We don’t need another round

Last Sunday, our City of Churches seemed more like Dodge City. Early that morning, a couple of gunmen pumped a barrage of rounds into a house on Race Street. That evening, another house was shot up in the 700 block of Madison Street.

On Monday, a 20-year-old Lynchburg resident was in court to answer charges that he wounded a man just outside the Lynchburg Public Library with a .38 revolver last January because … well, he didn’t like what the guy said to him. And two days later, on Wednesday, an Amherst man was shot in the face through his windshield on Park Avenue (motive unclear).

I’m not against guns, per se, and I’ll concede that they are useful for protection, hunting and target practice. As a tool for settling arguments, however, they are undeniably overkill (bad pun not intended).

Armed professional criminals will no doubt be with us for awhile, simply because the statement “Give me your wallet, or I’ll shoot you” is so much more compelling than “Could I please have your wallet?” The same with terrorists and wars, because it would be extremely time-consuming to take over another country with knives or fists.

Where we could make some progress, it seems to me, is with those who shoot other people simply because they’ve annoyed them. In a previous column, I suggested that everyone be issued paintball guns, which would allow us to have the satisfaction of pulling the trigger on someone without actually hurting them. Or perhaps handguns could come with a device that would pop up on the barrel as soon as the safety was released to ask: “Are you really, really sure you want to do this?”

This time around, I’d just like to give our local hotheads a few things to think about. I have a selfish reason for this — I don’t want to depart this life some day over a disputed parking space or highway lane change and have to explain that to St. Peter.

1. If your loved one has ditched you for someone else, shooting them won’t bring them around. Rather, that pretty much closes the deal — and, when word gets around, hurts your chances for future romance.

2. Lynchburg is a very small town, criminally speaking. If you’ll notice from reading our newspaper or watching local TV news, local shooters are usually apprehended rather quickly, because there are plenty of fellow citizens (usually friends or relatives of the shootee) who are eager to turn them in.

3. They don’t issue guns in prisons. Wielding your .38 or 9-millimeter to gain respect on the streets of Lynchburg isn’t going to help you when you’re disarmed and thrown in with people from your worst nightmares.

4. Committing murder is actually an act of self-abuse. It might give you instant gratification for a few seconds, but that rush of power usually comes at the cost of the rest of your life.

5. Nobody cares. Those close to the person you killed will never forget, but you’ll be forgotten in a heartbeat when you’re packed off to some hellhole institution in Southside Virginia.

Back in the days when Dodge City was really Dodge City, the fastest gunfighters lived the fastest lives. They were a little like rock stars. But that was in an atmosphere of extremely lax law enforcement, or none at all. Eventually, their era died.

For the good of all of us, it should have remained dead.