For far too long organizations like Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, Everytown for Gun Safety, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and Giffords have been vocally calling for an end to gun violence. Their call to end gun violence focuses on gun control and taking guns away from law abiding gun owners. The facts don’t support their methods.
Stop Gun Violence
The truth is that law abiding gun owners also want an end to gun violence, but they aren’t united and vocal about it. I think it’s time to change the narrative. Law abiding gun owners need to become vocal about stopping gun violence. We need to band together with ideas that will work. Ideas like the Crime Gun Intelligence Center of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department that has successfully taken hundreds of illegal guns off the streets in central Indiana. We need to let the world know that we, as responsible gun owners, are training with firearms to Proactively Protect our Families and the Community.
Gun violence takes many forms, suicide being one of the largest. Gun owners need to be vocally supporting mental health initiatives, suicide prevention hotlines, crises centers, and other initiatives aimed at supporting people in need to help lower suicide numbers.
Gun Control Means Better Training & Planning
School and church shootings are some of the most heinous types of gun violence. Gun owners need to band together to support hardening of schools and churches. These shooters most often are mentally ill but there are concrete things that can be done to stop these crimes. Things like bullet proof glass in schools, doors and door locks that seal off classrooms so that shooters can’t access once teachers activate them, metal detectors at entrances, armed and trained school resource officers, and school security teams consisting of trained and armed teachers. Churches can train and install church security teams that are well trained and have well thought out actions plans to deal with the most expected threats.
Accidental shootings and deaths fall directly on the responsible gun owner to address. We must make sure that our firearms are safely stored, that all members of the household know either how to properly use the firearm or to not touch it, and responsible gun owners need to follow the safety rules and keep your finger off the trigger.
Responsible Gun Owners Must Speak Up
To fight murders and other violent gun crimes responsible gun owners need to be supporting the police, not defunding them. They need to be supporting anti-crime initiatives in the community. Responsible gun owners need to train and train and train to learn how to defend themselves and others and to keep their skills sharp. Responsible gun owners need to practice situational awareness, keep the appropriate level of alertness, and carry your firearm ready to help protect.
We responsible gun owners have more and better answers to reduce gun violence, but we are overshadowed by the gun control advocates that are more vocal and have poor ideas.
We need to become more active. We need to become more vocal. We need initiatives like Wear Orange but promoting real solutions. There are millions of responsible gun owners being drowned out by a far smaller number of anti-gun zealots. If we want to keep our right to bear arms we need to speak up and We Need to Change the Narrative.
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