On Gun Control

   The Crazies Are Out There…

“If one is shot dead, it is a great consolation to know that it was with a legally held fire-arm.” Margaret Thatcher

A friend died a while back and I will never forget the day or the event…

As a child, I was taught respect for human life. I was also taught to respect authority, be it the teacher at school, the school crossing guard, the Sheriff or the Police. I was told to obey rules and I was taught to shoot. By the time I was seven, I was taught the rules for owning and using a gun. My father was a small time hunter and target shooter and he thought it important that I learn to shoot, as well. On many occasions he would take me to the gravel pit outside Amarillo and we would shoot beer or soda cans for target practice. Many were the times he took me on the Texas Panhandle, dusty back roads hunting for rabbits or other small game. He always stressed the importance of never pointing a gun at another human. He taught me to respect a gun and to respect a man. The two were inseparable issues when you held a gun in your hand. I learned these lessons and never did I contemplate shooting another person.

Growing up, my friends and I played army in the vacant fields surrounding Wild Horse Lake. One side was always the good guy Americans and the other side any number of bad guys, former enemies of the United States. We captured our prisoners or staged Hollywood style shootings. Every week we faithfully followed Vic Morrow and cast through Europe and World War II on the TV show Combat. We loved war and guns and all sorts of war materiel. We grew up through Viet Nam with all its sadness and atrocities and we saw mass killing. We matured and we hated killing; we saw its senseless purpose and end result, everyone lost. In time many of us understood.

I entered the Army when I was just a few weeks past eighteen. I was taught how to kill the “designated enemy” with a gun, a bayonet or my bare hands. I learned how to be a soldier. Killing is the war time vocation of a soldier. When I left the Army, I left the killing vocation that a soldier considers his duty. The duty to uphold the Constitution of the United States and to protect the citizens from enemies, both foreign and domestic. I never killed and I thank God for that missed opportunity.

A few years ago, when my sons, Zack and Dax were the ages of 13 and 8, I bought them BB rifles. I felt it time to teach them how to shoot and how to properly handle and respect guns. We set up a target “box” in the back yard and we proceeded to have some after Christmas fun learning how to shoot; first foremost learning gun respect and gun safety. Things proceeded well for awhile. The boys became excellent marksmen and learned the gun rules well. As boys so often do, they test the boundaries. Dax and a friend left the safe confines of our backyard and the target box for the front yard. He violated two rules that day. First of all, he disobeyed an authority figure and took his gun outside without an adult present. Secondly, he aimed and fired at something never placed on his list of allowable targets, his grandmother’s 1984 Chevy Monte Carlo. In addition to breaking the two rules for use of his Daisy Red Rider BB rifle, he forgot something about aiming. When confronted later, after the shattered back window of the Monte Carlo had been cleaned from the car’s back seat and driveway, Dax admitted that he was only aiming at the rear bumper. In addition, Dax and his friend shot out a window on the rental house we were in at the time. That day Dax lost many privileges and he never quite liked shooting as much thereafter. I do believe Dax learned two lessons that day; the first being don’t shoot at things not on the allowable target list and secondly, guns have an awesome amount of power and used wrongly can harm people and property. I do believe Dax respects guns and personal rights more today. As for Zack, he never violated the rules and it may simply be that he was older and obviously more mature when he learned the rules.

The San Antonio Express News read as follows: August 4, 2000 “A Department of Public Safety trooper clung to life in an Austin hospital late Thursday after he was shot in the head after stopping a driver for allegedly not wearing a seat belt, DPS officials said. Trooper Randall Vetter, 28, was rushed to Austin's Brackenridge Hospital after the morning shooting on an access road of Interstate 35 just south of here. The trooper, married with an 8-month-old child, recently was transferred to the San Marcos station from New Braunfels. A 72-year-old Kyle man, toting an assault-style weapon, was arrested at the scene within minutes. Melvin Edison Hale was charged with attempted capital murder of a peace officer and late Thursday was being held in Hays County Jail in lieu of posting a $1 million bond. Vetter pulled Hale over just before 10:30 a.m. Thursday on the access road that runs west of
I-35. Hale was ticketed at the same spot…

