Learning About Guns Can Teach a Lesson

.22 Caliber Bolt-action Rifle

AR-15  

I last fired a gun back in about 1948 when i was 10 years old. My older brother--age 16--owned a 22 caliber bolt-action rifle. Sixty-five years in hindsight, I am grateful that he afforded me the opportunity to experience the power of a gun because I learned that I never need, now wanted, to own a gun ever again. Of course, he had  probably skirted the requirements about gun registration in Illinois, and our parents didn't know he had the gun. He had a "range" set up in the basement shooting into a thick stand of newspapers. I cringe to think what might have happened in that make-shift range and when he used a gun to shoot out street lamps in another town--for which he was fortunately only reprimanded and parents fined. What's happening today is much more than just teenage misbehavior ignoring both gun laws and parental authority. Laws exist today that need stricter enforcement. We've come a long way from that .22 rifle to AR-15s. And our society and culture has changed radically. Objections to gun restrictions based on an over-200-year-old 2nd amendment need to be tempered by a common sense application of that amendment to bipartisan solutions to the mass shootings proliferating in our day.