Just keep talking, Larry.

yep, typical right wing thuggery. This is how they roll. They can't win on ideas so instead win through violence. Fear and ignorance based sociopathy, a kind of insanity which unfortunately is damaging to us all. I don't know how to cut through all their hate and anger - I'm not sure it is possible at this point. Let's hope their children grow up with a less nightmarish worldview.

One could troll them, like in this article

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/28/wa…

he thinks that the fear of being shot is healthy because it's why he carries a gun. he's constantly afraid, and he thinks that's health.

@2

Is your mind really just a warehouse for talking points from HuffPo? Wow, that's just sad.

Careful around all those straw men in summer heat, kiddo.

@5 feeling a bit defensive, are we? Maybe it is possible to get through to 'these' people. Thank you Seattleblues for revealing your fears, even if just a little bit. This is an important first step. Build on it!

Good Morning Charles,
Hmm? I never heard of Gun Owners of America nor Larry Pratt for that matter until this posting. Seems Mr. Pratt is a blow hard and reactionary. Fair enough. He's not a man I'd like to meet.

Still, I'm having a difficulty associating the NRA and other lobbies with mass murder in America. The majority of killings by firearms in this country are not done by gun lobbyists (NRA, Gun Owners of America etc.). They are committed by perpetrators wielding hand guns arguably obtained illegally or clandestinely. And, they are usually visceral reactions or retaliatory.

Over the recent 4th of July long holiday weekend in Chicago (4 days) 82 humans were shot with 17 killed. That is massacre short and simple. I am exceedingly dubious that any of those perps were members of the NRA etc. They know they can obtain weapons. And they do one way or another.

The problem I am stressing is "gun culture". Guns intimidate period. Always have. Personally, I find it unnecessary to possess a firearm. In addition, I do believe in background checks and restrictions on some assault rifles. But like it or not, America is heavily armed already and won't yield its firearms easily. Fine, go after the NRA et al. if one wishes. But, I strongly suspect it will only harden their stance.

For me, I want pop culture to change. I want less TV and feature films that contain graphic violence. Not that this matters but I refuse to see the film "Lucy". Once I saw the trailer and it featured handguns, I said to myself "nah". Gratuitous violence is getting old.

When you get into an extended conversation with gun "enthusiasts" they will eventually blurt out that the real reason they need those military grade weapons is for the day they have to fight against the US government in an apocalyptic Battle for Freedom. Of course, this isn't something they fear, it's their escapist fantasy. To give it up would be to acknowledge the reality that they are average schmucks living inconsequential lives, and not freedom fighters awaiting their moment of glory.

@7 while i get you and mostly agree. 'lucy' is about a woman who kills with her mind and people, who are mostly living in france, where the story takes place, who are trying to kill her first. on the graphic violence scale it doesn't come remotely close to anything larry pratt or the nra is fantasizing and wanking about.

@8

...says a person who knows only people who hate the 2nd Amendment.

Know what's weird? I know several people who collect guns. Most of those I know own one anyway. And I have yet to have a conversation with the sheriffs deputy cousin or former career military gun collectors about violent rebellion. I have yet to discuss the overthrow of our government with any of my gun nut (by your terms anyone who owns a gun is a nut) neighbors and friends.

Maybe get off Cap Hill once in a while and, you know, meet some of these wild eyed treason fantasy folks. You might be surprised. Well, if you had room in your own dark imaginings of a horde of suburban dads with hunting rifles trying to foment insurrection for any other thought you might.

@7.. actually now that i remember it she does take out a bunch of folks with guns before her brain kicks in and does the self defending for her.. so ..yeah..

@6

Well, I have one fear.

In your zeal to demolish the 2nd Amendment, ever thought what happens to the rest of our civil liberties? See, if judges and lawmakers get to decide to ignore without due process one right, precedent is set for the others up be so ignored as well.

Didn't think of that while scanning the days alarmist BS about gun toting loonies shooting up shopping malls, did you? (Hint- your own paranoia about gun violence isn't any more based in statistics than a person afraid of flying. Both are exceedingly rare and unworthy of fear.)

@8 I think the whole NRA organized gun nut culture is based not so much on fantasies of overthrowing the govmint. Instead I think it is based primarily on racism, in fear of non-whites, particularly African-Americans, coming to get you and yours. The animosity these people feel towards the government, I suspect, is directly proportional to the extent they think the government helps minorities through government programs, especially welfare programs.

