ArcaMax

Gun violence is not just an urban issue. As rural community members along I-75 near Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky say things like "this is unheard of here" after a gunman shot at cars driving on the highway, they are forced to grapple with the fact that this American atrocity has found their door.

Gun violence does happen there. It happens everywhere.

It will continue to happen as long as the wrong people have carte blanche access to an arsenal. This horror will play out in our communities again and again. Not just in the inner city. Not just in relation to gang violence. But, communities of every kind.

I am not anti-gun. Guns have their place. My husband is a hunter. He proposed to me over a deer we harvested together in the woods. That said, I am a little uneasy with the fact that we can have a shotgun in the house and no one bats an eye. Our weapons don't need to be registered or insured. Homeowners pay higher insurance premiums if they have a pool or trampoline but not if they own guns. This makes no sense to me.

As reported by Everytown, a 2022 study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that "living in a home with a handgun owner increased the risk of the non-gun owner being shot and killed at home by a spouse or an intimate partner more than sevenfold, and that the vast majority of victims -- 84% -- were women."

All of us should absolutely be held accountable for the firearms in our homes. It should be a question that's asked when applying for a homeowners insurance policy. According to the National Safety Council, your odds of dying from a gun are 1 in 89. Your odds of drowning are 1 in 1,032. So why don't our premiums go up for guns like they do for pools?

Why don't our lawmakers see the opportunity to create a safe firearm industry? Let gun enthusiasts champion an industry in the name of safe gun ownership, complete with licensure and training requirements for the betterment of our entire country.

Licensing matters. With licensing comes education and training for how to use a very deadly machine -- a car. We should take this same approach to gun use. Vehicles are carefully studied. Because of this, there has been a marked decline in motor vehicle crash fatalities since the 1990s thanks to changes in roadway design, graduated licensing requirements, campaigns to reduce drunk driving and increased seatbelt use. All because researchers were able to pinpoint causes and create solutions.

Meanwhile the so-called Dickey Amendment effectively barred the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from studying firearm violence by prohibiting the use of federal funds to advocate or promote gun control. The law was softened a little in 2018 when Congress allowed federal funding of research regarding the causes of gun violence.

It is possible to uphold Second Amendment rights while also upholding every citizen's inalienable rights. You know, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Life.

The foundation of our inalienable rights starts with an American's right to live. It is hard to imagine that our Second Amendment right to bear arms trumps that. How is it that lives lost to senseless gun violence seem to some like an acceptable cost?

It's not. Your freedom ends where mine begins. You have a 1 in 89 chance of dying because of guns. In a movie theater, at the mall, the grocery store, a night club, school, at home or just driving down the highway. There is literally nowhere to hide.

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Check out Bonnie's weekly YouTube videos at https://www.youtube.com/bonniejeanfeldkamp. To find out more about Bonnie Jean Feldkamp and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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