Gun owners should be licensed, trained, insured
A recent letter said, “A well-armed citizenry is our best guarantee of continued freedom, which is more important than the incidental deaths resulting from gun ownership.”
Incidental deaths? A classroom full of little kids constitutes incidental deaths?
The letter further stated, “A disarmed citizenry is at the mercy of the police and military forces of a tyrannical government.”
I’m 78 years old. I served three years in the Army, 16 months of that in Korea, then returned and had a rewarding civilian career, from which I am now retired.
Not once, in all that time, have I felt a fear of police carrying guns or the “military forces of a tyrannical government.” Of course, I have always been a law-abiding citizen.
I begin to see pictures of people digging foxholes in their front yards. What has happened to people?
Like a car owner, gun owners should be required to be licensed, with training and tests, their guns registered and the owner insured against liability for the people they might injure or kill.
What makes an inanimate object like a gun more sacred than a car? The gun manufacturers and their propaganda.
Let’s be reasonable, folks.
Bill Murphy, Fresno
This story was originally published October 31, 2015 at 6:38 AM with the headline "Gun owners should be licensed, trained, insured."