Sadly, Trooper Randall Vetter died a few days later. There is a sickness that pervades our society. Trooper Randall Vetter died because of this sickness. No community is immune. It happens every day, of every week, of every month. It is a cancerous blight on our children, homes and society. Families are split over it. The governing bodies cannot agree. Our society is wrought with trauma and our democratic way of life could be endangered. We are rapidly becoming a lawless society and this cancer is at the core of the issues we argue. Our personal freedoms are at jeopardy and our Constitution is at risk of being invalidated; it could someday be suspended because of the abuse of the personal liberties afforded the citizens under its umbrella. Guns, weapons of singular destruction, are being used to lash out at innocents and law enforcement officers. The lack of gun control grows “out of control”. Our streets have become a war zone and killing field, yet all too often we are de-sensitized to the news of a “crazy or druggie, spurned lover or gang member killing someone.” We may choose to turn our head and forget what Trooper Vetter was doing for us, but his widow and infant child will never forget their personal and our societal tragedy.

Crazies buy guns, steal them and yes borrow or otherwise acquire them. And they commit all manner of atrocities against our friends, loved ones and children. Children steal their parents, friends or relative’s guns. We have shootings in schools, restaurants, bus stations, post offices, churches and malls. A safe place does not exist. It is a madness that is at the heated heart of the gun control argument. A “fictoid” (fact and fiction intermingled, viewed differently as fact or fiction by opposing sides); we are the most lawless society on earth today. A Victim’s personal freedom and often their life are taken away every hour of every day by a gun toting crazed lunatic. Mothers lose sons and daughters, wives lose husbands, children lose parents and little is done to control the vicious lawless cycle of robbery, murder, and “execution” on our streets, in our homes and just about every place imaginable.

Gun control opponents rally around the cry, “Outlaw guns and only outlaws will have guns”. Or “Guns don’t shoot people, people shoot people”. The NRA and various hunting associations adamantly and sometimes violently oppose gun control. Failure of society, at large, to control gun abuse and the crazies that perpetuate the “shooting” crimes is done so, based on a Constitutional right to bear arms. The abuse continues based on an antiquated portion of the law. In 1776, the right to bear arms had a vastly different meaning than today, year 2022, and a supposed era of enlightenment. How can we stop this madness? Will the deaths from guns soon surpass another societal ill, that of drunk driving. Or has it already? What will we Baby Boomers do about this, as the Depressers (our parent’s generation from the Depression Era) fade out of the system and no longer control the voice of Government at all levels? I for one have decided that my quiet voice on the matter of gun control will no longer be quiet. I want my sons and their children to live a long and safe life. I too want Randall Vetter’s young child to learn that his father’s life was a milestone for change. Change that will enable our generation to stop the crazies from senseless and deadly abuse of honorable men like Trooper Randall Vetter. May God rest his soul.

Gun control at all levels must occur. From manufacturer, to seller, to user, accountability must be mandatory at all levels. Assault type weapons should be banned. Gun control laws should have provisions for proper lock up of all weapons and stiff punishment to the previous legal owners when their stolen weapons were not locked properly. Pawning of handguns should be outlawed. Open gun trading and gun shows should be monitored and every weapon sold should be traced and registered. There should be appropriate waiting periods to purchase any handgun or rifle. Crimes committed with a gun should carry a mandatory life sentence with no parole. Make “cave crawlers” out of those perpetrators and send them to a war zone, D.C., Afghanistan or the current World hot spot. Hands down, zero tolerance!!! I can hear the gun control opponents crying now, but I also can hear Trooper Vetter’s widow and children crying.

Peace may never come to our streets, but we, as a Boomer Generation must try because the Crazies are out there.

"As the peaceful quiet of the morning dawn erupts into a blazing hail of molten lead, there you will find me, protecting my rights as a gun owner. Some innocent citizenry must often die for the Constitutional rights of others.”
Gun Rights Activist, 2022

Beware-Cuidado! Because the Crazies are out there…

Jack Boomer Johnson
14439 NW Military Hwy. Suite 108 PMB 200 Shavano Park, Texas 78231
U.S. Army, 1970- Soldier Forever

Author of: BoomerShorts B.S. – An Anatomically Correct Book of Stuff…and more stuff!
And Sentinels of the Constitution