FBM wrote:I agree, Woodbutcher. A lot of gun owners are paranoid and in need of a reality check. But most aren't, in my experience. The increased scrutiny of people buying guns might help to weed out the ones who are most likely to go off the deep end some day.
And, yes, if you think you need a gun for everyday protection, there is a problem. Maybe you live in a safe area and you're imagining the threat, in which case you need some professional attention. Or maybe you're sane and are simply responding reasonably to an unreasonable situation. No single answer fits everyone at all times. I'm afraid there's no categorical imperative available for this one.
It's different even for different people in the same city. In East Knoxville, TN, gangs run the place. Shootings there don't even make the news unless an innocent bystander, such as a child, gets hit. If I lived, worked or had to travel though there, damn straight I'd carry.
But North Knoxville is all gated communities with security guards. The chances of needing a firearm there are negligible. A hyper-vigilant, gun-toting type there would almost certainly be someone who isn't psychologically fit to carry, unless s/he were hired to do so.
You just have to keep in mind the wide variety of social environments one is exposed to, and then judge each situation on its on merit, I think. Throwing a blanket condemnation or a blanket commendation on gun-owners everywhere is just lazy and sloppy reasoning, imo.
Of course it seems to have escaped you that people who live in North Knoxville don't spend their lives in North Knoxville and they might need to travel east or some other direction, into an area where you admit it's perfectly prudent to carry a gun.
Here's another example: Louisville, Kentucky. I've been there a few times, once for the NRA convention and several times for the Knob Creek machine gun shoot. I have friends who live there. My first trip, they told me to be sure to see downtown Louisville with its historic buildings and jazz clubs, but they sternly warned me NOT to venture south of 12th Street, where Louisville turns from being a quaint, old and stately city into a third-world shithole where shootings are common, particularly of white tourists who mistakenly venture into the ghetto.
Had I not been warned of this, it's likely that I would have gone that way while touring the area. The good news is that Kentucky honors my CCW permit, so I was armed, but it was nice to know where to stay away from.
The same situation applies in most big cities, like East Saint Louis, where it's easy for tourists to get off the Interstate by mistake and end up in a very bad part of town.
So, just because you might have hired armed guards to secure your home in North Knoxville, that's no protection at all when venturing outside that gated community, and the need to be armed for self defense remains a perfectly valid and rational aspect of life anywhere in the world...including London and Glasgow.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth
© 2013/2014/2015/2016 Seth, all rights reserved. No reuse, republication, duplication, or derivative work is authorized.