This fear, unfortunately, is only gonna get worse as right-wing politicians and other snake oil salesmen find it easier to exploit and inflame that fear as we become a demographically pluralistic society.

I always find it funny that the people at rallies screaming that Obama is a commie-thug are usually brandishing a loaded AK-47.

The fact that majorities support increased gun control and yet it's not politically feasible speaks to the political clout of gun nuts (or more accurately, the organizations they join and gun companies they enrich), not against it.

Shooting a public official who did something that you didn't like is not an act protected by the Constitution. Indeed, every guy who ever has shot a public official for disagreeing with him has been roundly condemned by the public, and they are usually punished even more severely than ordinary murderers. Shooting a public official is not just a crime against the individual; it is a crime against the entire community who elected that official because it represents a single person forcibly negating the will of the majority. The assassin is the real tyrant in the situation.

The founding fathers understood that the violent overthrow of the government is justified only when legal methods have failed to address the problem AND a solid majority of the public supports the rebellion. There's a reason the language of the Second Amendment mentions militias. The right to bear arms was never intended to be an individual right, it was envisioned as a collective right of the community as a whole.

@12 Wow, Blues, your arguments are even weaker than usual. A quick Google search shows that there are 32,000 gun deaths in the US per year, versus an average of 30 dead in plane crashes. Try again.

And no, it's not a slippery slope, because different rights are supported by different lines of reasoning, so that attacking the reasoning behind one doesn't undermine the reasoning behind others. The reasons behind the right to free speech, prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure, and trial by jury hold up as well today as they did in 1788, but the reasoning behind the right to bear arms has massively deteriorated as the nation has transformed itself from a sparsely populated agricultural nation fresh from a rebellion with a dangerous frontier to a well-ordered, modern urban nation that has never needed another armed rebellion to throw off tyranny.

Treating the right to bear arms as a Constitutional right just doesn't make sense anymore, which is why I believe that we ought to push for the repeal of the Second Amendment, and hopefully achieve it within the next 50 years. No other democracy enshrines the right to bear arms. It isn't necessary and it's causing thousands of needless deaths every year. It's time to get treat it as the anachronism it is.

@10: You're saying here that "gun nuts" aren't the potentially-violent fearful little people that some people claim them to be...and you're defending "gun nuts" in a thread about a bunch of "gun nuts" telling Congresspersons that they should have a healthy fear of being shot and killed by their constituents. A bit incongruous, don't you think?

Also, I know gun owners as well. One of them is my uncle, a police officer, who for several years was in charge of safety at the police firing range. He has a few firearms and a Taser. He doesn't think you can trust the government all that far. But he's sick of the gun nuts also, especially given their insistence on toting the damned things everywhere and disregarding basic firearms safety rules. My uncle knows guns pretty well. They're an important part of his job. He knows they're not toys. Sadly, many gun owners don't.

@12: I can't speak for others here, but I'm not trying to get rid of the Second Amendment. I'm trying to subject the right to keep and bear arms to reasonable limits, just like EVERY OTHER GUARANTEED RIGHT.
I oppose allowing violent felons to purchase guns, and believe that a background check should be required of every gun purchase. I oppose exempting lead ammunition from EPA oversight. I oppose leaving gun manufacturers in the current state of deregulation such that they cannot be held responsible for knowingly selling low-quality firearms that are unreliable and dangerous to the user. (Just about every other consumer good has safety and quality standards, but not domestic firearms.) I support requiring a special permit for certain types of weapons, particularly semi-automatic rifles designed to be fired from the hip. I support government funding for firearms safety training to keep gun owners and their families from being injured or killed by their own weapons. I support severe restrictions on extended magazines, hollow-point bullets, and bullets designed to penetrate body armor.
If you think those will "demolish the 2nd Amendment", you're seriously paranoid. We criminalize speech that is disruptive to peace and order, we criminalize incitement to violence, and we ban people from swearing on the public airwaves, but somehow we still have the right to freedom of expression, right?

