If I had my way, there would be no privately held guns in the United States.
But, if I had my way we would have no drug addiction and I would be twenty pounds lighter when I wake up tomorrow morning. Oh, and I'd have a full head of hair and be twenty years younger.
Sadly, none of the above will ever happen.
Now about guns: My father in law was a lifetime member of the NRA. He got his first rifle age 12 and hunted in the fields around his home in Utah. He kept several locked lockers full of guns in his basement. He kept notebooks on each gun, with targets shot with holes by each and careful notes about the gun's characteristics: At 150 feet this gun pulls to the left 1 inch, etc.
He was appalled by the idea a gun is any good at defending you in your house because the home invader has a weapon more powerful than any gun: surprise. He thought the most likely outcome of a bedside gun was some family member would someday be shot with it. Guns at home were kept locked.
He raised his three sons and his daughter (my wife) to be good shots. In fact, he was pleased that for a few years, his daughter was rated higher than any of his sons at the skeet shooting range and she was listed in some rifle magazine as some sort of hot shot.
But he spent his life in the military, where, he noted no solider was every allowed back from the shooting range without the same number of spent cartridges as he was issued before he went shooting targets. The military tightly controlled bullets lest one of the recruits had it in for his drill instructor, as in "Full Metal Jacket."
If we restricted gun ownership and home possession, we would likely cut down on deaths among children shooting themselves or others at home and we might cut down on suicides by gun, although it's an open question whether we'd cut down on suicides by other means.
We may not prevent mass shootings by lunatics. The reasons for this are obvious: A guy who plans out his mass shooting by booking a room plus an adjoining suite, rigging up hallway surveillance cameras, fits out his guns with bump stocks, is not likely to have much trouble collecting guns of mass destruction. As anyone who has read "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" knows, the trade in illegal guns is not much more inhibited by law than the sales of illegal drugs.
Beyond the sportsman and gun aficionado who was my father in law, I've met plenty of men who love talking about their guns in New Hampshire. Most of these guys are small or very obese or simply physically unimpressive men for whom a gun is their ticket to instant respectability: I may look like a loser, like a nobody, but put a gun in my hand or on my hip and you've got to respect me, because I might just kill you.
Big gun is the surrogate for big penis.
Those are the guys you have to pry their gun from their cold, dead fingers, because they need that gun so.
For some of these guys, its a thin line from an inferiority complex and fragile ego to a shooting rampage, but they may go their whole lives without crossing it.
They are the guys who worry us, however. Ordinarily, they get through the day, but all it might take is that one very bad, no good, terrible day, when their car is rear ended, their boss fires them for being late to work and they go home to find their wife in bed with the mailman.
We do not need bump stocks and we do not need legislators packing heat in the State House to show what tough guys they are and we do not need guys at political rallies carrying assault rifles. All that can be legislated away, just as soon as we assure our gun loving fellow citizens, they can keep their security blankets.
But, if I had my way we would have no drug addiction and I would be twenty pounds lighter when I wake up tomorrow morning. Oh, and I'd have a full head of hair and be twenty years younger.
Sadly, none of the above will ever happen.
Now about guns: My father in law was a lifetime member of the NRA. He got his first rifle age 12 and hunted in the fields around his home in Utah. He kept several locked lockers full of guns in his basement. He kept notebooks on each gun, with targets shot with holes by each and careful notes about the gun's characteristics: At 150 feet this gun pulls to the left 1 inch, etc.
He was appalled by the idea a gun is any good at defending you in your house because the home invader has a weapon more powerful than any gun: surprise. He thought the most likely outcome of a bedside gun was some family member would someday be shot with it. Guns at home were kept locked.
He raised his three sons and his daughter (my wife) to be good shots. In fact, he was pleased that for a few years, his daughter was rated higher than any of his sons at the skeet shooting range and she was listed in some rifle magazine as some sort of hot shot.
But he spent his life in the military, where, he noted no solider was every allowed back from the shooting range without the same number of spent cartridges as he was issued before he went shooting targets. The military tightly controlled bullets lest one of the recruits had it in for his drill instructor, as in "Full Metal Jacket."
If we restricted gun ownership and home possession, we would likely cut down on deaths among children shooting themselves or others at home and we might cut down on suicides by gun, although it's an open question whether we'd cut down on suicides by other means.
We may not prevent mass shootings by lunatics. The reasons for this are obvious: A guy who plans out his mass shooting by booking a room plus an adjoining suite, rigging up hallway surveillance cameras, fits out his guns with bump stocks, is not likely to have much trouble collecting guns of mass destruction. As anyone who has read "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" knows, the trade in illegal guns is not much more inhibited by law than the sales of illegal drugs.
Beyond the sportsman and gun aficionado who was my father in law, I've met plenty of men who love talking about their guns in New Hampshire. Most of these guys are small or very obese or simply physically unimpressive men for whom a gun is their ticket to instant respectability: I may look like a loser, like a nobody, but put a gun in my hand or on my hip and you've got to respect me, because I might just kill you.
Big gun is the surrogate for big penis.
Those are the guys you have to pry their gun from their cold, dead fingers, because they need that gun so.
For some of these guys, its a thin line from an inferiority complex and fragile ego to a shooting rampage, but they may go their whole lives without crossing it.
They are the guys who worry us, however. Ordinarily, they get through the day, but all it might take is that one very bad, no good, terrible day, when their car is rear ended, their boss fires them for being late to work and they go home to find their wife in bed with the mailman.
We do not need bump stocks and we do not need legislators packing heat in the State House to show what tough guys they are and we do not need guys at political rallies carrying assault rifles. All that can be legislated away, just as soon as we assure our gun loving fellow citizens, they can keep their security blankets.
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