Mediaboss Marketing

Lois Thielen, Times Writers Group| St. Cloud Times

One day last month, a young man near Long Prairie was out in his yard working on his vehicle. His dog, Waylon, was stretched out on the grass along the driveway nearby. Suddenly Waylon's owner heard multiple gun shots; his dog had been shot. His owner got Waylon to the local veterinarian but hisdog died there soon after.

It happened only 10 miles from our farm.

The reports of seemingly senseless gun violence directed at people just going about their business are constant. Here's three from last month, about the time Waylon was shot:

*On April 12, a 59-year-old Illinois man was fatally shot by his 79-yeear-old neighbor while using a leaf blower in his own yard.

*On April 13, a 16-year-old honor student was shot by an 84-year-old man after the boy rang his doorbell but had picked the wrong house while picking up his brothers from a friend's house.

*On April 18, two Texas cheerleaders were shot by a 25-year-old man after one of them mistakenly tried to get in the wrong car after a late night practice.

There is something seriously wrong with a country when the response to every mistake, every misunderstanding, every perceived slight, is to pull out a gun and start shooting.

There seems to be an endless number of firearms, a lot of angry, scared or mentally disturbed people and no restrictions whatsoever on what these angry, scared and mentally disturbed people can do with their vast caches of weapons.

The sheer amount of weaponry is unlike any developed country in the world. As a March 13, 2023, article by Dr. Michael Kryzanek in a Bridgewater State University blog entitled "Guns, violence and the Second Amendment " reports, "...the United States is unique in the world when it comes to gun culture and a failure to take action to regulate gun ownership...the United States has five percent of the world's population and 46 percent of the world's privately owned weapons."

Other first-tier nations, including Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada, all have strict gun laws, that place limits on ownership, require training with firearms, prohibit assault rifles and require detailed background checks of gun buyers. The number of gun-related deaths in these countries is extremely low, Kryzanek concludes.

Our country's attitudesabout guns perplex other developed countries. "People in these countries cannot fathom why the United States permits such lax laws and how the American people and particularly American political leaders accept the tragic loss of life," Kryzanek said.

But any discussion of curbing gun violence immediately segues into how this would infringe upon gun owners' rights under the Second Amendment. Just for the record, here is the Second Amendment: "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the securing of a Free State, the rights of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Keep in mind this amendment was ratified Dec. 15, 1791, when the weapon of choice was a musket, which took four minutes to load, fired one shot at a time and was wildly inaccurate, a far cry from today's assault weapons.

Also remember the government wanted its citizens to own weapons was to enable the U. S. army of the time to have weapons as the government at that time could not afford to buy weapons for its soldiers.

Unfortunately, the Second Amendment has not been updated in these approximately 230 years to reflect modern weaponry, or placed any kind of limit on how many and what kind of weapons citizens can own.

So every day we hear of another American citizen being attacked by a gun-toting opponent or another mass shooting at a school, church or shopping mall. It's hard to feel safe in a public place or large-scale event such as a concert, county fair or sporting event. It's hard hearing our children worry about a school shooting possibly happening at their school. It's hard wondering if we'll be shot for approaching the wrong car in the parking lot or grabbing the wrong shopping cart at the supermarket.

We don't know what it's going to take to fix this country's gun sickness. All we know is that something needs to be done.

This is the opinion of Times Writers Group member Lois Thielen, a dairy farmer who lives near Grey Eagle. Her column is published the first Sunday of the month.

Continue reading here:
What's to be done about our country's gun sickness? - SC Times