look at the thread. GMTA
Mine’s bigger. ;^)
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