GUN OWNERSHIP AND REGULATION
The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (3/4/07)

Pat Wray’s article on gun ownership betrays an underlying paranoia about the federal government which may be well-taken after six years of the Bush Administration. Paranoia is not always a sign of psychopathology. My late brother, a professor at Caltech, was once asked to speak to a full-scholarship black student from the poverty-stricken South Los Angeles ghetto about the student’s disruptive behavior. My brother said in full professorial condescension, “You’re acting paranoid,” to which the young man replied, “Hell, Dr. Smith, “you’d be paranoid, too, if you were the only black dude living with all these honkies. They just don’t think I belong here. They scare me.”

Any suspicion of government is well-taken, especially since power corrupts. If people trust the government, they are at cross purposes with our Founding Father who didn’t trust government at all as testified by our checks and balances. However, gun ownership is not the issue, it is regulation.

When he says, he doesn’t want to be melodramatic, he commences a self-righteous melodrama, citing Pol Pot and Idi Amin. He says gun owners don’t train for “guerilla action” or “stockpile exorbitant amounts of ammunition.” The point is that some do, and they make me paranoid. As a former Sg/Maj, Special Troops, they scare me.

Mr. Wray sounds like an executive in a pharmaceutical corporation, telling agreeably purchased politicians to trust the drug companies to regulate themselves. That’s when I really get paranoid. I’m scared of yahoos armed to the teeth, telling me to trust them.

Copyright © Dana Prom Smith 2007