An Open Letter to 2nd Amendment Supporters

DEAR HARDCORE SECOND AMENDMENT SUPPORTERS:

Your assertions that "liberals hate guns" is highly offensive. I've said before and I will say again here, the issue is not the ownership of firearms. The issue is keeping track and controlling access to who has possession of a weapon that has been proven over and over and over again to be a lethal device of destruction that is relatively easy to operate and has a high rate of accidental injury and death associated with it. This is not an issue of Gun Abolishment; it's an issue, as it always has been, of GUN CONTROL. As in, controlling who has access to a dangerous weapon, or where a dangerous weapon can be carried or used.

If there was not a long and extensively-documented history of firearms being used in reckless, destructive, and overwhelmingly harmful acts, this would not be such an issue. But even claims that allowing anyone to carry a firearm at any time could/would have prevented any tragedy is speculation at best; most acts of gun violence occur so quickly and abruptly that even when there are fully-armed and trained individuals present, they often don't have the reaction time to prevent a shooting. Adding further guns to the mix, wielded by average people without specialized training, would likely only add to the chaos and increase the body count.

Once again: Most liberals do NOT wish to get rid of all guns, everywhere. We'd just prefer that people like the guy who shot Gabrielle Gifford (Or JFK... or Mahatma Ghandi... Or John Lennon... Or Ronald Regan...) would have had a much more difficult (if not impossible) time acquiring the weapons they used for the acts.

Love,

A Non-Gun-Hating Left-Wing Friend