This happens to you?
What about your very life?
And as to the second part, how is anything I said untrue or “promoting fear”?
Well it might happen because… because FEAR! Fear of a highly unlikely event that is promoted by the gun industry.
And also because it’s so pathetically easy for criminals to get their hands on guns, thanks to lax regulations promoted by national organizations funded by gun companies in order to maximize profits.
Not yet, thank God. And with any luck it will never happen to me. But make no mistake, it DOES happen to some women. And the difference between those women and me is merely that they are unluckier.
You mean like the fear that your child’s school will be shot up by a deranged maniac? The gun industry is promoting that?
If gun control is reasonable to propose on the basis that mass shootings sometimes occur, then gun ownership proposed on the basis that the Boogeyman is in fact real and sometimes DOES show up at your house is also reasonable.
And how often do you suppose it happens that women get their bedroom doors kicked in in the middle of the night and get assulted? Does this happen to people you know?
In my 51 years, I’ve never been in a situation where I needed a gun. On the other hand, I’ve never had my house burn down either. Shit happens.
I’ve always felt a woman was safer with a big dog and a cell phone than with a gun. Assuming they have a viable 911 system where she lives that is.
And a meteorite may fall out of the sky and bonk me in the head but I don’t walk around wearing a hard hat.
I know a lot of people that are frantically stocking up on semi-automatic and automatic ammunition these days. ( Why yes, I do live in rural Texas. Why do you ask?) Doesn’t make me feel a lick safer or a drop more secure.
And for the record, we own a shotgun and a .22 because we sometimes have to kill things down here on the farm.
So let me get this clear:
You need free and easy access to guns, because deranged lunatics have free and easy access to guns, and you need to protect yourself against them.
How about if you remove the proximate cause, and don’t let deranged lunatics have free and easy access to guns in the first place.
Will that help with their free and easy access to knives, baseball bats, and tire irons?
Will it change the fact that the average male can beat the shit out of the average female even absent a weapon?
And where was I demanding “free and easy access” to guns? I AM demanding that self-defense be seen as a legitimate reason to own one, but that is not the same as demanding free and easy access to them.
(Now if you want to talk about getting rid of men, I’m listening. There’s no question whatsoever that that would in fact be the very best solution to America’s problem with violence, as nearly all violent crime is committed by males. But I don’t think that approach is going to be politically feasible, even if it is absolutely the very best long-term solution.)
Thank you, you summed it up perfectly.
Thank you for your support of gun control.
Oooookay then. Thank you for your logical thoughts. Have a nice day.
I don’t think you got the point, unless you also go to bed with a fireman’s outfit and a fire extinguisher next to your bed. BTW, which do you tink is more likely-your house catching fire, or a robber breaking down your bedroom door intending to do you harm?
You’d be wrong.
Oh, a fire, most certainly. Which is why I DO have working fire extinguishers in my home, as well as smoke detectors (which get their batteries faithfully replaced on a regular schedule) and I’ve rigged up a rope tied to my bedstand which will allow me to safely rapell from my bedroom window down to the patio should I need to get away from a fire.
Fires are rare, but we take precautions against them. If you’re not living a criminal lifestyle, serious attacks are even more rare, but they DO happen on occasion. So why not take precautions against them? For various reasons, I’ve chosen a firearm as one of those precautions. I’m not demanding that anyone else do so, but I am insisting that others respect that choice.
If you’d read any of my posts in the other gun control thread we’ve had popping up recently, you’d know I support rational gun control. That is NOT the same thing as the “run in circles, scream and shout” Assault Weapons Ban or similar such nonsense, or gun control of the “let ban ALL the guns!” approach.
You may laugh (because I was admittedly writing in a snarky fashion), but seriously consider what I said. Why DON’T we consider the problem to be a “young man problem” instead of a “gun problem”? Most violent crime is committed by males between the ages of 12 and 30, after all, and virtually none is committed by females (and the little that is is generally child abuse). While we can’t institute “male control” as in some dystopian feminist science fiction novel, we could seriously ask ourselves why so many young men are turning toward violence. It’s not all testosterone and stupidity; males are males everywhere, but crime levels fluctuate wildly between different societies and different times. It’s cultural. And we know some of the causes: “honor culture” which demands insults be revenged rather than ignored, glorification of violence as the best way to solve problems, need for a father figure leading young males to join gangs, depression and feelings of alienation from the larger society in many of our young people. Those are issues we can and should do a much better job of addressing.
How are you going to do that? Seriously. It sounds simple, but come up with a plan to do just that.
Funny, that’s what I’ve been saying about dismissing the pro-gun side as mentally ill.
You do know I can mirror-image every single accusation against the other side that you can put forward, don’t you?
Beyond “let’s institute restrictive measures and worry later about how to enforce them”, that is.