The death penalty doesn't act as a deterent to killing, except that the
murderer will never murder again.
If everyone were armed there MIGHT be a lot more shootings, but it is
likely that the people with enough brains to deserve to remain in the
gene pool will learn how to use and care for those guns they have. And
if the berserker next door "goes off" he could then be quickly "offed."
The message would spread without need of the media: Use your gun
against others, and they'll theirs against you -- and "they" always will
outnumber, and "out gun" you.
Shootings going up does not equate to killing going up. Having an armed
populus does equate to killings and other crimes of violence going down.
How many kids, even brain-dead adolescent males, would plot attacking
their school and shooting other kids IF they knew every other student at
the school was armed, trained, and willing to shoot back to stop them??
Columbine wouldn't have happened if even one out of ten students carried
a gun; it wouldn't have happened if the teachers were armed.
A few years back, an idiot out to commit suicide drove his truck into a
Denny's in the town where my daughter was then living -- a restaurant
where she & I had eaten together. The cretin then started taking pot
shots at the patrons, and managed to kill quite a few. One woman who
had been trapped inside echoed the sentiments of a number of others
caught in that episode: If I'd had my gun with me, he wouldn't have
shot more than one person.
Intead of registering guns, I'd like to see it be mandatory to
successfully complete a course on "care and feeding of your firearm."
Not only would the potential owner have to safely fire the precisely
same type of weapon, but also would have to prove s/he could properly
breakdown, clean, reassemble, and store [if there were children under
age 13, or older children who had not taken formal firearms training]
the gun they want to purchase.
With ownership of *anything* comes responsibility. You are responsible
for what your car does, even if you've allowed someone else to drive it.
You are responsible for your cat, dog, horse, kine or cattle ... You
should be responsible for your children, but the system too often
doesn't offer help in keeping kids both civilized and in a caring home;
too often the only way a child can get necessary help is to be removed
from the home [another on-going story which could fill volumes].
If the stupid or crazy manage to get themselves killed, that's simply
speeding up the Darwinian process. And it is amazing how much smarter
some people can become when they learn that, although I cannot yet "pack
a gun," I have at least one I'm not afraid to use in self-defense or in
the defense of the lives of others. Just finding out that there were a
couple of people like me in the neighborhood made the Clan change its
mind about having a hate rally in the park a block from here.
Being afraid to be out after dark isn't civilized. Being fearful of a
"home invasion" crime isn't civilized. Having to worry about
car-jackings or hostage takings isn't civilized. And only "the bad
guys" having guns isn't civilized. Regardless of how "illegal" it might
be to own a gun, guns are pretty damn easy to make ... and even Hitler
at his worst never quite managed to gather up all the guns in the
countries he "conquered."
My final example of "why gun ownership is truely sane" centers around
Kosovo & Bosnia [pardon any misspellings]. The cost of a single cruise
missle -- which were used to excess and did little good -- would have
armed every household. How many "hunter killer squads" would have
walked into those villages knowing that every adult in town was armed
and had plenty of ammo? How many mass graves would not have been dug if
the "common wo/man" was able to shoot back? Our USA participation in
the UN "peace keeping" mission to that area could have saved millions of
dollars and tens of thousands of lives -- if the low tech approach of
arming people to protect themselves had been taken.
I'm tired of talking. But being a sane gun owner, I always try to
negotiate and educate first ... using deadly force only as a last
resort.
-- Arachne V1.70;rev.3, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
