It would be my luck that immediately after I write a pro-gun rights blog, a woman gets shot with her own pistol after making an enormous stink to carry it to soccer games. What is comical about that is that’s the only fact anyone cares about, not the fact that her murderous ex-husband brutally killed her.
Just as easily, he could have acquired his own gun, picked up a knife, or failing that, grabbed a rock. I don’t think that anyone who will brutally murder someone else really cares what tool they use, probably just whatever’s clever.
Of course, this doesn’t lead to media sensationalism and lots of shocked people watching the news and gasping in horror, but feeling somehow relieved that all their fear-mongering world views are being justified through a skewed lens.
As if answering my prayers, the next story on the news was about a UCLA student stabbing another in the neck, as if whatever playwright in charge of this whole “earth” thing was like “guns kill people, but so does pretty much anything else, and for just as little reason. So why spend all your time crying about it?”
Guns are defensive tools, and that being said, they are the most efficient and effective ones that we possess. They can’t be decried because of user error or irrational fear due to lack of understanding. Most people don’t know much about quantum physics, does that invalidate it as a field of study?
Scaling back second amendment gun rights, would just see another weapon rise into prominence, as evidenced in the European Union where the fall of guns saw the rise of swords, which also had to be banned. You would end up scaling back or banning rights on everything down to cinder blocks and rocks, heck, even your toaster is a potentially deadly weapon.
Humans are a bloody and war-like lot. No matter what weapon you take away from them, they’ll find another, all the way down to punching each other to death. Then what do you do? Require everyone to wear foam pads on their hands? Stop picking on the gun-owners that obey the law and pay their taxes, especially the ones that fought for the freedom of every single citizen in this country.
“Most people don’t know much about quantum physics, does that invalidate it as a field of study?”
No, but I wouldn’t want to give them a particle accelerator.
Just because we are a violent people doesn’t mean we should make it easy. I believe the idea behind gun control is to make it harder for people to kill or harm each other. Having fewer guns does this because it’s very easy to do extreme harm with a gun. It’s possible to do extreme harm with a knife, but it’s harder and less likely to happen by accident.
How do you justify calling guns “defensive tools?” To take your slippery-slope banning guns leads to banning rocks and toasters argument to the other extreme: why don’t we legalize bombs? I’m sure there’s a way they could be used defensively.
Also, seeing a story about a UCLA student getting stabbed in the neck “answered your prayers?” I know that’s not what you meant but still.