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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (36757)	3/3/1999 9:32:00 PM
From: nuke44	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Maybe, but if Mickey or Snow White also had a gun, they could pop a cap into the wicked witch's ass quicker than you could say Fantasia. Seriously though, the anti-gun lobby, especially those that propose a 100% ban on firearms need to do a reality check. A conservative estimate is that there's in excess of 300,000,000 firearms in the possession of private citizens in the United States as we speak. Even the most draconian of antigun laws, short of an absolute dictatorship, would have only a minimum of effect on those numbers and no effect whatsoever on the percentage of the population that poses the greatest threat to public safety. The criminal element has proven that they can and will arm themselves, illegally if necessary, in order to prey on the rest of society and there's not a damn thing the government can do to stop them. (More on that later) So all the huffing and puffing about total banning of firearms is no more than a fantasy. Moreover, some antigunners propose a society where only the government is armed. think about it. The military and the police armed while the rest of society depends on the good intentions of politicians. Yeah, right. I'm a career military man and the thought of that scares the hell out of me. Don't these people have a clue? Have they read even the Cliff Notes of The Gulag Archipeligo or Nelson Mandela's writings prior to his imprisonment? This is precisely what the founding fathers were referring to when they said "The people's right to bear arms shall not be infringed". At the other end of the spectrum. R. E. Heinlein once said, that "A society where everyone is armed, is by necessity a polite society". While that may or may not hold true, the fact that an armed felon or a disgruntled employee knew for a fact that they would be encountering armed resistance if they attempted to use armed force, no matter if it was in a school yard or in a private home, they would probably think twice before carrying out their intended crime. In the event they decided to go ahead with it, the odds are that their success would be limited and their crime shortlived. The extra benefit would be that with some luck, they would not cost the tax payers money for a trial. At the most, a couple of hundred bucks for cremation an a couple of bucks for a Tupperware urn. Truthfully, I am not advocating a society where everyone is armed. I refer to my prior statement that I wouldn't trust the majority of these goobers with anything more potent than a slingshot. Making the choice of owning a firearm and being prepared to use it in self defense carries a heavy responsibility. It requires that the citizen who so chooses is competent with that firearm and safe with that firearm. It also requires that that person becomes trained in the use of that firearm to the extent that they know through training and mental preparation when the use of that firearm is appropriate and more importantly, when it is not. If this sounds like too much work then by all means you should not be armed. Banning of firearms is not an option in our society. Banning of criminals and violent sociopaths is. Ironically many of the same people who protest the loudest against private ownership of firearms are the same ones who scream for the rights of the predators that make those guns necessary for the rest of us. Two many times, a convicted felon that has already take a life has been released to kill again. The numbers are staggering. In the U.S. today, there is in excess of 50,000 felons back on the street after being convicted for some crime directly involving them in the death of another human being. The anti-gunner's fervor for justice would be better served by crying for the permanent removal of these miscreants from society than by trying to disarm law abiding citizens. Until we achieve Utopia I intend to be prepared to protect myself and mine, with a firearm if necessary. If the anti's are comfortable abdicating the responsibility for their personal safety and that of their loved ones to overworked and underpaid public servants, then they're welcome to do so. I'll read about it in the paper.