Regulate handguns? Archie Bunker has the answer

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Paul Sassone

Updated: February 1, 2012 5:44PM

I’m not a big fan of hollering, so I didn’t go to the Jan. 24 public hearing on handguns.

The U.S. Supreme Court has pretty much made Oak Park’s 1984 ban on handguns evaporate. So, the hearing on the 24th was to let citizens speak about whether the village should attempt in some way to regulate the sale and ownership of handguns in Oak Park.

Not surprisingly, public opinion ranged from regulate handguns a lot to “From my cold, dead hands!”

If it’s not too late, I’d like to offer my suggestion on handgun regulations.

Why, I wondered, would people want to keep a handgun, or handguns, in their home?

For protection from criminals, seemed the obvious answer.

And this is a good thing, protection from criminals. We spend a lot of money on protection from criminals. We call that protection: police.

But, often it is impossible to prevent a criminal from hurting us or stealing from us. Police can’t be everywhere.

It seems to follow that we have to, to some extent, provide protection for ourselves. Hence, the desire of people to have a handgun in the house, maybe even carry a handgun when they go out.

So, it’s possible we’ve been looking at gun regulations the wrong way around. In the past, we Oak Parkers wanted to eliminate crime by eliminating guns. Fewer guns, fewer crimes.

But the best way to protect ourselves might be if everyone had a handgun. More guns, less crime.

A criminal might think twice about burglarizing a house if he knew the occupant had a gun. Ditto for muggers, strong-armed robbers, carjackers, etc.

But how can we instill this fear in criminals?

How are we to make them sure that their next intended victim is armed and therefore too dangerous to attack?

The only way to do this is to make sure that every resident of Oak Park is armed.

So, my suggestion for handgun regulation is that the Oak Park Village Board pass an ordinance that requires all Oak Park residents over age 18 to own a handgun.

I’d like to take credit for this approach, but I can’t. I got the idea where we Americans get all our ideas — from television.

I watched an old “All in the Family’’ show on which Archie Bunker said the way to stop airplane hijacking was to arm all the passengers. Nobody would be crazy enough to hijack a plane if he knew all the other passengers could shoot him, would he?

Who says TV isn’t educational?