While sitting outside reading a book at lunch recently and trying to forget about all the violence that has taken place these past few weeks, the strangest thought came to my mind. I thought about the guy who had just walked by, and how if he wanted to, he could shoot me in the middle of the day in between bites of my Caesar salad. That is, if he wanted to. I'm glad he didn't want to. I thought about how wherever we choose to be on any given day, we are essentially sitting ducks for people who simply want to kill someone else because they didn't like how they looked or they just had a bad day.

If you're rocking out to your music on the expressway, you're a sitting duck.

If you're enjoying a lovely evening at the movies with your spouse, you're a sitting duck.

If you're sitting at home watching mindless television, you're a sitting duck.

If you're at the shopping mall trying to find a dress for Saturday night, you're a sitting duck.

If you're sitting in your cubicle at work and someone has a grievance with your employer, you're a sitting duck.

If you're in the shower upstairs at home and an intruder enters through your basement and you have 20 guns -- 10 of them locked up and 10 of them strategically placed throughout the house -- you're a sitting duck.

If you're an armed police officer (And why wouldn't you be?) and you encounter someone whose fire power far exceeds your own, you're a sitting duck.

If you're an unarmed Black man with your hands up, you're a sitting duck. In fact, more of a sitting duck than your average individual by the way. Not cool. If we're all going to be sitting ducks anyway, then we should be equal sitting ducks.

If you're a congresswoman conducting a meeting in a supermarket parking lot, you're a sitting duck.

If you're at church for bible study learning about God's word, you're a sitting duck.

If you're in grade school or college trying to learn or a teacher trying to teach, you're a sitting duck.

You must realize by now that you're in this unwanted sitting duck group, too. On any given day, we are all at the mercy of nutcases who have gotten their hands on weapons quite easily and want to cause us or the country harm.

So, let's just say you are a proud gun owner who has gone through every legal means to get your guns. You bought the guns to protect yourself and your family by any means necessary. Well, many of those people who found themselves in the sitting duck scenarios mentioned above are also gun owners, and there wasn't a thing they could do to save their lives or the people around them.

Therefore, unless your finger is on the trigger of one of your guns at all times, or most of the time like a soldier or something, you are a sitting duck. You are at the whim of a large growing group of lunatics who decide that killing you and a bunch of others is a good idea on their day of choice.

A little dramatic? Maybe a little, but not really because all of those sitting duck scenarios are true in some form or another. These unfortunate situations are on the rise, not on the decline.

Whether you are sitting in a classroom trying to figure out a math problem, talking on the phone while sitting in your car, sitting outside have a nice lunch, browsing around in a convenience store, you could become the victim of gun violence.

There are a lot of weird true stories about people getting killed by guns and many of them are gun owners. They just don't always have their guns within reach since laws vary from state to state. Further, who's going to have easy access to their gun while in the shower or during a rub-a-dub-dub session in the bathtub? No one unless you're living a Tony Montana lifestyle and a scary group of people are after you.

So, this is yet another reason why I'm baffled by the gun argument. You can't actually protect yourself from others' trigger-happiness when they go off the deep end. As we all have seen, this is happening quite a bit lately. Everyone would have to be walking around with AR-15s like soldiers at war in order to fully protect themselves. And who wants that kind of society? That is not America.

There should be less guns, not more. There is no reason why an average individual should have more powerful arsenal than the police force. An excessive amount of guns that clearly aren't protecting any of us in any real way can't be the answer.

#guns #weapons