Dean Forster wrote:
>
> You're going to have to move to an alternate universe.
> There is no such thing as absolute safety, and
> striving for it is ludicrous.
Wow, wher'd ya get the idea that I was striving for absolute safety? I think
allowing concealed carry is ludicrous though. Think about some of the morons
that we license to drive and what it might be like if they all were licensed
to carry. That's what I mean about feeling unsafe because I don't have (or
want to have) a gun.
> going to have to give up a lot, until eventually
> you'll have to start giving up things that you care
> about. I care about personal freedom, so i'm drawing
> the line at personal firearm ownership. If you don't
> want a gun, that's fine. There's a very good chance
> that you won't need one in your lifetime.
I think that the more guns we have, the more we have to fear, and it's my
opinion that it's _more_ of an infringement on my rights to have to live with
that fear than it would be to deprive people the right to carry concealed
weapons. I don't buy the "armed society is a polite society" crap at all in
fact I think our nation is absolute proof that that idea is hogwash.
>
> Before someone else takes the opportunity to take me
> out of context again, I don't want Doug to live in
> fear, nor would I if i didn't own a gun. But I would
> hope that if I lived next to Doug and he knew me, he
> would sleep a little better at night knowing that I
> was near. With my gun. =P
Nope. I think my chances of getting clocked with a stray bullet while you're
having a gun fight with a burgyaler are probably higher than my chances of
getting shot by the burgyaler himself. 8^)
> My point is that personal firearms ownership should be
> an option, it allows people who want to take
> responsibility for themselves to do so. It would seem
> obvious by now that my viewpoint isn't advocating the
> unsafe posession of firearms. It's not that i think
> they're neato cool so i want one, and a jetski too. I
> don't walk around my house waving it around thinking
> 'wow, i could shoot something if i wanted to!'. I
> look on it as a medical kit or a spare tire- it's
> there if needed.
Well, if everyone that wanted a gun was as responsible as you, that might be
OK. Unfortunately there are an awful lot of people out there that have little
or no sense of responsibility (but can feign that they do) in whose hands a
hand gun is an incident waiting to happen.
>
> No one is going to force responsibility for your
> personal safety on you, you have every *right* to
> pacifism or a simple dislike of firearms.
I don't care about pacifism. If some a**hole breaks into my place I have no
qualms about beating the living crap out of him with the bat I keep handy. I
just don't want a bunch of idiots playing secret agent in my neighborhood.
(Note that I'm referencing concealed carry laws in most of this post.)
And if
> you're wondering, I don't think less of people that
> don't have a gun, they just have a different outlook
> on life or different beliefs. Tolerance is good, so
> i'd appreciate it if you'd tolerate the freedoms that
> you don't take advantage of still existing.
As long as they don't infringe on my freedoms, that's fine. But when firearms
proliferate the way they have in this country, my rights are being infringed
to a greater extent than gun toter's rights, IMO.
Doug
