A recent poll related to gun control conducted by the Behavior Research Center found that only 33 percent of Arizona households asked want stricter laws on the sale of firearms. This surprised some in the Grand Canyon State considering the Gabrielle Giffords shooting just a few years ago still hits close to home for many Arizonans.
However, pollster Earl de Berge said “it’s more likely that Arizonans are affected by more recent headlines and names like Charlie Hebdo. The other part of it goes to Ferguson and those kinds of issues where people are beginning to say, ‘Gee, maybe I do need to be in the role of personal self defense’.”
It is unfortunate that incidents like Ferguson and Charlie Hebdo have to be the catalyst to make people aware of their responsibility to defend themselves and their loves ones. However, the more people that come around to realizing guns do save lives, the better off we are as a nation in being able to defend ourselves against the increasing tide of thugs and bad guys.
One can certainly understand how Charlie Hebdo and Ferguson have played a role in Arizonans feeling the need for greater personal defense. However, I do believe there is another issue that evokes these feelings even greater; the ever increasingly violent crimes spilling into Arizona from Mexico.
Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels said in an interview with NBC “I deal with the phone calls every day in my office—every day—about the burglars, people breaking into their homes, smugglers coming through their properties and damaging their properties, and the assaults,” he said. “It’s living in fear.”
In 2013 more than 80 shots were fired and three people were wounded when an ambush shootout between rival drug gangs broke out in tiny McNeal, Arizona. Early this year, a bloody gangland fight between traffickers in Agua Prieta, Mexico, just south of Douglas, Arizona, left at least eight dead. Authorities in neighboring Cochise County went on high alert and warned border-area ranchers and homeowners to be cautious.
It is no wonder, with these kind of things happening so close by, that the people of Arizona do not want greater firearms restrictions. The people of Arizona want to be able to defend themselves and have access to the personal weapons that can protect them and their family.