"Hint- your own paranoia about gun violence isn't any more based in statistics than a person afraid of flying. Both are exceedingly rare and unworthy of fear."
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 467,300 nonfatal firearms crimes in 2011. That's a rate of 155 per 100k, which is nothing to sneeze at. For comparison, for every 23 traffic accidents of any caliber (and we're talking fender benders here), there is 1 crime involving a firearm. Now think of how damn common traffic accidents are.
Injuries or death due to air travel are vanishingly rare; it's uncommon even to end up bruised from turbulence. But what do you care? You're not terribly keen on facts taking precedence over invective.

"Gun Culture". I have lived in Seattle almost all my life but am so far away from the average Seattleite on some subjects its like night and day. People fear guns or people with guns because they are TAUGHT to. There is no other reason. I spent some formative years in a rural setting and when I see a person with a gun I feel indifferent. Maybe a hunter. Sometimes I just think, "hey, nice gun." How can an inanimate object instill such fear? Really, ask yourself? You are blasted daily with why and how you should fear guns. How many interactions have you had with someone who owns a gun. How many interactions have you had with a gun? Any?
This country has over 10,000 laws on the books. TEN THOUSAND! There are enough laws and regulations. There are SOUND laws and regulations regarding fire arms. The connection between crime and firearms is crime. By far the majority of crimes committed with firearms contained firearms that were stolen or unlawfully obtained. The money people think should be spent to further regulate arms should be spent on helping the mentally ill. The truly horrific and tragic events that people point to when discussing firearms are caused by mental illness. Not lack of gun regulation. My whole point is that when a law is made, there is no going back. You will never get those rights back. Yes gun rights and protection from tyranny is a very serious topic to this "gun nut". World War 2 was 75 years ago. A very long time ago. Yet, there are still people alive that went through it. If you think something like that could never happen again, well you are a lost cause. Are you aware that Obama has executed 2 American Citizens without due process? Are you aware that a law was passed, where you can be labeled a domestic terrorist for storing more than 2 weeks of food in your home? This is a real law! You should be terrified of what your government is doing. What you are allowing them to do. Call me crazy all you want I am scared for myself, for my fellow Americans and for our children who are growing up in this "free" democratic Republic.

“The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” -Thomas Jefferson

”Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.” -Ben Franklin

”If we restrict liberty to attain security we will lose them both.” -Ben Franklin

Open Carry enthusiasts would change their tune pretty quick if armed brown folks were to stroll through their neighborhoods, carrying signs claiming that carefully manicured lawns need to be periodically watered with the blood of white people.

One thing that is a constant in the gun debate: Writers who want more gun control don't tend to know much about guns. Charles, while it is possible that somewhere in the US someone is carrying a "automatic rifle," automatic weapons are highly regulated and very expensive (20,000+ for a legal AK-47). What you are seeing open carried are semi-automatic rifles. If you want to be taken seriously when you write about guns, you should learn a little more about them.

Everyone also should learn a little about gun control's history. Many of the first gun control laws in this country were enacted after the Civil War to keep freed slaves unarmed. Such laws were particularly popular in the post-Reconstruction South. The knee jerk accusation that anyone who disagrees with you is racist is simply lazy. You might actually try to educate yourself a little about what others think before utilizing your super power ESP.

@22:

Um, okay, so if, as you suggest, many of the gun control laws enacted in the post-bellum South were intended to keep firearms out of the hands of former slaves, then it would be safe to say that the blatantly racist undertones attributed to some "gun-nuts" has a demonstrable historical foundation, in which case your post seems rather self-contradictory. I mean, it's not like racism has magically vanished from the Union in the intervening 150 years, (despite claims by the Right), so it seems perfectly reasonable that at least some of the current hoo-haw comes from a similarly racist source.

@22: Are you seriously suggesting that peoples' opinions about gun control should be influenced by the motivations of long dead people in a totally different context? Would you support gun control today if it had been used to protect freed slaves 150 years ago?

#24 can you read? The people advocating gun control were the white racists who wanted to keep the former slaves powerless (the KKK wasn't exactly fighting to keep blacks armed). So it was the historical gun control nuts that had the racist angle on this issue. And though racism hasn't "magically vanished" only an idiot would say that the US is just as racist as it was in 1870.

#25 First, the entire debate is controlled by our interpretations of a sentence written by
"long dead people in a totally different context?" right? So maybe bringing history into it is kinda relevant. Also, the knee jerk reactions shown above (i.e. gun rights=racism) is historically the reverse of how gun control started in this country. You need not go back to Reconstruction-The Black Panthers had pretty strong opinions about gun rights not too long ago. They are a great example of people using the right to bear arms to resist tyranny. Finally, calling people who disagree with you racist without bothering to engage in their actual opinions is, at best, lazy and more often stupid.

