The Tribune is wrong. Guns are not a recipe for disaster during coronavirus crisis

The Tribune editorial page, having twice in one week attacked gun stores, gun owners and gun-rights organizations, would like to call a truce. This is not a truce. They would like the other side to unconditionally surrender.

While chastising the NRA specifically for fundraising during this time (other gun rights groups also continue to do fundraising as well), The Tribune has a link at the top of its home page asking for readers’ support by subscribing. It’s apparently only outrageous when the other guy does it.

Various public officials nationwide, often egged on by media outlets and activists like The Tribune, have used the current pandemic as a pretext to do by fiat what the Constitution prohibits. Marijuana dispensaries, wineries, liquor stores and dry cleaners are all considered “essential,” but firearms manufacturers and retailers — one of the few businesses protected by the Constitution; the media is another — do not merit the same consideration.

There is no reason these stores should not remain open as long as they follow the same social-distancing guidelines that any other business does.

The Tribune is correct that it doesn’t appear that widespread looting and pillaging is imminent, and I hope, like they do, that it never happens. Of course, on April 28, 1992, Korean shop owners in Los Angeles also had no reason to be worried. Yet 24 hours later downtown L.A. was on fire and they were manning rooftops and parking lots with guns to protect themselves and their property from widespread pillaging, looting and arson.

People have good reason to seriously consider purchasing a firearm to defend themselves, their families and their homes right now. Across the nation, governors, mayors, sheriffs and police chiefs have announced they will be freeing prisoners in order to reduce the likelihood of the coronavirus creating a crisis in their prisons and jails.

Two Santa Barbara County sheriff’s deputies who patrol Santa Maria have been diagnosed with the coronavirus. Detroit has more than 250 officers in quarantine after the virus spread like wildfire after a Police and Pancakes breakfast. New York police have reported more than 500 of their officers have been infected.

Our law enforcement agencies are perhaps the most at risk for contracting the virus because of the close contact they have with numerous people during the performance of their duties. When they have to detain and arrest individuals — some of whom inevitably resist — it becomes hard to imagine how they will be able to completely avoid infection.

In California, gun buyers cannot go out and legally purchase a firearm when trouble is imminent. California’s draconian gun laws require a 10-day wait, an extensive background check, successfully passing a firearms safety test and performing a safe-handling demonstration before any firearm can be taken home.

Increased reports of domestic violence or suicide are no reason to suspend the Second Amendment. People with a domestic violence conviction, restraining order or no-contact order cannot pass the mandatory background check to acquire a gun. Closing gun stores would also ensure that victims of domestic violence, who too often find that a piece of paper signed by a judge is scant protection from a violent or determined abuser, cannot protect themselves or their children either.

Approximately two-thirds of gun deaths in this country are suicides, and every one is a tragedy. But there are plenty of other methods people use to kill themselves, and Japan, where firearms are few and far between, still has a higher suicide rate than the United States.

The answer to these problems is not banning guns. Instead, The Tribune could better use its voice to encourage readers to contact their elected representatives and urge them to allocate additional funding for mental health agencies and suicide prevention efforts, along with providing hotel vouchers or other housing options so that victims of domestic violence can get away from their abusers.

Citizens possessing firearms is not a recipe for disaster. Violent crimes have been on the decline for more than two decades. Over that same period, more firearms have been purchased, more states have loosened restrictions on citizens being able to carry their guns in public and the imagined return to the Wild West has never materialized.

It won’t this time either.

Matthew Hoy is a Paso Robles resident and blogs about guns at RestrictedArms.com, and politics and society at Hoystory.com.

This story was originally published April 2, 2020 at 6:31 PM.