Guns Make Killing Easier

by

Special to United Methodist Insight

The gun lobby has long claimed that it is people that kill, not guns. What they neglect to say is that guns make it much easier for people to kill. Here is why.

Guns make it possible to kill from a distance. If you are going to choke, club, or stab a person to death, you need to be close to your victim. Get three feet away, and it is hard to hurt them. But, with a gun, you can kill a person from across the room or across the street. A trained sniper can kill from over a half mile away.

Guns kill quickly. It takes time to kill people by other ways. But a shooter can kill or wound as rapidly as he can pull the trigger. With a bump stock, he can spray a room with bullets with one pull of the trigger. From a safe distance, the shooter does not even see the damage he causes. The shooter in a Las Vegas hotel could see people falling in the park across the street, but he could not see any blood or exposed wounds.

Guns are  more lethal than other ways of killing. A person who is hit or choked or stabbed has a better chance of surviving than a person who is shot, especially if he or she is shot by a high-powered assault weapon using a modern bullet that tears the body apart.

So, guns make killing quick, easy, lethal, and long distance, which means that killing with a gun is often impersonal. The shooter may have an intended target, but often, especially in mass shootings, there are people killed or wounded who are completely unknown to the shooter. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the bullets didn't care, and the victims are still dead or hurt.

How do you protect yourself against an automatic pistol or an assault rifle? How do you protect yourself when you can't see what is coming from across the room? How do you protect yourself when bullets can come through whatever you are hiding behind?

Will angry people continue to kill other people? I assume so. But sensible gun regulation could make killing harder and could keep more innocent victims out of harm's way.

The Rev. Edwin B. Womack of San Luis Obispo, Calif., is a retired United Methodist elder, serving for 60 years in the California-Pacific Annual Conference and its predecessors. He gladly gives his age as 92.