On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 20:10:15 -0400, Kirk Gordon
wrote:

All true. All reasonable. All agreable to me. But my basic
premise was that you would NOT be safer if everyone had the same skills
as you have. (The same discipline might be a good thing. Or the same
kind of focus and energy. But not just the capacity to do violence.)
If everyone DID have the same skills, then you'd be no better off than
someone without skills, fighting another just like him.

If each of us had the same skill levels..no one would initiate
violence against another, as it would be mutual suicide, barring good
luck. Unfortunately...this is not something we need concern ourselves
with. Someone is always better, faster or has more luck. Hopefuly it
will be the victim, not the perpetrator.

Or, if someone who wanted to threaten you could somehow grow another
arm, or a bigger fist, or otherwise up the ante and gain advantage, then
your abilities would still not protect you.

Skill and treachery works a fair amount of time.

That's the trouble with guns. The capacity to kill is too easy to
acquire. If it took years of training just to pull a trigger
successfully, then I wouldn't be nearly as concerned.

I can kill you just as well with a #2 pencil, or a rolled up
newspaper, or the steak knife on the kitchen counter, or even the
broom beside it. Those are not skills that take any appreciable time
to learn.

Your own choice
of defense strategies is, by nature, less likely to fall into the hands
of any fool who gets angry. And, of course, you can't grow an extra
arm. The basics of human anatomy define the limits to which any
hand-to-hand combat can be escalated. Not so with firearms. If your
opponent has a hand gun, you get a rifle. If he has a rifle, you get
something automatic. And so on. And so on. Forever.

Wrong. You assume both parties survive the initial encounter, to be
able to escalate it.

I respect what you're saying. Completely. But I don't think it's a
good analogy for the problem/question of owning and using firearms.

KG

The only problem with owning firearms, its safe usage, and the common
sense to when to use it or when not to.

Gunner


"Anyone who cannot cope with firearms is not fully human. At best he
is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not
make messes in the house."
With appologies to RAH..