Common sense:
In this country you can own a gun and still not know how to use it. And even if you know how to fire it, you don’t necessarily know how to fire it under pressure. The people who are supposed to respond to situations involving firearms go through a lot of training which prepares them to deal with these situations. It’s the rare armed civilian who’s going to be anything more than a hindrance in a firefight.
Boy this is a tough call! On the one hand – being prior military and trained in the use of firearms – having a gun makes sense. On the other hand how many ‘average’ Americans are trained with weapons. Still, when you imagine the consequencies of a mistake you find yourself wondering.
For instance with a new granddaughter you realize that THERE CAN BE NO MISTAKES. No gun – even if found or discovered by a curious little mind – cannot and will not be operational.
Now I don’t subscribe to the looney idea that guns kill people – people kill people. Just like pencils don’t misspell words – people misspell words.
In the final analysis, the big issue is over “who decides who can have guns.” Our cosntitution mandated that all citizens can own guns – for whatever reason. By the same token people are responsible for the consequencies of operating a gun just like they are responsible for the operation if their automobiles.
More on this later. Have a staff meeting in 5 minutes.
You got me thinking, but I’ll put it in a post…