Some years ago, my daughter had a Calico cat that I despised.  And I had a gun that I’d never fired.  But no, it’s not what you think.

I can’t recall the exact sequence of events on that fateful day, only that a UPS van that turned around in our rural driveway, plowed over poor Daisy.  But Daisy didn’t die.  She was left in a sad distorted mess and destined to die.  It became my job to put her out of her misery.

That brings us to my brief history of gun ownership.  Events in my life had led me to purchase a small caliber pistol for potential protection against the presence of some evil folks who lurked on the outskirts of my work life.  But I had never fired it.

My experience with guns (here in the heart of hunting and gun-loving friends) consisted of one bold shot into a pond with a .22 rifle as bored teen that sent a large frog a long distance through the air……..in a lot of pieces.

So I find and load my pistol, and drag poor Daisy to a secluded spot behind our house to bring her life to a merciful end.  The only problem was, that even though she couldn’t move, it still took me three shots to get a direct hit.

Apparently I turned my head, closed my eyes and flinched each time I shot.  But I finally finished the deed.  I’m pretty sure my kids still think of this story every time they see a UPS truck.

But why do people buy guns?  Why do people vehemently defend their right to own guns?  And why do politicians bring up gun control laws every time a news story of gun violence reaches national airwaves?

I couldn’t begin to get inside the mind of an avid gun owner.   But I think the main reason that people purchase their first gun later in life is simply to protect themselves against the presence of evil people in their world.  A couple of horrific news stories motivated my wife to arm herself………not against guns, but against godless evil people.

Make no mistake, it is of greatest importance to be more heavily armed that whatever potential evil we may face.  If somebody wants to assault me with bare hands, then I want a baseball bat (since I’ve never been in a fist fight in 47 years, I don’t imagine I could win one now).  If someone comes at me with a knife, I’ll be needing a gun.  If danger shows up with a gun, I’ll most likely need a bigger gun.

I won’t argue just how big of a gun is big enough.  And I won’t argue the finer points of intrusions and registrations that gun control regulations present.

But I will toss this out there:

There needs to be a shift away from freaking out about what people possess (guns), and serious consideration of changing the way people think (heart)

The problem with so many problems is that government wants to step in and overstep in cases where inaction is perfectly fine.  But politicians want to grab every horrible headline and say, “Yes, I am going to fix that for everybody.”

Hillary Clinton certainly wasn’t going to miss her chance after two TV journalists were fatally shot on the air last week.

“We have got to do something about gun violence in America. I will take it on. There are many people who face it and know it but then turn away because it’s hard,” Clinton said. “It’s a very political, difficult issue in America. But I believe we are smart enough, we are compassionate enough, to figure out how to balance the legitimate Second Amendment rights with preventive measures and control measures so that whatever motivated this murderer who eventually took his own life, we will not see more deaths, needless, senseless deaths.”

Gun control would have prevented this double murder?  Probably not.  You simply can’t ignore the condition of a man’s heart in all these discussions.

She claims that it’s a political problem (and of course, she will fix it).  But it’s not a problem of laws, regulation, and ownership.  Gun violence is a problem of moral decay.

Laws can be made to bring and maintain order in society.  But government cannot enter homes and legislate the presence of moral values and respect for life.

Instead, government officials constantly claim to fix problems that they can’t fix, but all they achieve is poisoning impressionable minds with false hope of easier and better lives by someone else’s provision.  The result is that misguided souls experience the disappearance of personal responsibility.  Dependent people become hopeless people.  Hopeless people become angry people.

Just as you can’t fight a war on poverty by passing out checks & removing incentives to work, you can’t fight a war against hatred and violence by ignoring moral issues, placing blame on objects, and cultivating false hope with empty promises.

We don’t have a gun problem.  We have a people problem….a hope problem.  Ever increasing government intrusion and chatter breeds hopelessness and helplessness.

God and self, in that order.

Big government……silence is golden.  You can’t really fix a lot of things.  People can fix things.  But the more you intrude and the more you talk, you continue to demonstrate a fine ability to make matters worse.