Ryan H. Turner wrote:
You can hope until you turn blue in the face brother, but as for me, well...my conflict resolution when faced with the possibility of me or my family dying because of someone ELSE with a gun will be based on MY gun being A WHOLE LOT BIGGER THAN THE OTHER GUY'S GUN. You see, when comments like this pop up, especially the milque toast "conflict resolution" type, I laugh myself silly. What would you expect to do when you're in a mall, say, in Minnesota and some guy decides it's time for you to die? Hmmmm??? Talk it out???? No...YOU KILL THE PERPETRATOR and keep him from killing others.
GUN CONTROL, in ANY form, will keep me, a person who is NOT "psychologically affected" by having a gun, from being able to protect myself, my family, and others. GUN CONTROL, in ANY form, is the next dangerous step down a road this country is ALREADY LONG DOWN. And personally, I would rather have the ability to say the Pledge of Allegiance without tacking on a "Ziech Heil" at the end of it, if you get my drift.
GUN CONTROL is dangerous. GUN CONTROL kills people.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go sit on my porch, tune up my banjo, and play some songs...
It’s not a matter of pie in the sky, utopian wishful thinking on the part of "handwringers", but of trying to be practical in trying to insure that episodes of confrontation don’t escalate into acts of extreme violence. It might be very well to focus on episodes of mass shootings, in which people are attacked randomly, but despite the sensational and sustained coverage on television that each of these episodes receives, that doesn’t change the fact that they are extreme cases, not everyday occurrences. You are arguing from fear in advocating the most extreme response, an act which many of our politicians are extremely adept at doing as well, and I don’t buy your argument that if we were all armed to the teeth, these episodes would somehow diminish (they are already rare) or be any less deadly than they are.
Yes, we all want to feel safe, but chances are carrying around a gun (or bazooka or AK-47 or missile launcher or whatever you feel the need to acquire in the arms race you seem to be advocating) is not going to resolve the situation, and instead I would be tempted to suggest that it would contribute to a gunslinger mentality which will put everyone else at risk, innocent bystanders as well as aggressors, protestations of being a “good guy” to the contrary. Or, fallible human nature being what it is, are you saying that you can trust yourself in any and every situation which presents itself? With all your practice sessions, your gun safety classes and your knowledge of firearms and your attendance at church services, are you going to be the one perfect human being who will be able to shoot straight or restrain yourself in episodes of extreme emotional duress? I’m human, and I do the best that I can, but because I am human, I know that I have made mistakes and will do so in the future as well.
And lastly, I appreciate the emotion of your posting, but you have to take a step back. You don’t prove your point with slogans, and you discredit your argument with invective, which reveals a strong and unrestrained emotional response which is not subject to reason. Please leave the diatribes for Talk Radio. And please, life isn’t a Western, so enough of this crap about “Good Guys” and “Bad Guys”, or always invoking Hitler’s Germany, regardless of whether the circumstances are applicable or not. To argue from extreme cases (the rare mass shootings), to disregard the safety record of other countries which do have gun control, and to fail to consider the ramifications of advocating a universally armed populace with the hope that this will minimize rather than escalate confrontation is to ignore the bigger picture.
What I am wondering is, who will protect me from you when you are having a bad day? How do I know that you will always be “not psychologically affected”? By trusting you, because you say so and wear a proverbial white hat? Your boss yells at you at work, someone cuts you off in traffic, someone swears at you, some Hispanic kids are standing next to your car (they could be my kids), you feel threatened and you immediately reach for your gun? You applaud the neologism "sheeple" (yes, I realize that some find it fun to insult others) but in the next instance you morph back into the respectable, regular “you”, the one who only wants to protect his family and livelihood? Well, my and my families’ lives and security and happiness are the most important things to me, and of course I know that verbal taunts are not the same as homicidal tendencies, yet I still am also aware that aggression is one of our deepest instincts, and I don’t want expanded gun availability.
Enough of this, I agree with Loyal Tubist and Hostrauser, we are Off Topic, so let’s turn to other subjects.