How many innocents have been killed with a gun? How often do we hear an individual claiming the Government is taking away their Second Amendment rights?

Has it come to the point that the citizens of this country are living in fear of losing their lives, their property or freedoms because of gun violence or due to an over zealous liberal president and a do-nothing Congress? Should there be gun-free zones? Should there be background checks that include mental health history or religious preference?

Has President Barack Obama overstepped his authority as Speaker Paul Ryan claimed? Or, has Congress failed to stand up to the National Rifle Association? These questions hang in the air like the pungent black smoke rising above a field of burning tires.

The United States leads the world in gun ownership. According to a recent CNN report, 88.8 percent of civilians in the United States own guns, and more than half of the homicides are due to gun violence. There are laws that might curtail some of these homicides, but it is almost impossible to enforce them as reported by the government’s lead law enforcement agency.

Many guns that are purchased and used in homicides are done so legally; but too many are purchased from gun shows where, according to a recent article in Newsweek, guns are bought and sold by collectors under the signage “private sales” which preclude the seller from having a federal firearms license – and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is aware of these sales but rarely prosecute due to a claim of a lack of resources. This claim may be irrelevant, however if one believes Newsweek’s claim that most of the guns used by bad guys got them from private dealers at gun shows, on the internet, or from friends and family.

There may be some validity to this claim since it appears the recent San Bernardino shootings carried out by two self-proclaimed ISIS followers actually got guns from a friend. The young man who shot those schoolchildren in Newtown got his guns from his mother, the shooter of the worshipers in the Charleston church got his gun legally (albeit it was later found that there were omissions and errors in his record that were not discovered at the time of the record check by the FBI). That being said, the guns they used were purchased legally and the president’s latest executive order would not have stopped these violent acts.

At a recent town hall the president was confronted by a woman who had been a victim of rape who felt that having a handgun made her feel safe. The President stumbled through his response suggesting that a person must be “pretty well trained” when using a firearm for the purposes of protection, and “may become the victim of the firearm themselves.” While this may be true, I doubt if it made the young woman feel any better.

This past week we heard presidential candidate Donald Trump say that colleges should no longer be a “gun-free zone.” We saw Ted Cruz recently use a machine gun to “fry bacon,” and in this past Saturday’s OBSERVER there is an advertisement for a NRA Course “Basics of in-home personal protection.” Is this where we are today?

Jeb Bush has said on CNN, “Hillary Clinton, after one of these horrific violent acts, said we need to have federal gun laws. Obama almost always says the same thing. And the result is you’re going to take away rights of law-abiding citizens, 99.999 percent of the people. That’s not the right approach.” It should also be noted that Bush signed the Stand Your Ground bill into law in 2005.

Candidate Ben Carson has said he believes there should be “No limits to gun ownership, except in cases of insanity.” And that protecting the “Second Amendment is critical in guarding against tyranny.”

Clinton has changed here views (evolved is the politically correct word) on this issue over the years. However, she has repeated recently, “We’ve got to rein in what has become an almost article of faith that anybody can have a gun anywhere, anytime,” she said. “And I don’t believe that is in the best interest of the vast majority of people.”

She has also called for a registry that has “good data” identifying individuals who have mental health issues or who are felons. I would like to see that database to include family members of these individuals who might inadvertently provide these individuals access to guns.

There are many seemingly reasonable and equally unreasonable positions on this issue, but far too many to quote here. However, I believe there is a general consensus that no one wants to take away the Second Amendment rights or guns from any law-abiding citizen who is not nor has been a convicted felon, who is free of mental illness, or who does not possess known radical terrorist ideas. Getting to a place where Second Amendment rights are protected and enforceable gun safety legislation happens won’t be easy. However, adding restrictions and regulations via Executive Orders won’t necessarily help the process.

So I ask, do we need more laws or should we provide adequate resources to enforce the laws we have? Could each municipality engage in more local police department gun buy-backs? More arguably, should law-abiding citizens who want a gun be allowed to have a gun? Who should answer these questions?

After all is said and done, however, the real issue for me is: is the problem the gun or is it more a decline of morals and personal responsibility in our country? Did the recent town hall meeting with the President televised on CNN, or his tearful press conference when announcing his latest Executive Order answer any of these questions? I think not!

This debate will continue

Have a great day.

Vicki Westling is a Dunkirk resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com