@19: I have a healthy unease about firearms for the same reason that I do about long drops, bandsaws, and concentrated hydrochloric acid. All of those are extremely dangerous, capable of causing severe injury or death as the result of a simple mistake or accident. Don't act like there's nothing to be afraid of; these are deadly weapons and, unlike the other three examples, designed for that EXPRESS PURPOSE.

Sure, we have a lot of laws on the books. Ten thousand only sounds like a lot to people who don't stop and think about how complex today's world is and how much goes on that must be controlled in order to maintain peace and order. Saying what amounts to "we have lots of laws already" is an argument against any new law whatsoever, and such an attitude is a recipe for decrepitude in a changing world.

"My whole point is that when a law is made, there is no going back. You will never get those rights back."
Tell that to the boozers of this country, like me.

Also, Thomas Jefferson NEVER said the quote that you attribute to him. Neither did Franklin say either quote attributed to him in your post. (He expressed a similar sentiment in thoroughly different words, but you and your lot need to learn what quotation marks mean.) And for that matter, your claim that owning 2 weeks' worth of food means you can be officially labeled a domestic terrorist ("This is a real law!") is bullshit. I traced that rumor back to this flyer which simply gives military surplus stores some examples of suspicious behavior to watch for. Lie after lie after lie.
Stop pretending you've got the facts to back you up when you can't even get them straight.

@26:

The basic difference then I guess would be attributable to the fact that, in the example you cite, "gun control" wasn't to be applied universally - white gun owners weren't themselves subject to the same restrictions as blacks - so for them, it was never an issue of anyone taking THEIR guns away, but rather that they wanted to prevent someone else from GETTING guns at all. And of course, this goes even further back, since as early as the 17th Century the Massachusetts & Plymouth Colonies banned the sales of guns to Native Americans, on the fear these same weapons would subsequently be used against white colonists.

Now, to which side of the current debate over gun-control do you think this sort of argument would most appeal?

@20
Would you make that statement in response to this Second Amendment advocate:
http://westernrifleshooters.files.wordpr…

This guy is absolutely right. All government should be afraid of being replaced, either by voting, direct action or, if necessary, violent revolution. History has shown us violence cannot be 100% taken off the table, even in times of outward stability.
The Civil Rights movement won in part because groups like the Deacons for Defense took up arms to defend their community. Maybe Charles Mudede fell asleep during history class.

As the guy in the movie said:
"People should not be afraid of their government. Government should be afraid of its people."

@venolash
Are you kidding me!!!!! First if I am lying about Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin saying the words that I put in between the quotation marks (yes I know how they work) then so is every book I've ever read about them or that even mentions them as well as documentaries about them. Franklin said what I quoted along with many other versions. Google either of those quotes and you will easily find their author. Second, The National Defense Authorization Act. Storing more than 7 days of food makes you a terror suspect. Storing "excessive" amounts of ammunition (a very vague term, excessive) makes you a terror suspect. Allows the detainment of terror suspects (including United States Citizens) INDEFINITELY, without trial. Here's a link to people discussing the bill.
http://bunkerville.wordpress.com/2011/12…
Why would a bill like this that removes all rights of citizens have passed in congress? Open your eyes and ears. Question everything.
Thank you @30, somebody with a functioning brain.

@30:

Why does it not surprise me in the least that you would base your political "philosophy" on a quote pulled from a crappy movie adaptation of a half-way decent comic book about a character who emulated a failed domestic terrorist bent on restoring a theocratic monarchy?

@31: I am not kidding you. If you read those quotes in a book, then you have been lied to.
And yes, OF COURSE I Googled those. How do you think I learned they were fake?
If you go to the OFFICIAL THOMAS JEFFERSON WEBSITE, you'll find that supposed quotation listed under "Spurious Quotations" and not found in anything written by Jefferson. (Source.) As for the Franklin quote, what he actually wrote was "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Neither of the statements you attributed to Benjamin Franklin appear ANYWHERE in his known writings. (Here is a write-up about how that quote has been mangled and decontextualized. For the record, Franklin was not speaking of personal freedoms but rather of taxes.)

