Letter: Stimulus incentive

For the Monitor

Monday, December 31, 2012

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They say guns don’t kill. People kill. Correct! Well, sort of. Guns are designed to kill. The presence of a gun creates a stimulus incentive.

Many people do not snack between meals, but the presence of a sticky muffin at home or at work cries out “Pick me up! Eat me.”

Cool cars are stimulus incentives. “Just touch me. Just get in me. Just get behind the wheel. Get your hands on it; see how it feels! Just drive me around the block.”

A velvet martini is also a stimulus incentive. Why not another, and a third for lunch?

(Of course most stimulus incentives are not specifically designed to kill people. Guns are designed and manufacture to kill.)

Many people believe that the gun lobby has our congressional representatives under its financial and electoral thumb.

Do our representatives mind that this is a moral issue?

Seems that getting elected is a higher priority. Just got to get re-elected!

PETER BALDWIN

Lower Gilmanton

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Comments 2

Walter wrote:

01/01/2013

Any firearm is a truly inanimate object. NO gun ever fired itself. The conversation SHOULD be about mental illness and how it has killed hundreds of innocents. Until this conversation is held, no truly productive measures can be formulated !!

jonstah wrote:

01/01/2013

As long as manufacturers build better mousetraps the mousetraps get bigger with more bells and whistles. We all as humans evolve and part of the evolution process is bigger and better trinkets. I don't know where we go from here, do we ban all military style weapons? I think most folks who have them will not give them up as was done in Los Angles with a hundred dollar gift card for groceries being the reward for your 2 to 3 hundred dollar gun. That won't work nationwide for the gun owning public. This fascination with the military weapon thats now legal to own has done nothing but grow since the ban was removed and the manufacturers products expand (along with their wallets) on the tragedy of Newtown Connecticut. I've never seen such a rush to own a semi-automatic weapon designed to be an assault rifle for warfare, not hunting. Most owners of these rifles are familiar with firearms but have this craving for bigger and better and won't be without. We can ask these folks to lock them up (and some will) but most see then as a form of protection for a reason to own them. The bottom line is the world has changed and however unfortunate this situation is we need to somehow control this rush to arms for the public good. We now have to work with our representatives to accomplish commonsense rules for ownership. We need to educate these well meaning residents the safe way to own and use these guns. I think that's the best we can hope for. If they choose not to take educational courses with a documented certificate for ownership then they should be made to sell them back to the gun shop from whence they came. With firearms ownership comes the great responsibility of the law and the penalties that go along with it for the common-good of the commonwealth. Maybe the gun maker needs to also be responsible for their part in this. Toyota was sued and made to pay for the death and destruction caused when their cars failed to operate properly.