Gun control, liberals, and conservatives

Firearms have become one of the main polarizing issues between the parties. Almost on the level of the pro-life/pro-choice debate. On a national scale is seems clear cut: Republicans love guns and want your children to carry them to school every day. Democrats are evil dictators that want to take away your freedom. In reality, it’s not so simple.

It’s fairly easy to determine the thought processes of both candidates as it relates to the 2nd amendment:

Barack Obama on gun rights

John McCain on gun rights

My take, is that John McCain is not particularly anti gun control and Barack Obama is not particularly pro gun control. Yet, the NRA will spend millions this year telling people that Barack Obama will take away your guns. Does anyone really think that this is going to happen?

It seems to me, that both sides live in fear. The conservatives live in fear of government taking away their “freedom” while liberals live in a fear of the unknown.

Gun control is a tough subject for me, as I am a gun owner and see no problem with safe gun ownership. However, there are people out there who should not own firearms due to past or current mental and criminal issues. How can that be regulated? In a country with as many guns as we have, it would be very difficult to keep guns out of the criminals hands.

Americans own a lot of guns and that’s not going to change. We need to not let gun control cloud our judgement in the upcoming election. Single issue voting is never the answer.