Before getting into this story I will make one admission: guns scare the crap out of me.  Here’s another admission: the idea of many of the people I see on a daily basis being entrusted with guns scares me even more. I need look no further than today’s Winston-Salem Journal to find proof that my fears are well founded:

Two men engaged in
a property dispute became involved in what Sheriff Andy Stokes called a
“face-to-face shootout” yesterday as a surveyor worked on the property.

The shooting took place on Zimmerman Road near the intersection with Burton Road, Stokes said

Joseph Reid Wilson, 53, of Lewisville and Bobby Grant Minor, 78, of Zimmerman Road were each shot twice, Stokes said…

“The shooting took place about 300 feet from the road at the disputed property line,” Stokes said.

“A fence separated
the two pieces of property. One was on one side and one was on the
other. They were about 30 feet apart when they started firing.”…

Earlier in the day, deputies went to the dispute to calm down the two men, Stokes said.

“We thought the situation had been settled, but apparently it flared back up,” Stokes said.

Wilson was shot in
his stomach and back with a .25-caliber automatic pistol, Stokes said.
Minor was shot in the right shoulder and left wrist with a 9 mm
semi-automatic pistol.

This happened in Davie County near Advance, which coincidentally is where Baptist Medical Center would like to build a new hospital.  Wonder if they might consider a trauma center now?

Whatever.  I can’t possibly imagine a situation where a sane person would get so bent out of shape that they’d engage in a firefight over some sort of property dispute.  I mean what happened to good ol’ fist fights?  Hell, what happened to litigation?  You can’t walk 10 feet around here without tripping over a lawyer so why resort to gunfighting?

You know that NRA tag line, "Guns don’t kill people, people kill people?"  Well I think we need to keep stories like this in mind when we discuss gun control, because it’s not guns that need controlling but the morons that use them. 

Now, before some of you get all mad at me for calling all gun owners morons let me say that I don’t mean that.  I mean that I wish we had a way of keeping guns out of the hands of idiots.  I know many fine, intelligent people who own guns and I’m even related to a few of them, but I’m also sure that they are far outnumbered by people whose cranium can best be described as having lights on and nobody home.  You know, the people who think Entertainment Tonight is network news, that the Dog Whisperer speaks a previously undiscovered language called Caninish and that we’re being invaded by our neighbors to the north, the Mexicans.  Letting these people have guns is like standing in the middle of the road waiting for Britney Spears to drive by on her way home from a party: it’s nuts.