To the Young People:

Guns.

I know that you have strong feelings on this subject, but if you would please humor me and read what I have to say here, this is from the heart. In the end, if you disagree with me, no harm done – disagreement is as American as apple pie and is actually a big part of what made this Country strong in the first place. I am aware that your generation has been taught that people who disagree with you are evil and must be destroyed, but that is demonstrably false. I am not your enemy, so please just hear me out. In reading what follows, you will encounter ideas that are contrary to your own. I enter this topic knowing full well that I will change the mind of nearly no one. But rather than the changing of a mind, my goal here is to state facts to consider and to try and show that you might be looking at the problem in a way that is leading you to solutions that will accomplish nothing. You are free to post your disagreement in the comments.

I understand the idea of wanting to be a part of something big, and of wanting to be a part of history, and especially of wanting to help people. I do not want to minimize or question your motives. I believe that you truly are trying to help. I would ask you to consider what you are trying to achieve, and the methods by which you plan to achieve it, and then ask yourself; if you were to be successful in this goal, would it really create the change you say you want? I would like to respectfully suggest to you that it will not.

At the base of all of this is the issue of school mass shootings. Not the NRA. Not private gun ownership. Young people, I can assure you, from the bottom of my heart – no one wants to see what happened in Parkland Florida happen anywhere else, ever. No one. Not the people who hate the NRA, and not the people who are the NRA. Anti-gun and pro-gun, no sane person wants to have such tragedies happen. I am even willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to journalists and politicians, while they do tend to disturbingly salivate immediately after these tragedies, I cannot accept that people want these things to happen. They are too willing to exploit the tragedy, but even heartless politicians have to have some tiny shred of human decency and wish no harm to come to children. Right?

Where you and I really differ is in our opinion of how to prevent these terrible actions by bad people.

Let’s suppose that the end goal of the anti-gun Left is achieved. You manage to make gun ownership illegal and also manage to round up the 300,000,000 legally owned guns without causing complete pandemonium. The illegally possessed guns will still be out there.

What do we do about those?

The people who have committed these mass murders have broken plenty of laws before they ever started killing anyone. Breaking a gun law obviously means nothing to them because there are laws preventing guns on campus, you know, the gun free zone laws. Breaking a new law making possession of a firearm illegal isn’t really going to be a big deal to someone who wants to murder people.

But let us say that through some sorcery, all of the illegal guns were rounded up and confiscated too. No one has any guns except the Military and the Police. Fine.

I ask you to consider this point; if you make the bad guy pick up a knife instead of a gun, is he still a bad guy? Is he still dangerous? Is he still a threat?

On the same day as the massacre at Sandy Hook, all the way around the world in China, a man attacked school children with a knife at the entrance of a school in Chen Peng. If you call me, as a member of the NRA, a child murderer because I am against certain gun restrictions, are you willing to accept the blame and the blood on your hands when you get your gun control and children are stabbed to death because your solution had nothing to do with securing schools?

Make no mistake, until schools are guarded like statehouses, courthouses, and banks, these attacks will continue with or without more gun restrictions. Every new law passed that does not secure schools puts blood on your hands. Can you live with that? You are being distracted, and the so-called solutions you are being told to support will solve nothing.

A gun in the hands of a person bent on murder is a very bad thing, I will give you that point. But you must understand that a gun in the hand of a good person will harm no one, except a bad person intending to murder innocents. I own guns and have never even pointed them at a human being. I hope I never have to. I also own swords and knives and axes and halberds. I’ve never stabbed or chopped anyone and I don’t intend to. I’ve also trained in martial arts for longer than I care to say, and I do not wander out to administer fatal beatings. It is a waste of time and energy to focus on the tool used by the bad guy.

The focus should be on securing the schools. All else right now is a distraction.

Take some time to think things through, with a constant eye on what your solutions will really accomplish, and what they will fail to accomplish. I wish you well.