I am an advocate for the Second Amendment, a target shooter and hunter. I have collected fine old firearms in the past and have even held a firearms license. To this day, I do not understand gun violence. Nor is it clear how the current rhetoric around gun control can fix it. Guns do not, and never will, kill without someone pulling the trigger. If we fail to deal with the PEOPLE, we will never cure the KILLING. Gun laws have been in effect for years. At one time, dealers were held accountable if a firearm was sold illegally and /or if that firearm was used illegally. Automatic firing and explosive weapons were considered destructive devices and required a special license and extreme vetting of buyers and sellers.

But the “pushing” effect has changed what goes on today. The “left” pushes to ban all privately owned and used firearms. And the “right” pushes back by asking for broader interpretations of that freedom and the constitutional guarantee protecting it. Teenaged individuals buy weapons that, at one time, could never have been purchased by them. Add to this, our zeal to be politically correct by changing laws limiting police who stop people and investigate their suspicious activities, and we have sacrificed our own safety.

If you want to put blame where it belongs, look to our lawmakers who have caved with weak-kneed responses to activists who push political correctness to the brink of ridiculousness. Add to them, those respondents who demand a broader distance between responsible and outright unregulated gun ownership. Both have created an environment that allows for the volatile and dangerous use of firearms and other weapons.

As for law enforcement, we can’t have it both ways. We cannot have officers “stand down” during riots or ignore suspicious individuals given their experience and training and expect to have threats of violence thwarted. Stop and frisk may insult some. But if in a group of five events, the police are able to thwart even one violent incident, it may be that those involved in the other four investigations would be grateful that none of them had to personally experience an extreme shooting tragedy.

Guns legally owned and used for sport, or even for home protection, are not evil. Nor are the laws that are written to allow individuals who “qualify” to own them. In the U.S and in our cities, we have the means to bring under control these tragic incidents. Every American has the right and responsibility to demand our law enforcement agencies, their superiors, and our lawmakers to work with those laws and ordinances. Not having them do that continues to put all of us at risk.

PETER KAPUSCINSKI lives in Buckingham County. His email address is petekap@centurylink.net.