It shouldn't be this easy to get a gun

It has been a dangerous time recently for South Kitsappers.

Some unhappy nut attacked the Tacoma Mall the other day, and one of the people who was transformed from innocent bystander to victim in the flash of a rifle muzzle was a Port Orchard woman.

Not to mention two dead in a evidently domestically inspired shooting in Olalla in early November.

All of which brings me around once again to my belief that weapons are too easy to get in this country.

First of all, no Ameican not serving in Iraq needs an assault rifle. You shouldn’t hunt with them — not sporting.

And if you have a long juvenile criminal record, you shouldn’t be able to walk into a mall in Tacoma with a weapon of any kind and light it, and a bunch of innocent consumers, up.

My mother’s Irish family were all city dwellers. But my dad and his folk were from Bavaria and relocated onto farms all over southern Indiana and northern Kentucky. I have hunted since I was 10.

I got my first deer before I was 16 and killed so many birds that Donald and Daffy Duck probably put a hit out on me in my teen years.

I also qualified as a marksman with the .45-caliber sidearm in basic training lo those many years ago. And I was one of the few who qualified expert with the .45 at the same sinkhole in Texas.

I like to shoot. I’m not against hunting or home protection weapons.

I am against the NRA and those other folks who think guns should be as easy to get as porn videos.

We take tests to drive. We take tests to get decent jobs. We take tests to get advanced college degrees. There should be a test for those wishing to own and operate firearms.

There should be a license that is more than a piece of paper. And there should be much more serious penalties for using the weapons we own in a criminal fashion.

Americans murder each other at a furious rate, and since I was a nipper more than 50 percent of American homicides annually have been committed with firearms.

I really don’t care if the Colt folks and the Winchester shareholders don’t make a killing on the stock market. A hunting rifle and/or a home protection weapon should be a privilege, not a right.

And don’t tell me about militias. The only militias extant today are groups of nutbags in rural areas who always think their rights are being tread on along with their marijuana patches.

I believe all law-abiding citizens who are trained and responsible should be allowed to  own firearms. But they are still too easy to get in this country, where we often confuse freedom with license.

I have stood over more than 200 bodies watching the life bleed out after being shot. As a reporter and a Vietnam-era veteran, I would feel safer if the idiot driving over the double yellow line didn’t also have a trunk full of guns.

Guns may not kill people, but untrained yo-yos with itchy trigger-fingers kill quite a few folks.

As do two- and three-time losers who still have no trouble buying rifles. We are a violent folk and we need to regulate our worst impulses more, not less.

-- I don’t have a personal opinion about most of the candidates recently elected, or not elected, to the Port Orchard City Council. But I will say it pleases me to see a mix of newcomers and old standards elected.

Sometimes folks who remain at the political trough for 10 to 20 years, even a small trough like Port Orchard City Council, need to be given time to discover what else they can do with their remaining lives.

It’s true everywhere that second-termers are often less effective and more establishment after they’ve secured their political positions.

Not to mention third-termers, who often begin to perceive the government as their own private business and not as a public service task they have taken on.

Change for change’s sake may or may not ultimately effect real difference. But it’s always a good thing to shake up the rascals and non-rascals alike.

Good luck to the newbies and the oldsters on the latest version of the Port Orchard City Council.

But remember, folks, work hard and don’t get too comfortable. The city belongs to the public, not the politicians.

Dennis Wilken is a former Port Orchard Independent reporter.

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