{"id":4436,"date":"2012-07-13T10:37:41","date_gmt":"2012-07-13T10:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/life\/more-guns-in-the-lbc\/"},"modified":"2012-07-13T10:37:41","modified_gmt":"2012-07-13T10:37:41","slug":"more-guns-in-the-lbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/more-guns-in-the-lbc","title":{"rendered":"More Guns in the LBC?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

According to a Gallup poll<\/a> last October, 47% of Americans report owning a gun\u2014the highest percentage since 1993. The same poll found<\/a> a record low 26% of Americans favoring a ban on handguns.<\/p>\n

I got to wondering whether that trend holds locally when I heard<\/a> about Mean Kim, the West Long Beach shop owner who feels he saved his own life by drawing his own handgun on would-be armed robbers and chasing them away with several shots.<\/p>\n

If you follow local news even casually, you probably know that violent crime\u2014including shootings\u2014is up in Long Beach this year. Is Long Beach becoming more heavily armed? And should residents be arming themselves to deal with a civic milieu of increasing violence and decreasing police resources?<\/p>\n

I have owned a handgun\u2014not because I ever liked guns, and certainly not because I would ever aggress against anyone. But as a child as soon as I was able to conceive of the idea of being victimized, I wanted my parents to purchase a gun so that we would be in a position to defend ourselves if ever the need arose.<\/p>\n

Although it never did, the sentiment stayed with me, and in my late 20s I bought a Glock 9mm semiautomatic that I really didn’t need. But did it help me feel safer? It did.<\/p>\n

I feel the gun lobby bastardizes the intent of the 2nd Amendment, which was created so that if our democratic experiment began to founder and our government veered away from the people and toward tyranny, a well-armed militia might be in place to thwart the would-be tyrants by way of violent resistance. It was a completely understandable, even noble notion for the late 18th century, but 200+ years later, with the United States’ military arsenal being what it is, the 2nd Amendment’s raison d’\u00eatre<\/em> has been mooted. This is not to say I’m against my fellow Americans being allowed to bear arms, but let us be intellectually honest in our considerations. If there’s a military junta<\/em> in 2012, we’re best off not trying to take them head-on.<\/p>\n

But whatever was intended by Jefferson and co., in 2012 if you’re of age and not otherwise disqualified from gun ownership, you can walk down to your local gun shop, pass a written test that makes the DMV written seem like the GRE, and 10 days you can acquire just about whatever bullet-based weaponry you can afford.<\/p>\n

But should you? Mean Kim is certainly glad he did\u2014and I’m not sure how we can blame him. But what about the rest of us? Is arming ourselves as individuals the best way we as a community can secure our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Gun ownership in the U.S. is at its highest point in two decades. With gun crimes up and police resources down, should we be arming ourselves? A Long Beach shopowner sure is glad he did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":69580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hi-lo","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4436"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=4436"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}