Gun Safety

Gun Safety

by
Nick Bennett
PCDP Central Committee Member/Roseville Junction Democratic Club Chair

As a former infantry paratrooper in the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, I have a well-founded respect for firearms. During basic training, our M4s were kept locked in the middle of our barracks room at night, only a dozen or so feet from where we slept, so that we could quickly take them out for training during the day. When I jumped from C-130s, my weapon was strapped to my side in a protective padding, which I then had to lower off of my body with my other equipment so that I could safely hit the ground. As I patrolled on foot in the middle of the night through the villages and farmland of Anbar Province in Iraq, I carried my four-man fire team’s M249 light machine gun. The smell of fireworks reminds me of the shooting ranges, as does the faint ringing that remains in my ear.

The power to take a life with the squeeze of a finger is an immense responsibility that should never be taken lightly. Firearms have an important role for protection, but far too often it seems like they are treated as toys and people who should not have them do. As a society, we should not be afraid to have an open discussion about what it means to be a responsible gun owner and user. We must not accept that there is nothing that we can do to prevent school shootings and the easy access to firearms by criminals. We are all affected by the misuse of firearms. The grief and fear that we experience are not the price of freedom but the intransigence to modernize what it means to keep and bear arms in today's society. Responsible gun ownership must not only mean safely protecting one’s self, but ensuring that one’s community is safe from gun violence as well.