As for the claim that storing seven days' worth of food designates you a terror suspect, you're full of beans. The NDAA, you say, contains such a provision? BULLSHIT. HERE is this year's version of the NDAA as passed by Congress and HERE is the previous year's version. I scanned both for every instance of the word "terror"; nowhere in either is there any such provision as you claim. Senator Rand Paul made that claim in front of Congress based (extremely loosely) on the aforementioned flyer. It's a total fabrication, mere wind in a bag.

I question everything, certainly. I questioned the bill and I questioned your claims, and you have been found wanting. If I blindly believed everything I heard from some paranoid tinfoil-bewigged yahoo on the Internet, would I be any better than someone who believed everything they heard from their government?

@30 Tell me in your view how should government work? Not what they should do. How should it work to make a decision? You've expressed the belief that the public peace should be kept, that the environment should be protected. By what process would you ideally like to see those decisions made?

Reminder, your opinion of what those decisions should be is not relevant to the question. The question is what process would you propose for reaching those decisions.

"These are the types who want to walk into a Starbucks with automatic rifles."
You don't know a god damn thing about firearms, do you Charles?

@venomslash

2012. It was in the bill. An addendum, thats how they get messed up bills passed. By including them in bills that HAVE to pass. It was in the Seattle Times. It was in the Oregonian. Jon Stewart mentioned it on two of his shows. It was in the bill. The bill passed. You're an idiot. Fuck off.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms" - Thomas Jefferson

Yes 10,000 laws is an absurd amount of laws. New laws, laws period do not PREVENT crime. No law has ever stopped a criminal from committing a crime. The laws we have work. As I said the problem is NOT a lack of rules. The problem is a lack of help for people with mental illness. Gun violence is down. Firearm-related homicides declined 39%, from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011. Nonfatal firearm crimes declined 69%, from 1.5 million victimizations in 1993 to 467,300 victimizations in 2011. (Bureau of Justice Statistics) Spend money on helping sick people instead of trying to figure out ways to punish people that are already going to be punished.

@38: It wasn't in the bill. It was NOWHERE in the bill. I went through the WHOLE DAMN THING AS PASSED BY CONGRESS. Show me the text of the bill where it says that owning more than seven days' worth of food makes you a "terror suspect". Show me where; I DARE YOU. Stewart took issue with the 2012 NDAA because certain provisions could be interpreted broadly as allowing the military detention of civilians. Rand Paul invented the rest.
Thank you for finally posting a quote that actually came from its alleged originator. Let me show you the full version of that quote: "No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own lands or tenements]" (brackets in original) (source). Note also that a convicted felon would not be considered a "freeman" under some definitions.

Laws ABSOLUTELY DO prevent crime. Are you really so feeble-minded as to insist that nobody ever wanted to commit a crime but reconsidered based on the penalty he would face? If the laws we had worked, we wouldn't see convicted felons going to gun shows and legally buying weapons they're not legally permitted to own.
I really don't see where you're getting the ideas in your last sentence from. I'm not arguing for punishing anyone other than people who sell guns to felons, and irresponsible gun owners who endanger others. And as someone managing a mental illness I have great appreciation for the good that mental health resources can do and believe they should receive better funding.

You're new here, tedpm. I'm going to toot my own horn here and tell you that people don't generally win arguments against me on SLOG. If people have valid points, I accept them; if they're spewing lies and invective, I vivisect their posts. At the risk of being an Internet Tough Guy, I say you'll need to step it up if you want to play with me.

@venomlash
Congratulations on being a ...erm veteran of Slog. I've been around a while. Just haven't lived in Seattle for 5 years. I was receiving a newsletter from FAMM and from the Department of Justice. I tracked the Bill from the first time I heard about it until it passed. I don't know what else to tell you. Shall we take a field trip to D.C.? It appears you are right on the first Jefferson quote. I will double check my sources next time, thank you for the correction. The Franklin quote is one of several versions HE reworded many times and still stands. And thanks for focusing on something that wasn't the meat of my statement.
I specifically said laws do not prevent CRIMINALS from committing crimes. Yes I am very feeble minded. I don't think you need 10 different laws regulating the same thing. There are already laws that state you cannot sell a firearm to a felon. We don't need new ones. A felon getting caught with a firearm gets a mandatory 5 year sentence. Under the law a felon can get a mandatory 5 year sentence for 1 bullet. No gun. Just a bullet. A fully automatic machine gun? Thats life for a felon. More than 15 rounds in the clip? Stiffer penalties. The laws are in place and the penalties are stiff. What is lacking is education, enforcement and help for those that do not fall where a law would discover them.
How about those stats? You don't have anything to say about the lack of crime no seems to acknowledge? As I said in the beginning the public is blasted daily on the immediate danger of guns. Yet gun crime is down 39% - 69%?! Have you ever looked at the intricate connections between every major news source and the White House?
What do you think would be the perfect U.S. in regards to gun control?

