Portland shooting reaction

In response to the outrage at the Clackamas Town Center in Portland, I have already begun to see on my Facebook page all those slogans that really don't make much sense: "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns," and "If more sane people were armed, crazy people would get off fewer shots," and my personal favorite: "Guns don't kill people; people kill people."

First, very few, if any, of the shooters in these horrific massacres are "outlaws" in the typical sense. They are not drug dealers or bank robbers.

Second, even trained professionals have accidently shot innocent bystanders. Am I supposed to feel safer thinking about some pistol-packing amateur firing indiscriminately at a "shooter"?

Third, yes, humans will always find ways to kill other humans, but few portable weapons have the power of automatic rifles, whose sole purpose is to kill as many people as possible in a short amount of time.

People are getting tired of having their children shot down in schools, malls and theaters. These simplified, naïve, knee-jerk reactions are part of the problem and ultimately could have the opposite outcome.

I want to make it clear that I come from a long line of hunters and gun owners. I firmly believe in the Second Amendment, but its focus is a "well-regulated militia" and was written at a time when this country could still have been overtaken by some European empire.

I believe that if we do not find some way to institute reasonable gun control laws; if we do not find some way to control the sale and distribution of automatic and semi-automatic rifles, then we will find ourselves with stricter gun control laws than even I want.

- Judy Woolsey,