Re: Obama XXI: Kenyan Muslins are ruining this country!
Among other considerations: we have a Second Amendment and the supremes have recently held it means individuals have a right to own firearms, not just "militias." Apart from the .22s at Riverview Park in Chicago, the only weapons I've fired were in the military. I don't even know anyone who has a gun (to the best of my knowledge).
Paraphrasing Dennis Miller: when did the NRA become so freakin' cranky? I can remember when they were in the business of preserving our shooting heritage. Fathers handing down the pleasure of shooting sports to sons. Now they're completely out of their minds, referring to murdered ATF agents in Waco as "jackbooted government thugs" after they were killed trying to serve a legal warrant.
The flip side to that are the rabid anti-gun types. Is it Carolyn McCarthy who has been working assiduously to get everyone's gun taken away since her husband was shot dead on the LIRR? Horrible tragedy no doubt, but we have a 2nd Amendment and it applies to private citizens whether she and her allies like it or not.
I've told the story before about the Omaha kids coming home from hs one day and hanging out at a friend's house. Up to the point where one of 'em found a loaded .45 on top of the refrigerator--one dead teenager. I once interviewed a Houston surgeon after a cluster of child shootings. Several of them were his patients and he explained that little kids are usually hit in the face when the gun they're examining goes off. That usually means the ones who survive are left with brain damage and/or hideous facial injuries. This is all annecdotal, of course. The over whelming majority of gun owners take the required precautions. And they are doubtless embarrassed by the rhetorical excesses of the gun lobby.
I have no evidence to prove it, but I suspect most of the people who get concealed carry permits don't need them. They are at very low risk of running into a situation where they've got to slap leather to stay alive. Conversly, the people who live in neighborhoods where there are a lot of shootings usually don't have the permits, for a variety of reasons. Of course, that doesn't mean they aren't carrying. Seems like lots of 'em do.
To me, the thing that has changed dramatically, is the willingness of very young people to shoot and kill other very young people with whom they're having some silly beef. It is now SOP for some young folks to pack heat when heading to a hs football game, or prom or some other gathering. And if they get into some adolescent chest bumping, pull that sucker out and start blasting. There was a Chicago Bear player a couple of years ago who got into trouble with the league because his bodyguard shot and killed somebody in a bar. Dude, you mean there's no place you can have a drink and get a bj without carrying a gun or having a bodyguard? Stay home. Order out.
And then there are the guys who blast a roomful of innocent people for a variety of reasons then usually kill themselves. We've seen several examples of this in recent weeks. Inevitably, after one of these tragedies, the anti-gun types dust off their favorite proposals and offer them as "solutions" to the problem. If enacted, these proposals wouldn't reduce the liklihood of similar tragedies one iota, but that doesn't stop the anti-gun types, who never miss an opportunity to advocate proscribing other people's rights.
Finally, that insistence by pro gun types to suggest that things would have turned out differently if the "good guys" had been packing. We saw that after Virginia Tech and in '91 when that guy drove his pickup into Luby's in Killeen and began shooting. That's what you would call a target rich environment. And maybe some civilian would have gotten off a shot to stop that guy. But it seems just as likely he would have hit my mother, having her senior citizens diet plate. Pass.
