Some people grow up with guns and some don't. Those who don't, as a rule, believe guns are dangerous and don't understand the necessity for them. Those who do, as a rule, believe guns can be handled safely and don't understand why people think people shouldn't have them. Then there are those who use guns to commit crime.

There are valid arguments on both sides of the issue, and the second Amendment to the Constitution does give U.S. citizens the right to keep and bear arms in order to maintain a well-regulated militia, necessary to the security of a free State. The thing is, a well-regulated militia today costs about $550 billion per year.

Obviously, the problem is not the guns themselves, but rather the irresponsible gun owner. A child finds a gun in his parents' closet, takes it outside and shoots himself or a neighbor kid. Neither advocates nor opponents want this kind of thing to happen, but it does. It isn't the gun's fault. It may be the irresponsible gun-owner's fault, but it's law enforcement's lax attitude regarding gun ownership that fosters the atmosphere that makes such a thing possible.

I bought my first gun after a nineteen-year-old girl was abducted here in Bloomington, while riding her bicycle, and later shot-gunned to death. I went to a gun shop and bought a 9mm Sig Sauer. Believing I needed a permit to own a gun, I went to the Police Department, answered some questions, left a thumb print, took an application which I sent, along with fifteen dollars, to the State, and got my permit in the mail. When it arrived, I was quite surprised to discover it was a carry permit. I'm so naive. In Indiana, one does not need a permit to own a gun, and one can get a permit to carry a gun even if one doesn't know how to use a gun.

I thought I had better register this gun, so I called the Police Dept. where I'd gotten the application. They told me I would have to register my gun with the Sheriff's Dept. So I called the Sheriff's Dept. and was told I would have to register my gun with the State Police. So I called the State Police and they told me that they didn't have the forms and that I needed to call the State Police in Indianapolis, which I did, and was told that I needed to register a gun in the county in which I lived. I devoted the better part of an afternoon to this, trying to register a gun, and contacted four different law enforcement agencies, and not one of them knew how to register a gun. I could have one gun or sixty, and law enforcement wouldn't be one whit the wiser.

It is this kind of atmosphere that leads to accidental gunshots and fosters gun-related crime. It's the same kind of atmosphere that allows a drunk driver with seven prior drunk-drivng arrests, on probation and driving without a license, to kill a friend's wife and five-year-old son. Maybe law enforcement could do a better job of preventing drunk-driving deaths if they would just give drunk drivers guns.

If you're just going to fan the flame, piss on it!