This is an open letter to gun owners in my community. I am confident that we are all alike in this way: We all feel great shock and sadness about the people who were recently killed and seriously injured in the Las Vegas shooting.
We are different in this way: I do not own any guns. I don’t believe that this difference needs to divide us the way it has often done.
There has to be some way that people in the U.S. who have different opinions about guns can talk to one another without getting angry.
There has to be something we can agree on and do to try to prevent mass shootings at music festivals and other places where people used to feel that they could be safe and enjoy themselves.
I sincerely believe that putting people into the categories of “gun rights” and “gun control” activists is way over-simplified.
If we were to have a conversation, I would say to you, “I do not want to take away your handguns that you keep for protection, and I do not want to take your hunting rifles away from you.”
I do want gun ownership to be subject to the same type of instruction, licensing and age restrictions as the ownership and use of a car.
The Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights are thoughtful documents. From what I know about history, the people who wrote those documents thought long and hard about the wording of them and what they wanted to accomplish.
I have lost confidence that the U.S. Congress can have a productive discussion or come to a meaningful agreement regarding what the writers of the Second Amendment were concerned about and meant when they wrote that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
My hope is that it will be possible for the rest of us to have civil discussions and to come up with some ideas about what we can ask of one other so that people who own guns and people who do not, feel that their rights are being respected and that they are as safe as possible in their daily lives.
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