The shooting of the Sheriff in WV should make us reflect on the purpose of arming ourselves

[CreekDog]

It's not that being armed in this situation doesn't ever make one safer.

It's that this is an illustration of how limited the number of situations where being armed does make a person safer.

What we should weigh in our minds is which of the two things make us safer, overall, on average, in most situations:

1) having increasing numbers of people carrying arms at all times or most times and having most people think that they are

or

2) having fewer and fewer people armed, that guns are difficult to acquire, strongly discouraged to carry, and ammunition limited and regulated, to the extent that most people you meet or see on the street will not be armed.

I think the latter is a safer thing and while that would take societal change and a change in values to accomplish, there are rewards that go with that, such as a de-escalation on the streets, the hope that someday some of our peace officers could do their jobs without carrying arms.

While I grant that there will of necessity be members or roles within our society which must be able to use force at times to maintain peace or order, at the same time, in order for values of non violence to be valued in our society, we as a society, have to have individuals willing to live that way and think that way. The average citizen needs to be a part of the solution where we are not constantly fearful of our fellow citizens to the extent that we carry deadly force wherever we go. If we are, and if we act on those fears by being prepared to mete out deadly force on a moment's notice, as a fact of our lives, we may make ourselves safer in particular limited situations, but we will all be less safe overall because our society will be much more hostile, less trusting and able to use deadly force on a moment's notice with that context in the background.

We have to deal with how we think about guns and how we relate to each other. Both need to change and need a dose of reality.