On Fri, 17 May 2013 16:37:45 -0400, "Eisboch" wrote:



"jps" wrote in message
.. .


Copied from a commenter responding to the news that a young woman
accidently shot herself dead with her assault rifle...

"I wonder how many times she was able to protect herself from the
hoards of rapists and other monsters who were breaking into her house
to get her before she shot herself in the head with her own assault
weapon. That seems to me to be the key information missing from this
story. In fact, I think that this a key piece of information that
should be included in every damn gun story from now on. How many times
did the gun who just killed a family member protect that family from
the roving gangs of monsters who are regularly busting into homes and
gang raping women and kidnapping babies. How many times did she use
this gun for defense against such enemies before she killed herself
with it. I'm guessing none!"

----------------------------------

Drinking, inexperience and reckless behavior. Sad, but not the gun's
fault.

Here's something to read and consider. Set to me by a friend:

The Gun Is Civilization
Written March 23, 2007 by Marko Kloos

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and
force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of
either convincing me via argument or forcing me to do your bidding
under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those
two categories, without exception.

Reason or force, that’s it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact
through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social
interaction and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the
personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use
reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your
threat or employment of force.

The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on
equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal
footing witha19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal
footing with a car load of drunken guys with baseball bats.

The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers
between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad
force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more
civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm
makes it easier for a[armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is
only true if the mugger’s potential victims are mostly disarmed either
by choice or by legislative fiat–it has no validity when most of a
mugger’s potential marks are armed.

People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the
young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a
civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a
successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force
monopoly.

Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal
that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is
fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are
won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on
the loser.

People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don’t constitute
lethal force, watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come
out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes
lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not
the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.

The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an
octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply
wouldn’t work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal
and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight,
but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means
that I can not be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m
afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the
actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the
actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the
equation… and that’s why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

Living in fear is a choice that he makes. A gun shouldn't be what's
required to eliminate that feeling.