Guns for all will never make sense: Door County Advocate Chuck Carlson Column

By Chuck Carlson Advocate editor

We refer you to one of the great Americans in history, Archie Bunker, during the TV classic “All in the Family.”

Archie goes on the local news to talk about the evils of gun control and, along the way, he makes his suggestion for how to deal with the rash of airline hijackings.

Hand out weapons to all the passengers before they get on the plane and collect them again when it lands.

“Case closed,” he says.

That was the pure black-and-white logic in Archie’ Bunker’s world.

Now that was in the 1970s and that was a razor-sharp sitcom that poked fun at everyone and everything.

Archie Bunker embodied an America that was changing and often in ways he detested.

Whether the topic was abortion or civil rights or war or gun control, Archie always had his opinion. And, of course, it was always correct.

But that was also 30-some years ago. The 2007 version of Archie Bunker appears to be one Larry Pratt and it isn’t quite so funny.

Pratt is the executive director of something called the Gun Owners of America, an organization that thinks anyone who doesn’t own a gun is either crazy or just plain stupid.

Pratt said the tragedy this week in Omaha that saw eight people gunned down by a screwed up 19-year-old kid with a semi-automatic weapon could have been easily prevented.

“If just a single person was packing (a gun), they could have stopped (the alleged killer) Robert Hawkins dead in his tracks,” he said in his press release.

“When will we learn that being defenseless is no defense?” he concluded.

Case closed.

This is an issue that has reared its demented head more than a few times in this country and was even debated in the Wisconsin Legislature several years ago.

Let me see if I understand this. The best way to stop gun violence in America is to make sure every American is armed.

You know, I have mine, you have yours. It could be a great Christmas gift. Buy your wife a semi-automatic and make sure to add the ammunition as a clever stocking stuffer.

Your son is heading off to college? Stick an AK-47 in his suitcase just to show how much he means to you.

It’s time to head out to the supermarket. Got your keys? Your cell phone? Your .38? Swell.

Proponents can couch this any way they like, but arming the general population to cut down on crime is just flat-out nuts.

Imagine if everyone had indeed been packing in the Omaha mall and the Hawkins kid opened fire.

It would be the OK Corral and Omaha Beach all at once.

Does this really make sense to anyone?

Again, this is another of those issues in which opinions have been cemented years ago.

No one will budge on the subject of gun control and we can debate what the Second Amendment of the Constitution really means until the cows come home.

Arming everyone is not the answer and it will never be the answer.

Even police departments are opposed to any such a ridiculous idea.

What’s truly scary is how many people believe Pratt is correct and that any attempt in limiting handguns and assault weapons is somehow an infringement on our rights as Americans.

So maybe we should let everyone carried concealed w

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eapons just to see what happens.

If nothing else, it will fulfill the vision of Archie Bunker and every other real American.

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I disagree with your premises and conclusions, with your characterizations and rhetoric and with your base opinion on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

The movement to the uninfringed Second Amendment has not sprung fully formed from the mouth a single man but from long and bitter experience with the consequences of tyrannical ignorance. A heuristic starting-point for this experience is the 1991 Luby's Restaurant massacre, enabled by the then Texas law and a Good Lady's compliance, Suzanna Gratia Hupp. Study her biography if you will refine your base opinion. Study the recent battle to amend Article I of Wisconsin's Constitution with Section 25.

The length of the bitter experience is measured in lives lost to evil ignorance as well as the gently passing years. Toll the mass shootings in malls, in schools and in public places, each by one evil man pulling the trigger unopposed. Toll the editorial column-inches (one sentence 'graphs, double spaced, empty), the mighty pen against evil guns. Don't fear the instrumentality, pen or gun, but fear the evil intent of the operator. Toll 9/11.

Archie Bunker is, of course, 'Everyman' and 'every American-man', easily japed and silent in his own defense and rebuke. Gun Owner's of America's Larry Pratt is one man that will likely ignore this one 'Carlson Column' cut in his war against base ignorance; with little effect on Carlson and Carlson's other thousand cuts against the interests of every man.

The hypothetical Wild West shootout hasn't happened. The blood in the streets is from the innocents. The data and conclusions from the likes of John R. Lott, Jr. and David Mustard, and economists and public policy academics over-weighs the political posturings of the Chiefs of Police and First Class armed-citizens.

Either we are equal or we are not. Good people ought to be armed where they will, with wits and guns and the truth.

Doug Huffman
Mountain Road
Washington Island
Wisconsin 54246

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