Advice from a small town girl

You must be stunned.

I know I am.

This week I wanted to write some humorous thoughts about how a family Christmas can go awry.

But history intervened.

It was bad enough to see news coverage of a multiple shooting incident at Clackamas Town Center, one of my favorite shopping destinations when I lived in Portland, and where I very nearly took a job. I could picture that scene, because I’ve been there.

That incident hit close to home.

Friday, I was at home all day, doing laundry and other housework, playing with the puppy and worrying about my lack of success as a dieter.

I didn’t have the news on.

The first I heard of the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, was as I was driving to town for a Christmas dinner.

As the near-constant news coverage continues, several things occur to me.

First, I can conceive of absolutely no reason why any resident of this nation should need to own an assault weapon.

Yes, I know the Constitution guarantees us the right to bear arms. Let me amend that statement, because it was an amendment to the Constitution that guaranteed us that right.

But I believe that the 2nd Amendment is trumped by those “certain unalienable rights” which are cited in the Declaration of Independence - those of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

And yes, I realize that we are not governed by the Declaration of Independence. But maybe we should remember that without it, there would be no Constitution.

Now, I’ve heard it said by some that if the teachers in Connecticut had been armed, they could have stopped the shooter.

Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

I don’t know.

And neither do you.

What I do know is that the United States, what we like to think of as the greatest nation on earth, has thousands more deaths each year from the use of firearms than any other affluent country on earth. Most of them are one victim at a time, so we don’t hear about them on the news.

Some gun-control advocates like to say that the U.S. has the highest rate of gun violence in the world, but that is not backed up by the facts. Countries such as Colombia, Mexico and Thailand outstrip us by far. When compared with all countries on a per capita basis, the U.S. ranks 17th in death by firearms.

That’s still way too close to the top of the list.

Although it seems impossible in light of recent events, the rate of mass shootings has not significantly increased in decades. It just seems that way.

What I also know is that I don’t want to live in a world where every Tom, Dick and Jane is toting weapons around just in case they need to defend themselves.

It seems to me that it’s time to address this from multiple points.

I just wish I knew what they were.

In the past few days I’ve heard that we need more stringent gun control, a better mental health care delivery system, armed personnel in every school, a limit on exposure to violence in movies and video games, and on and on.

I don’t know what the answer is. I fear that there isn’t a fix to the problem.

But here’s what I do know:

I don’t want to live in a world where everyone is so afraid that violence will be done to them or to their 6-year-old child that they feel they have to pack a lethal weapon around with them.

I don’t want to live in a world where our children have to be locked into their schools to protect them from harm.

I don’t want to live in a world where the answer to violence is more violence.

I don’t want to live in a nation where anyone’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness can be snuffed out in a second by someone else’s 2nd amendment right.

Maybe guns don’t kill people. But they sure make it easier.