Can't we all just get along?

In light of last night’s Presidential Debate – which was anything but Presidential from both candidates – I figured I would write about all the discord in the 2A community….no, it’s not a community. We can’t be a community when so many are running around causing division simply because someone may not totally agree with you all of the time.

There have to be some common ideas that we, as a group, should be able to agree on. Instead, we have some who think zero compromise with anti-gunners means zero tolerance of any difference of opinion from our side.

We should be able to all agree that people who are too aggressive or too dangerous with firearms are a threat to society at large. This should be a no brainer. We already have laws that prevent someone who is mentally impaired or emotionally unstable to purchase a firearm. But when someone who already owns firearms has a mental deterioration to where they are a danger to society, all of a sudden we have to protect their rights to own firearms at our peril? That doesn’t make sense.

Then there are people who actually read proposed gun laws and there are people who read the sound bytes from already known inflammatory sources. I’ve personally read misleading information come from the “zero tolerance” gun groups. I’ve not read such things from MCRGO, NRA, GOA.

Some things we should agree on: not everyone is suitable for firearms. Those that are suitable, we should all agree that we all can commit certain acts that violates the trust of our community and when we do that, we should lose our rights. These are violent crimes. Personally, I feel we should have a way to get those rights back. However, I will not use that opinion to cause division amongst us.

We should all agree that some things are irresponsible with a firearm. Open carrying a rifle while walking back and forth in front of a school is a really bad idea. Carrying a loaded firearm when it’s not in use is a bad idea. Pointing firearms with your finger on the trigger at people who are not a clear and immediate danger is a bad idea. Killing a person over property is a bad idea (we pay for insurance for this reason).

Some people have actually read the Red Flag laws and know they are not even close to what they are portrayed as by the likes of the FPC. The FPC say allow any person to place an anonymous tip to the police that someone said a threat, and therefore the police are obligated to go to that person and take their firearms away. That isn’t the case. Red Flag Laws state that only specific people with specific strong connections to an individual that can petition a Judge that there is legitimate cause for alarm and it’s the Judge’s responsibility to ensure that everyone’s Due Process rights are protected while still maintaining safety of those around them. And you know what? Not everyone has to agree that the real Red Flag laws are a good thing. Some can think so, and there is legitimate reasons for them doing so. Some don’t because they have legitimate reservations of the legal ramifications down the road. We don’t need to call names and draw battle lines among our own ranks on something like this. This is minor.

This should be a decent case of agreeing to disagree. What we should agree on is that organizations who falsely portray the laws should NEVER be trusted. Instead, many of us cling to what was told to us only because it feeds our preconceived notions of how the world is. In this regard, we will continue to be dysfunctional as a community and will not be able to unite as one to confront an enemy that owns the media. And we will lose. Why? The battleground is not the media or the anti-gunners. The battleground are those in the middle. These are the people we should be reaching out to, but largely are not. We, just like the liberals, think they think just like us. But, also just like the liberals, we just assume they do…and never engage with them and take the time for them to get to know why we are the way we are.

These people in the middle ground are normal people that just want to live their lives in peace. They don’t care about politics. These are the people we need to educate, not march against. We need to befriend them. Talk with them, not at them. In order to do that, we must understand them. Until we do, we will continue to lose the battle.

Could we please stop drawing the battle lines amongst ourselves? I would appreciate it, thank you.