O boy! Now we get to carry guns just like the big bad mainland.
Forget Puna as the Wild West, if we go down this twisted path of carrying handguns, the whole island will be the Wild West.
This adolescent attraction to handguns is dead serious. Every other beef will turn into a gunfight. Now when people fight it’s just a few punches, if you give people guns it won’t be just a black eye, it will be a black shroud.
If somebody slugs Junior, you don’t think he’ll pull out his gun, he will. So will a lot of others.
Putting guns in the hands of the public is dangerous, irresponsible and unnecessary. The only ones who should have guns are the military, police and hunters.
Do you really want people carrying guns around? It will only add nervousness and distrust to your day? Everyone you see could have a gun in their pocket.
It will poison our aloha spirit.
There are very few guns used in crimes in our county anyway. On our island of 150,000 people, in all of 2020 only five guns were used in robberies. The same year 10 were used in assaults, most were friends and family.
So there were maybe two to six people who had to “protect themselves”from some stranger. That’s the number of people that fit into one car on the road. Should we arm thousands of citizens over six people? I think not.
Protecting yourself with a gun is mostly a myth. It is so rare that when a citizen actually protects himself with a gun, it’s national news. He’s a big hero.
And now in our county there’s a sensible list of places, like churches and airports, where you can’t have a gun. The County Council is being pressured into whittling down the list, people feel they need their guns everywhere. Better have your pistol ready.
Who knows what armed muggers are hiding in the library?
What dangers lurk in churches and daycare centers? Better frisk the reverend, he could be packin’.
Face it, if you need a loaded handgun in church, a daycare center or a hospital there’s something wrong with your brain and you shouldn’t have a gun in the first place.
You want loaded guns in a bar full of drunks? Or at an airport? There’s an IQ problem here, too low to own a gun.
Discussing the new gun law, Puna Councilman Matt Kanealii-Kleinfelder said the list was “pretty much every place in the county.” Matt, now you’re getting it. It’s supposed to be every place in the county. It makes things safer.
Councilwoman Heather Kimball fundamentally disagreed that the county is safer packing heat. She’s right, listen to her.
County Council, please don’t whittle down the list of sensitive places, make it longer. Have the list include any place outside your front door.
But if you must, make it as restrictive as possible. Lives are at stake.
Guns don’t end trouble, they start trouble, every time, no matter who carries them.
Dennis Gregory writes a bi-monthly column for West Hawaii Today and welcomes your comments at makewavess@yahoo.com
