Got this email from a high school girl who saw our signs.
From: “Rebecca Moore”<missmayaxxxx@gmail.com>
Subject: A Young View
Mr. Templar-I have been noticing your signs on the side of the road and, although your publicizing techniques are clever, I can’t help but think about the negative effects they must have. While guns can have a few slightly positive effects once in awhile, they overall have a huge negative effect. Guns cause more deaths than they will ever save. As for educating children on gun use, I as a high schooler stronger oppose. School shootings are already increasing, imagine what more guns would cause. I suggest you think about the future consequences of your actions and all the future deaths of children they could cause.-A High Schooler for Gun Control
Foolishly believing this high school girl might just be misinformed as opposed to a closed-minded bigot, I violated my personal policy by taking time to write a reply:
Rebecca:
Thank you for reaching out to me reference our highway sign
program at Guns Save Life.
We are proud of the signs as they serve to not only educate the
populace about the proven benefits of firearm ownership, but also
to entertain and serve to cause people like yourself to consider
gun ownership for themselves.
You acknowledge that guns have positive effects. I encourage you
to explore this further in your spare time. Shooting sports
provide many benefits to participants young and old – and you
don’t have to be a physically fit young person to excel at them.
Men, women, even the handicapped can participate and become
champions. From the personal defense perspective, guns serve a
definite positive role. The only thing that stops bad people with
evil in their hearts is a good guy with a gun. You can call 9-1-1
and ask for good guys with a gun to come to you or you can access
your lawfully owned firearm. Which would be quicker most of the
time?
You say you oppose educating young people about the safe and
responsible use of firearms. Do you also believe the same about
fire safety, weather safety, water safety and electrical safety?
Do you also advocate not teaching children about safe sex and sex
ed as well?
There’s nothing positive to be gained by ignorance. Ignorance
gave us the Medieval era in history and I don’t think you or
anyone would like to recreate that way of (tyrannical) life. In
fact, it is through the NRA’s gun safety education that firearms
accidents are at historic lows.
School shootings are increasing? They are certainly more
prevalent than they were back in the 1950s, I’ll grant you that.
Rebecca, I’m guessing you practice fire safety drills at your
school right? And you have fire alarms, fire extinguishers, etc.
there as well, right?
How many kids have died in school fires since the 1950s? Care to
guess?
The answer is zero.
How many kids died in school massacres / “shootings” in the past
few years? Typically at least a couple of dozen each year.
Yet some folks, yourself included, probably believe that a sign on
the entrance of the school stating “no guns” will protect those
inside.
Denial has no survival value, Miss Moore.
Just as schools have fire extinguishers, we advocate that schools
have trained and responsibly armed staff to “extinguish” those who
would commit violence upon innocents within your school.
Our actions don’t cause the deaths of children at the hands of bad
people.
However, you are on the right path there in your observation that
decisions have consequences. Should you, or anyone good person,
choose to ignore the proven, life-saving benefits of firearms
ownership, you may someday have the rest of your life to regret
that decision – however long that amount of time may be – seconds
or years.
If you’re local, we’d be happy to sponsor you at the annual NRA
Youth Shooting Camp in nearby Bloomington, IL. At that camp, you
can explore your beliefs and learn first-hand how shooting sports
are safe *and* fun. Contact me for further details.
All the best to you.
John
Boy, was I wrong.
I’ve appended her reply, but some highlights:
- Rebecca is a future psychiatrist and she’s repulsed at the idea of killing a “psychologically disturbed child who tried to find answers to his problems using a gun”. I’d just about bet a thousand bucks she’d snuff out “disturbed” child before that “child” killed one of her future kids. Like most, I’m repulsed at the idea of killing another person, but if it’s a nutcase trying to “find answers using a gun” or simply an evil person killing for fun or religious zealotry, I’ll take great satisfaction striking them down where they stand before I allow them to continue a rampage and add to the body count of innocents.
- If you’re handicapped and you want to compete, Rebecca says compete in Special Olympics. How open-minded of her to assume all handicapped people are potential Special Olympics competitors.
- She’s also equally open minded about the proven benefits of firearms ownership, including the crimes thwarted by good guys with guns and lives saved therein. (That was sarcasm, for the sarcastically-challenged.)
- She pledges to keep her children safe from people like me and my fellow Guns Save Life gun-owning members.
Perfect. She can hire some Gangster Disciples to babysit her kids.
How silly of me to think a high school girl could be open-minded. She’ll make a good Obama-style voter until she grows up.
Mr. Boch,
In regard to your last email, I would like to point out that, while your points are accurate, they are are a shallow representation of the few positives that guns can have compared to the massive dangers that personal gun use poses for our country.
Personally, I will never own a gun. I have no intention of endangering my children with an unnecessary article of danger. Guns have no practical uses except for killing. One of my classmates knew the exact way to properly use a gun, but was still accidentally shot by the gun in his own household. Therefore, the only weapons I will have in my house are cooking knives, which will be placed out of reach. Your reference to “extinguishing” a psychologically disturbed child who tried to find answers to his problems using a gun repulses me. You are suggesting that teachers have the right to kill a child, rather than denying that child access to a gun in the first place. I suggest you think before you speak so nonchalantly about the deaths of children, Mr.Boch. Lives are not as disposable as a flame.
As for shooting as a sport, I strongly disagree in your reasoning. While it is true that everyone can shoot, sport shooting is simply teaching humans how to kill living things. Considering men and women are equals, I definitely realize that both are able to participate. However, even disabled people are enabled in our society to triumph in sports through technology and programs such as the Special Olympics. Therefore, there is no reason to teach these people that the only sport they can win in is showing how well they can pull the trigger on a killing machine. In fact, much of this sport is used to vent anger, which is psychologically proven to increase aggression. As a future psychiatrist, I would never encourage my patients to seek release from their anger in the form of a gun. At the least, this would increase aggression in the patient by giving them positive reinforcement to their anger. At its worst, the sport of gunshooting could instill the idea of using the gun on a living thing, which leads to another issue.
I am sure that in your line of work you stand against most gun control. However, less gun control can easily cause firearms to fall into the wrong hands. In the Firearms Lincensee Survey of 2011, gun dealers and pawnbrokers even agreed that firearms were too easy to attain in the United States. Guns are used to commit violent crimes, and a gun falling into the wrong hands could result in many deaths. In one year in America, there are 478,400 incidents of firearm use for violence, and 11,000 homicides were committed using a firearm. With the loopholes that exist in our gun control policies, guns easily fall into the wrong hands and deaths are an immediate result.
While you propose that a gun could save my life in self defense, the likelihood of a gun saving a life is much less than an accidental killing caused by that gun. While only 2.7% of houses are broken into each year, 126,438 accidental gun injuries occur per year. The obvious difference here concludes that guns cause much more damage than could ever be made up for by the few lives they save in self-defense.
I do believe children should be educated in case they are under the threat of a gun, but I do not believe they should be trained how to possibly point a gun at one of their classmates. There is a definitive difference between ignorance and placing the key to killing in the hands of children and criminals.
I am most certainly standing for denying guns to American citizens, Mr.Boch, and in this case I stand by my believe that denial of guns can lead to survival. I believe that saying is more applicable to your state, in which you are denying the dangers of guns and the deaths that they cause in order to defend your favorite hobby. I suggest you not threaten me with regret, because I will keep my children safe from gun-owners such as yourself my own way, and you do not get to demean the way I will conduct myself through my life.
I do not intend to ever visit one of your camps, unless I am carrying a protest sign. The fact that there is even such thing as a “Youth Shooting Camp” disgusts me.
-“Miss Moore”
(emphasis added).
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