It blows my mind that there are really people who believe citizens should NOT be allowed to have guns. That they can't be trusted with guns because they don't have training like the police (yeah, like police never shoot the wrong person or shoot them, reload and shoot them again when there's no threat, right?) and that people don't NEED guns anymore, that the civilian's need for guns is obsolete.

People who say that kind of crap really make me wonder...okay, obviously these people have never been a victim of a violent crime, never knew anybody who had. Leave it to the police, that's their answer, and that's fine in theory, but it wasn't fine for Kitty Genovese...and it's not fine for anybody who doesn't have a policeman at their side 24 hours a day, which is most of the population. Besides, everybody knows that the police have no legal obligation to protect ANYBODY, so if they don't want to help somebody, they don't have to...so how does that help people whose homes are broken into or people who are mugged?

And you know, TV loves to advertise the hell out of security systems, that they'll scare off any burglar and blah blah blah...why then do you NEVER hear in the news of a burglar who ran out of the house he was robbing because their security system went off? In comparison, there are quite a few stories about robbers who are deterred because the homeowner had a gun and USED it. Miss America from 1944, in her 80s, with a walker, caught 2 men on her property stealing, they were making their getaway, she took out her gun and shot out two of their tires and they were caught. Try getting the same results with a beep beep beep alarm, he'll just cut and run and probably never be found.

Then a while back, there was a story, this 80 year old woman was getting in her car in a mall parking lot, and this 20-something year old guy comes up and says he's going to kill her since she's too old to live anyway, and starts beating her with her own cane, she takes out her gun, fires at him, and the security guards catch him and he's taken to jail and she's still alive.

I say you don't want a gun in YOUR house, that's fine, nobody's forcing you too, but anybody who says NOBODY needs guns is living in a little bubble fantasy.

Oh yeah, and then there's the argument that soooo many crimes are committed using legally owned guns...yeah, I'm sure all the robbers and gunmen in the world line up for background checks, waiting periods, permits, and spend hundreds of dollars on a brand new gun to do a drive by shooting or stick up a convenience store, right? Some people think that by outlawing guns, there won't be anymore gun related crimes...right, because drugs are illegal and NOBODY gets their hands on them, right?

Where's everybody else stand?

No guns, in general? Well, what would hunters do?

But as far as guns in the home, like pistols, used for protection? Well, I think that anyone, hunters, or gun toting home owners, should be required to attend a gun safety class.

RedBedroom wrote:

No guns, in general? Well, what would hunters do?

Oh yeah, that's another favorite line of theirs, NOBODY needs to hunt anymore, you just get meat from the grocery store, that nice chemically altered, steroid filled meat that has God knows what in it.

I know too many families that depend on the meat from deer hunting. further, our largest food pantry also relies from donated venison.

I know, and they say that some hunters they get a lot of meat from their kills, donate it all to feed people, you aren't going to get that generosity from the grocery store and even if you do it's all hormone induced crap that most of us do have to eat.

Plus, if we took deer hunting away from my state, it would take years to control the deer population, and people would be hitting them with vehicles non-stop.

For two reasons...one, the obvious, there would be more deer. Two, the deer would not be corn fed so they would be more bold/desperate and would cause more accidents due to the boldness to be more mobile. Also, more gardens (another source families have to feed their large families in rural areas) would be deer destroyed.

I hate to be too wordy on this, but because hunting in my state is huge and so is the deer population, I am grateful to hunters. I am not someone who could ever shoot a deer. But I have been a passenger when a deer has been hit and also, I was hit by a deer! I was going crazy slow on a county road, and the deer jumped into my car. All she did was take out the area by my head light. Yet, it cost $500.

So, for all those in my state who get a dick on about hunting, I wonder how the would feel about their insurance rates is it was ever abolished. My husband hit a deer on the highway, and it was major. We were 100 miles from home, had to stay in a hotel that night (it happened at ten at night on a Sunday) and then the towing bill was huge. And the truck wasn't even totaled. But many times vehicle/deer collisions result in a totaled vehicle.

Hunting aside, while I don't care to have a firearm in my home, if you're not a criminal you should be allowed to have one. In fact you are allowed. However I think these "Shoot First" laws are dangerous.

Check these out for example:

http://www.shootfirstlaw.org/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/30/AR2005043000735.html

I'm not a bleeding heart type, so I firmly support anyone's right to carry a firearm. I'm all for pointing a piece at a thief who breaks into your home, since nine times out of ten, he'll have one pointed at you. However, since guns are made for the sake of killing/wounding (even if in self-defense), I do think that gun laws ought to always be strict, and that the people who purchase them backgrounds are thoroughly scrutinized.

I remember one story about this 17 year old kid broke into this old woman's house, and she pulled a gun on him, held it to his head, and made him pick up the phone and call the police on himself. You're not going to get that kind of reaction from a security system or whatever. That to me is justice served because he basically (though against his own will) turned himself in, the police got him, he didn't get away, he didn't get the chance to cut and run and hide and then go about breaking and enterting in somebody else's home.