Thursday, December 20, 2012

Gun Regulation

Here's a great fact filled appeal to reinstate the 1994 ban on Assault Weapons, or even repeal the 2nd amendment.  I heartily support both ideas.

Here's a study from JAMA showing that gun ownership is associated with increased death, rather than reduced death.  This doesn't surprise me at all.

I've never been a table pounder for increased gun regulation (or decreased gun regulation).  Partly because I don't fear death much.   I fear suffering, not death, my death will be your problem not mine...death gets me outta here and then you're on your own, no more help from me, whew!  Further, I don't have any dependents now, and will likely never have children since I'm already 56.  And then partly because I see that the actual numbers show the likelihood of death from guns as far smaller than other risks, such as medical errors or traffic fatalities.  Both of my parents died from medical errors, btw.

On the other hand, now I do have a lady friend, I think about the possibility of our loosing each other, and unfortunately she now has gun kooks living next to the home she owns, some neighbor kid having recently shot the windows out of a car using a real gun.  (Ever heard of gun locks, guys?)

And as an outlier, I've had more-guns-are-the-answers outliers as my friends, not that I've ever agreed with them either, but I've heard their rants.  I'm so indifferent to guns myself that I wouldn't care if Uncle Sam took them all away, and used them to cast a 1000 ft statue of James Brady.  I have no illusion that individual citizens are going to have any fighting chance against the state.  I've never seen any violent movement in the USA that's been up to any good.  As I see it, mass political movements are the only way to progress.   If violence originates within (or even next to) such movements, it is always used to discredit them.  It's not unknown that often instigators of such violence may even be intending that effect...as they are false flaggers...sometimes even undercover law enforcement agents.  But it's also possible they are simply nuts.  I'm thinking Black Bloc protesters breaking windows in Seattle 1999, a pattern almost predictable now.  Almost all of the demonstrators were opposed to such tactics.  Black Bloc was, and usually is in any demonstration, a tiny minority of nuts, likely riddled with agents provocateurs.

I don't own a gun, and will avoid doing so.  I did once buy a gun.  I bought a gun for the specific purpose of killing myself.  Or at least that was what I was trying to do.  Fortunately for you, heh, and me, the state where I lived at the time, California, had a "cooling off" gun regulation.  I put in my order and had to wait 5 days.  Well, 5 days later I had indeed cooled off.  I took the gun home anyway.  Not wanting to tempt fate and my own unpredictable mind, I never bought any ammunition.  I bought a top quality one and I loved to feel the silky smoothness of the never-fired mechanism.  Finally I sold it to a gun collector, figuring he couldn't do any more damage with my gun than the ones he already had.









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