Putting Personal Feelings Aside - Both Sides Need to Be Willing to Compromise on Gun Rights
Launch the media gallery 1 playerIt’s times like this that I wish President Obama were the militant socialist the right wings are convinced he is. This country could use that kind of president during times like these. Times when African Americans fear for their lives during every interaction with police. Times when literally every American is at risk of some other American deciding to open fire and take out as many innocent people as possible just because they can.
It’s times like these when we could use a President who said, “OK. Everybody turn in all your guns tomorrow by 6 pm. After that, if I catch you with a gun, I’m sending SEAL Time Six to your house.”
If the president were that guy, then all the anger and distrust (and outright disrespect) directed at him would make sense.
But it doesn’t, because he isn’t.
All the President wants is for fewer Americans to die from gun violence. That shouldn’t be a controversial opinion.
But it is controversial to many on the right, because the President himself is controversial. His very existence is problematic. He, himself, doesn’t make sense to people on the right, so they don’t trust him.
Seven years into the Obama presidency, the political right feels the same way about President Obama as I would if I woke up tomorrow and a talking ape were president. I’d be like, “Seriously? This ape is the president? Well, that just doesn’t make any sense. Lemme see that ape’s papers. I know I saw them before, but I just want to see them one more time.”
The big difference between me and the right is that after seven years of his presidency I think I would start to settle in and believe it was true. But to the loudest members of the GOP, something still doesn’t feel right about this Obama character being President. They can’t trust anything that comes out of his mouth. And they feel like they have to do something.
And that brings us to all these guns. For me, this boils down to a few questions:
Gun owners, how many different ways and/or times does President Obama have to say that he doesn’t want to take your guns away? Is there a specific way he needs to say it? Because if there is, then just tell him and I’m betting he will hold a press conference immediately and say it that way.
And then we could all have a productive discussion about how to solve the problem of America doing nothing about gun violence when innocent people die for no reason due to guns being held by the wrong people.
Let me be clear about something else, too. I want President Obama to want to take everyone’s gun’s away away. I don’t trust gun owners to be able to fire their guns safely. I don’t trust that their kids will not find them. And I don’t trust that the gun will not be stolen and end up in the wrong hands, no matter how good the intentions of the rightful owner are.
Frankly, I don’t trust anyone to own a gun. Who is to say that the owner won’t shoot someone else for no reason? What if that someone was me? Or my friends or family? We can throw a blanket blame of mental health issues on all these mass killers, but that doesn’t solve the actual problem of the gun.
Others are welcome to disagree with me, or have different opinions. These are just my thoughts on the gun issue.
But based on his actions, these are certainly not the opinions of President Obama. So people need to stop pretending that they are.
The longer gun owners pretend the President wants to take away all their guns, and refuse to believe that he wants to find a compromise that works for everyone, the more time is wasted, and the more innocent people die. Conservatives don’t have to like the idea of Obama being president, but they should at least be open to hearing his ideas and having conversation that could save people’s lives.