Need vs. Want

Can't stop thinking about the twenty dead kids in Connecticut, some as young as five. Here's the deal.

There are most likely very, very few people in the United States who NEED to have a gun. It's not like we live in Somalia or the West Bank or Palestine. Last time I checked, there were not hoards of marauders prowling the streets at night looking to rape, plunder, and pillage.

Sure, once in a while, Tom runs across a particularly tasty-looking deer in the woods, and he uses his rifle to end that creature's life and put it in the freezer so that he and Colden can eat it over the winter.

But people WANT their guns.

That shooter's mother owned the guns that he used to murder all those kids. She was a schoolteacher. Did she need those guns? Was she part of a well-regulated militia? Was she under threat from career criminals every day?

So, let's just admit it: we WANT our guns. We don't need them. And as long as we want the, we have to be willing to accept the deaths of young children as part of the package.

Guns were not invented to solve problems. They were invented to kill people.

And even sadder, we value our "right" to own a gun more than we value the "rights" of those kids to grow up, and the "rights" of their parents to get to watch their children grow up.

I don't know about you, but I value my son's life way more than I value your right to own a gun.