Time to leave ‘assault weapons’ and the Wild West behind
Time to leave the Wild West behind
Stuck in the wild Wild West?
Ronald Reagan once said, “While we recognize that assault-weapon legislation will not stop all assault-weapon crime, statistics prove that we can dry up the supply of these guns, making them less accessible to criminals.”
A gun-loving friend of mine argued that, “There are so many other useless things killing Americans. Why worry about this, when you have better odds of winning the lottery than dying in a mass shooting?”
In my opinion, most Americans aren't scared that we could end up shot, or that a loved one could die in a crowded night club. OK, there is a bit of that, but we know the odds are slim. We are well aware that we could carry our own concealed weapons if we wanted to defend ourselves. But, we don’t want to.
We're mostly mad about Orlando because it's that easy for one moron to kill lots of innocent people. Many of us have worked for large companies of 100 plus employees. We can all picture the horror if one morning a delivery man executed half of our co-workers with an “assault-weapon.” A delivery man does not need to own an assault-weapon - period. If that's part of his hobby, then his hobby is stupid.
Mass shootings will probably highlight the news for the rest of our lives, but there's no reason we can't start to fix this just a little bit. Does America need to look like the wild Wild West, forever?
Dan Dean, Myrtle Beach
This story was originally published June 23, 2016 at 8:32 AM with the headline "Time to leave ‘assault weapons’ and the Wild West behind."