Shootings....

As I declared in my Second Amendment series, I do support the right for individual Americans to own and bear arms.  But I do not support the right of people to go out and kill our law enforcement officers.  I am NOT saying that law enforcement officers had the right to shoot the people they stopped in Louisiana and Minnesota - far from it - but when Americans (or any other populace) take the law into their own hands and kill for no reason, I consider that anarchy.
    No one person has the right to decide who lives and who dies in America.  The people, or person, who shot the law enforcement officers at a protest in Dallas committed a heinous crime.  That same heinous crime was committed in Louisiana and Minnesota, by law officers.  But I ask you, if your son or daughter was in law enforcement, in your home state, should he (or she) become a target of hatred because of the death of another person in another state?  That is just stupid and ridiculous.
   I grew up in Florida during the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s.  I grew up with segregation and, then, integration.  I was, occasionally, threatened, by females of my own age, but with another color of skin.  That initially frightened me - until I realized they were threatening me because they, too, were frightened.  I became best friends with one of those girls in school.  - No big deal.
    But what I see in the United States today is very frightening to me.  A few people who own a gun/weapon, are making a lot of noise by killing other people who don't deserve to die, and that, in turn, makes it difficult for those people who own a gun/weapon (who keep it safely and fire it legally) to say they are a gun owner without an immediate backlash.   ....  I know that there are people who rob banking institutions in America.  I know that some type of bank robbery occurs daily in America. Bank robberies hurt everyone involved with banking.  However, there are very few people shot to death during a bank robbery on a daily basis.   ....   This is not true when it comes to gun violence in the United States.
    If I lived in another country, I believe I'd be afraid to visit the USA on a vacation, to see the sights. One can read every day about someone being killed or wounded by an American in our country.  And the vast majority of those killed and/or wounded are innocent bystanders.  The numbers can be found, easily; and they are overwhelming.  They scare me, and I'm a life-long citizen.
   Death is a terribly final thing.  We, as American citizens, must put an end to our country's increasing gun violence.  Soon, there will be only one person left standing, and they will have in their hand, a smoking gun.....