I followed a link in my good ol’ guest book today to the Colorado Psycho… and then to his blog where the first entry referenced a “must-read” article on gun control. Anytime someone says that something is a “must-read” on a topic that I follow, my first thought is, arrogantly enough, “Heh. I’ll be the judge of that!” So I clicked on the link to read a 1993 article by Jeffrey Snyder titled A Nation of Cowards.
Is it a must-read? You betcha. It is, without a doubt, the most clear and convincing document that I’ve ever read in support of the right to bear arms and, maybe more importantly, the right to bear ANY arms.
You really should read it on your own, because I won’t be able to adequately express the finer points here, but the basic gist is that the only person that you can hold responsible for protecting you is yourself. Failing to protect one’s self is suicide, and violent crime only exists in the country today because citizens allow it to happen.
Snyder makes a lot of good points about WHY people support gun control, and pretty much shows them and their reasoning to be offensive and absurd.
I’ll leave the rest for you to read, but my mind is still made up. There should be a nation-wide concealed carry law permitting anyone with a valid permit to carry a handgun even and especially semiautomatic handguns. If you want to own an AK-47, well, go right ahead… but it’ll be registered and identifiable.
For me it comes down to two points:
1. History shows that most governmental oppression first started by disarming the citizenry.
2. Criminals will have guns no matter what congress says and the only people who won’t have guns are the law abiding folks who need them.
I was talking with my Uncle about gun control and self defense over Christmas. It’s really a much more interesting topic than I thought it was.
One thing my uncle was telling me about was that (years ago), in Florida, there was a really high level of Michigan vacationers getting attacked, and they had no idea why. Finally, some criminals admitted that they would look for Michigan license plates, because florida residents had the right to carry a concealed weapon and Michigan residents didn’t. So while in Florida, a Michigan resident was much more likely to be unarmed, and thus, a better potential victim.
Michigan has changed the laws though, and we can now carry a concealed weapon, which I support.
I got the reference to this excellent article from the 16 Jan. “Four Right Wing Wackos” (http://4rwws.blogspot.com/) – love that name! To hear or read all that hate speech about how gun owners are supposed to be psychopathic mass murderers tries my patience. The gun owners I know are responsible individuals who would never even point their firearms at anyone except in self-defense or to protect the innocent.
It’s amazing the villification that goes on in politics on both sides, I tend to think it’s more prevalent on the left, but the right does it too — every statistic I’ve ever seen supports gun ownership and carrying and suggests the stereotypes of gun-owners are tripe.
So then would that mean that you’d be in support of gun registration or not?