I am constantly reading on the Net and in the media and about so-called gun rights, gun laws, and gun control. Equally disturbing are the cries to pass pro-gun legislation or rallies against anti-gun legislation.

On one hand, we preach that guns are mere machines, inanimate objects and tools. On the other, we appear to be attempting to give 'rights' to these inanimate machines.

I submit to you a request; that we remove the phrases gun rights, pro-gun and anti-gun from our vocabulary.

We should replace them with the more human, and more accurate, gun-owner rights, pro-gun-owner and anti-gun-owner."

The First Amendment does not guarantee rights to printing presses as machines; it guarantees the rights of people to use printing presses, radios, televisions and the Internet without restriction.

The Second Amendment guarantees no rights to guns themselves, as they are mere machines. It does, however, guarantee the right of the people to keep and bear them.

My guns have no rights! Citizens of the United States, however, have Constitutionally guaranteed rights concerning them. There are no parentheses or footnotes connected to "shall make no law" or "shall not be infringed"

The psychology behind what may appear as a minor 'grammatical nit' should be clear.

It is relatively easy for most people to hate an object. You can make up lies about an object, demonize an object and attempt to regulate and control objects. You can do so without fear of insulting the object, hurting its feelings, being sued by the object or facing any repercussions, it's just a defenseless, soulless object. As I said, objects have no rights.

When we replace gun rights with gun-owner rights, however, the issue becomes personal. Where many people and politicians [as opposed to people] find it easy and guilt-free to demonize guns as objects, it is far more difficult to for them to demonize a large segment of the population, gun-owners, as people.

Laws can not control inanimate objects, only what law-abiding persons do with those objects. Therefore, it's technically not gun control, or a war against guns, it's gun owner control, and a war against gun owners.

So let us end this futile battle for so-called, non-existent gun rights and gun laws, and renew the charge in support of the very real and very important rights of the people who own defensive and recreational firearms.

I've received a lot of feedback indicating that I should 'forget these nits' and stick to the very real subject of Constitutional Freedom.

These may seem like grammatical nits, but ask any ad agency -- impressions really are everything.

If you think mere semantics is a 'nit,' then consider the arsenal of such nits deployed by the other side to demonize law-abiding gun owners.

It's impossible, for instance, for a family to have a peaceful night out if one of the parents should accept additional responsibility for their safety and that of their family, by choosing to be legally armed.

When the 'other side' describes such a situation it is generally more like ... "the wife and children huddled as their father swaggered into Toys-be-Them with a military style automatic pistol, packed full of death-dealing hollow-point bullets strapped to his hip."

You see, to the anti-gun-owner crowd, you can't walk into a restaurant while legally carrying a concealed, defensive sidearm in a Two Hundred dollar hand-made holster.

You can, however, "swagger into the bar with a hidden gun strapped to your hip."

To the media:

• A private citizen legally carrying a sidearm is "packing heat."
• A criminal illegally carrying a stolen sidearm is "packing heat."
• It's not a concealed firearm it's a "hidden gun."
• Guns that are ugly, or look like they are 'extra deadly' are "military style assault weapons."
• More than one gun is a "cache."
• More than Two guns is an "arsenal."
• If one of those guns is Black, or just looks evil, regardless of its function, then it's an "arsenal of military style assault weapons."
• If they were locked in a safe, it's a "hidden arsenal."

I don't care (too much) if you call it a clip when it should be a magazine, but when the media and others equate law-abiding citizens to unstable criminals by the use of semantics, I do care.

Freedom of the press sounds noble. Freedom to be secure sounds desirable. To guarantee all of our freedoms, however, we need "freedom of the gun," and unfortunately, that sounds like a bad movie or Michael Moore documentary. (Same difference?)

In summary:

Please, in your blog postings, e-mails, letters to the editor, correspondence with congress and other public communications, keep these phrases in mind.

• Gun Owner Control
• Gun Owner Rights
• Pro and Anti Gun Owner Laws
• Pro and Anti Gun Owner Politicians
• Pro and Anti Gun Owner Businesses
• Pro and Anti Gun Owner Publications

That's my opinion, and you're welcome to it!

Egg

www.the-eggman.com

- 67GTO