Hey, Mistakes Can Happen (Shrug)

Trey Smith

In the aftermath of the Newtown shooting -- even far away in tiny hamlets like South Bend -- a lot of people are talking about it still one week later. Della and I seem to hold a minority opinion around here. While recent polls indicate that nearly 2/3 of the American public are ready to have a serious discussion about gun control (and better mental health services), it doesn't appear to be this way in gun happy Pacific County, Washington!

The other day I got into an interesting discussion with one of my neighbors. She was of the opinion that Americans need more guns, not less. She told me that, if she was out somewhere with her husband and children AND some individual started randomly shooting, she would hope that her husband would pull out his concealed pistol and blow that sucker away.

I asked her how she would feel if, in doing so, he accidentally caused injury or death to a bystander, particularly a child. Incredibly, she responded that this would be unfortunate, but mistakes of this nature can happen. No one should hold any animus against her spouse because he was trying to stop evil.

Upon hearing this, I asked a different sort of question: "What if another person -- one who thinks like you do -- pulled out his concealed weapon to try to stop a crazed gunman and accidentally shot your husband or one of your children?" She didn't like this question at all. This scenario obviously made her very uncomfortable. She abruptly ended the conversation and walked off.

While I can't be certain as to why my second question made her so uncomfortable, I can venture a guess. If someone she cared about was on the receiving end of a stray shot, she'd be mad as hell! She wouldn't so easily shrug her shoulders. And I think she quickly realized the callousness of her answer to the first question.

For me, this all goes back to the notion that what people in our camp might do is excusable, but what others might do is not. We -- both individually and collectively -- should be afforded the benefit of the doubt; others are NOT afforded this same luxury.

Let's face it. To a lesser or greater extent, we are all guilty of this. When we screw up, we want others to cut us some slack, but we demand that the book be thrown at others who are guilty of much the same thing.