Hey #40 can you provide us some examples of felons buying guns at gun shows? Firearms dealers are required to do background checks on sales at gun shows.

@42: The Franklin quote appeared in his works as I rendered it. Nowhere in any of Benjamin Franklin's works does it appear in either of the forms you used.
"I specifically said laws do not prevent CRIMINALS from committing crimes."
And you were specifically wrong. You are saying that nobody ever refrains from committing a crime because of the potential punishment they would face. You must be slow in the head to actually think such a thing.
"I don't think you need 10 different laws regulating the same thing. There are already laws that state you cannot sell a firearm to a felon. We don't need new ones."
It's nice that you don't think that, but there's a reason you're neither a lawyer nor a legislator (presumably). According to you we shouldn't have different categories of murder (different degrees, state or federal crime depending on particulars, etc.) because that would mean a bunch of different laws all talking about what is fundamentally the same thing. The point of closing the gun show loophole is not to further prohibit the act of buying a gun as but rather of selling a gun to a convicted felon; currently non-licensed firearms dealers operate under a cloak of plausible deniability.
Gun crime is down over the past twenty years, sure. So are deaths from tuberculosis, but we're still researching better treatments for the disease. You're the sort of fellow who would fold up his umbrella as soon as he was no longer being rained on.

@43: People who AREN'T licensed firearms dealers are under no obligation to perform background checks at gun shows. That's the "gun show loophole" in toto. You want examples? Here is a write-up from an ATF investigation. A bit dated, I know, but it's hard to get good data when there is an effective ban on the use of federal funds to study gun violence.

God you're a douche. When someone commits a crime that means they are a criminal. Before they commit that crime they are not unless they have already committed other crimes. Therefore law does NOT prevent CRIMINALS from committing crimes. Do you need a rule to know that you shouldn't kill people? That you shouldn't steal. Speaking of murder all the different murder charges you are speaking of aren't different laws. Great example. Thanks for proving my point.

Yes, gun crime IS down. Thats because the laws we have work. I'll say again. It is already a crime to sell a firearm to a felon. It is a very serious crime for a felon to purchase or even possess a firearm. That means if a felon so much as touches a firearm its 5 years. Mandatory. A private sale is a private sale. In the gun show, through the newspaper, on the street, whatever. Highly, HIGHLY unlikely that any gun owner would ever want to sell his gun to someone he thinks is going to use it in a crime. He will then have to answer some questions when the cops come knocking. All the recent tragedies have involved the theft of firearms by mentally ill people to be used in a crime.

Thanks again for not having anything to say about having an answer to proper gun control. You've proven yourself quite the blow hard. I assume you "win" your arguments because your "opponents" get tired of reiterating the same points. Here's a link to a Harvard Study "the mantra that more guns mean more deaths and that fewer guns, therefore, mean fewer deaths" is wrong.http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/…

My father has been quite into the idea of a new civil war and implied that my mother and I would be in danger for being democrats. A lot of his friends are on the same page. It really isn't uncommon.

Reading over this, I've seen some interesting points from both sides. Now. Before the people on this site who debate and argue these points daily decide to rip my argument to shreds, (I know they will.) I will say that I am neither Right or Left. I take what I like about both sides and make my decision from that.

I grew up around guns, my father owns them and taught me how to shoot safely at a young age. I consider myself a gun enthusiast, or a nut as people here prefer. I take an interest in weapons, but never once have I thought of overthrowing my government or going on a murderous rampage with my rifle. As far as a carry permit goes, I would get one. Not to live out some glorified fantasy, but in the one I'm one million chance that someone decides to threaten my life.

Does this mean I WANT to shoot someone? No. It bothers me when I have to go out and put a possum out of it's misery when my dogs catch it. Why it means is that if I'm in a situation where I am in danger, I have no chances of running, I at least want the chance to defend myself.