Answer To Crime Surge Certainly Not More Gun Laws

I sat down this morning to write about the pride I feel about this issue of GON. Duncan Dobie’s story about Papa Bland… another gem by a fantastic storyteller who continues to produce an everlasting chronicle of Georgia’s outdoors. There’s Ronnie Garrison, cranking out another Map-of-the-Month article, pure gold, not just because of the info but because of the anglers he features. Y’all probably didn’t know Ronnie was fighting a serious illness last year. Through treatments he still found the energy and drive to get in the boat, never missing his monthly article.

I could fill the rest of this column with more goodness, yet as I sit down to write I’m derailed by news of executive orders expected to be signed today in an effort to “fight crime.” Another two or three gun laws should do the trick, right? Crime problem solved?

This year more than 15 million hunters drove around with their guns and ammo. Add up the number of days they went hunting. In America there were easily more than 100 million incidents this past year of a camo-clad person carrying a gun. How many people got shot by a hunter during a road-rage incident? How many got carjacked by a deer hunter at a convenience store? I believe the answer is not a single one. I know the answer is zero, because if a hunter had shot and killed someone with a semi-automatic rifle, it would be headline news. There would be a politician holding a news conference calling for a new law.

Not one, yet, in the name of gun violence, new executive orders are coming. How close are we to new laws that restrict deer hunters from taking their preferred rifle and going hunting?

At what point do honest, intelligent people have rational, logical discussions about this not being a gun issue? It is clearly a people issue. How about doing something about people who think it’s OK to pull a gun and shoot someone on the freeway for cutting them off, who don’t think twice about pulling a gun and pulling the trigger for any number of remarkably stupid reasons? We have a people issue, a criminal issue, not a gun issue. No additional gun law is going to stop someone who already isn’t deterred by existing laws, you know, like the really serious law that says it is illegal to shoot someone. A new gun law will only affect law-abiding citizens, the ones we don’t need to worry about, like the 15 million hunters who carry a gun all the time and not once use it to shoot someone.

During the protests that rocked Atlanta last summer, an intersection was taken over by armed young men. This intersection is right off I-75, where any unsuspecting tourist on the way to Florida might get off to find some fast food or gasoline. A young couple was stopped, punched, a cinder block smashed through the front windshield. Yet there was nothing on the news, not one article in the Atlanta paper. The couple made a social media post describing how they felt lucky to be alive and were amazed this was going on in Atlanta and nothing was being done about it. Day after day it went on. It started June 13. Yet it wasn’t on the news, it wasn’t in the paper. Armed people stopping cars and assaulting drivers is front page, headline news—that is unless you’re trying to control a narrative that fits a political agenda. The mayor told police to stand down and not engage the armed young men who had taken over a public intersection. Then on July 4, day 22 of this intersection being controlled by armed “protesters,” a driver approached the intersection and tried to turn around. Shots were fired at the car. Secoriea Turner was killed. She was 8 years old.

The family is suing the city, the mayor and a councilwoman. They should also sue the news media. The news has become full of narrative, false narrative, one that fuels a culture of lawlessness—utter disregard for laws and the peace-keepers. Combine that with policies like catch-and-release, no punishment or consequence when criminals are caught, and we’re in trouble. So, we get more gun laws? What’s the end game for these false narratives and terrible policies? No police, combined with ever-more restrictive gun laws until the only people who have guns are those who don’t follow laws anyway?

I hate politics. But sportsmen need to make some solid choices in about 16 months. Some people may need to hold their noses at the voting booth, but they need to make the better choices.

I pray they will. We can’t afford to sit out another one.