Let Us Be Armed

As I've said in the past, I'm not a fan of guns. I don't hunt and I'm fairly certain that I'd be the type of person who would forget to put the safety on and end up shooting myself in the foot. I don't own a gun ... for my own protection. But seeing as how the Second Amendment grants every American citizen the right to keep and bear arms, it concerns me that Wisconsin has not legalized concealed carry of firearms. But what concerns me more is that concealed carry needs to be legalized in the first place. Why should individual states get to define how these constitutional amendments are applied?

First of all, if someone wants to own a gun – for protection, recreation or what have you – they have every right to do so. As of now, Wisconsin legally allows open carry, which requires citizens to keep the firearm in plain sight, but concealed carry is, for some reason, illegal. Given that we have the right to keep and bear arms, the manner in which each individual chooses to express that right should be up to the individual.

And while I'm aware that there are people out there naive enough to believe that maintaining laws against concealed carry is the answer to our problems with violence, it's not so easy. I mean, let's be realistic. Just because our state government says it's illegal to carry concealed weapons, that doesn't mean people don't do it. It's that rebellious nature in all of us. It's illegal to drink before you turn 21, but I'm fairly certain a large majority of the population, myself included, chose to ignore that little piece of legislation a time or two. Like the old saying goes, laws were made to be broken.

So if that's not a good enough solution, then what? Are we going to ban private citizens from owning weapons altogether? While I'm sure that would never happen (hunters simply wouldn't allow it), you can rest assured that, even with the strictest gun laws in place, we wouldn't be safe ... at that point, the only people who'd be armed would be criminals. While I still think that anyone who owns a handgun should go through a certain amount of training with that weapon, it's up to us to make the push to get concealed carry legalized. Besides, the more we allow our state government to encroach on our rights, the fewer we will have.

Limiting our right to keep and bear arms would be like taking away our right to vote ... though with this electoral college crap, it's hard for me to say whether or not our votes even make a difference. But that's a whole other can of worms I'll open some other day. All I know is that we can't let politicians walk all over their constituents. After all, they're supposed to be representing us.

Jennie Oemig
Editor
Arcadia News-Leader