Gun discussions can get very long as one tries to cover all the bases.
I do thank you for your respect. I also don't like that good people get shot. I hate it and it makes me mad and sad. I wish that we lived in a more perfect world and I do what I can as I see it within my powers to get it there.
I feel it necessary to say that a gun is not a magic talisman. It does not solve problems. All it does is change the odds. If a good person is in a bad situation, I want them to have all reasonable odds in their favor. And a handgun is a reasonable odds-shifter, because it's so easy to learn and so easy to carry as opposed to say taking sixteen years of martial arts.
When I read horrible stories in the news it hurts me. I wish so hard that they'd taken a course, gotten a handgun, and carried it. I wish they had had a chance. I believe in liberty and I know neither I nor any government can give anyone a sure thing. All they can have is a chance.
(My choice of verbiage here is affected by the famous story of Suzanna Hupp, who watched her parents executed in front of her in the Luby's Cafeteria Massacre. She had had to leave her legal concealed-carry firearm in her car because Luby's Cafeteria was a gun-free zone. When questioned about the 'what ifs' of the situation she said, "With it, I would have had a chance. Without it, I had no chance.")
As a more minor point, one of the problems about successfully using a firearm for self defense is that it usually means nothing happened. It doesn't make the news, or a police report. It is the opposite of 'if it bleeds it leads.' And so even though it happens hundreds of thousands to millions of times a year in the US depending on whose extrapolated questionnaires one wishes to believe, 'tragedy averted' is never so heart-wrenching as tragedy itself.
There are a few reasons why I don't believe guns are a solution to guns.
1) The advantage you are pointing out -- that a handgun is an odds shifter -- cuts both ways. People who want to do harm shift the odds in their favor with access to handguns, because they will conceal harmful intent until they are positioned to do the most harm.
2) The "good guys" will always be hampered by the need to not shoot other good guys, whereas the suicidal mass-killing bad guys are going to fire indiscriminately
3) Guns are a solution to guns, but this claim seems to be followed by a caveat that everyone requires adequate training. Why should one need to learn how to act in a firefight when we live in an ostensibly civilized society? If, in fact, we live in a society where laws have broken down and self-defense is routinely required, then yes, I would buy this argument. But we don't, and I don't.
I would just like to mention that I am in favor of abolishing possession of firearms, but not because handguns are intrinsically bad or that I believe it is possible to eliminate all guns from our society. It's because I believe that enacting major restrictions on guns is the only way to begin to effect change in our cultural attitude towards gun violence (i.e. apathy and desensitization). Legislation sometimes precedes a major shift in cultural attitudes. Sometimes it works (Brown vs. Board of Education), sometimes it doesn't (Prohibition). I think it is worth a try.
Gun discussions can get very long as one tries to cover all the bases.
I do thank you for your respect. I also don't like that good people get shot. I hate it and it makes me mad and sad. I wish that we lived in a more perfect world and I do what I can as I see it within my powers to get it there.
I feel it necessary to say that a gun is not a magic talisman. It does not solve problems. All it does is change the odds. If a good person is in a bad situation, I want them to have all reasonable odds in their favor. And a handgun is a reasonable odds-shifter, because it's so easy to learn and so easy to carry as opposed to say taking sixteen years of martial arts.
When I read horrible stories in the news it hurts me. I wish so hard that they'd taken a course, gotten a handgun, and carried it. I wish they had had a chance. I believe in liberty and I know neither I nor any government can give anyone a sure thing. All they can have is a chance.
(My choice of verbiage here is affected by the famous story of Suzanna Hupp, who watched her parents executed in front of her in the Luby's Cafeteria Massacre. She had had to leave her legal concealed-carry firearm in her car because Luby's Cafeteria was a gun-free zone. When questioned about the 'what ifs' of the situation she said, "With it, I would have had a chance. Without it, I had no chance.")
As a more minor point, one of the problems about successfully using a firearm for self defense is that it usually means nothing happened. It doesn't make the news, or a police report. It is the opposite of 'if it bleeds it leads.' And so even though it happens hundreds of thousands to millions of times a year in the US depending on whose extrapolated questionnaires one wishes to believe, 'tragedy averted' is never so heart-wrenching as tragedy itself.
Reply
1) The advantage you are pointing out -- that a handgun is an odds shifter -- cuts both ways. People who want to do harm shift the odds in their favor with access to handguns, because they will conceal harmful intent until they are positioned to do the most harm.
2) The "good guys" will always be hampered by the need to not shoot other good guys, whereas the suicidal mass-killing bad guys are going to fire indiscriminately
3) Guns are a solution to guns, but this claim seems to be followed by a caveat that everyone requires adequate training. Why should one need to learn how to act in a firefight when we live in an ostensibly civilized society? If, in fact, we live in a society where laws have broken down and self-defense is routinely required, then yes, I would buy this argument. But we don't, and I don't.
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment