Quote:
Originally Posted by Ibram
My only question is, what is it about guns that make perfectly reasonable people into complete ASSholes?
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I become a complete asshole in a gun thread because I treat people as they treat me. In the “do you own a gun?” thread, Clodfobble and I had a civil discussion – we disagreed without name-calling or insults. I acknowledged that she was right and I was wrong when she pointed out that I would try to change the minds of the jungle tribe that sacrifices children. We didn’t change each other’s minds, but we remained civil. I think that most pro-gunners view anti-gun people as being weak – they think we’ll run away from a nasty attack. I won’t.
People who would use a handgun on another human being are inherently aggressive. They have to be, since the intention of having a handgun is, at its most extreme conclusion, to kill someone who threatens them, someone near them, or their stuff. They also have to be inherently paranoid, because they live their lives with the anticipation that something bad will happen to them. So why do they turn into Assholes? Because they don’t want to admit that they’re scared, or that they would actually take someone’s life. Beyond those reasons, it’s hard to defend having a handgun. And when their other rationalizations fail, they resort to what they naturally do – they shoot the opposition with names, instead of bullets. They insult, belittle and ridicule their opponents, like pointing a handgun at them. When you are pointing a handgun at someone, you don’t have to talk anything out, do you?
Most handgun-owning Cellarites justify owning a handgun by saying they need it to protect themselves, and their stuff, in their home. Some have other reasons, some won’t state their reasons, but predominately, that’s the justification. A handgun is not the most effective way to protect a home or stuff. [Someone] scoffed at floodlights and bars on the windows, but when they’re used with alarms and good locks, they will keep her safer from a potential intruder than having a handgun inside the house. If you don’t secure your perimeter, you could be woken out of a sound sleep being poked with the barrel of a gun. How would your handgun help in that situation? If you answer your door, and the intruder pushes through and beats your brains in as you try to get to your handgun, how did it help? If you answer the door with your handgun in your hand, loaded, with the safety off, or sleep with it in the same condition, under your pillow, bad things can happen. It would be easy to accidentally discharge the weapon, or for a child to get hold of it, with all the negative consequences of that, or for the intruder to get possession of it and use it on the owner or the owner’s family.