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.

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.

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. 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.

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

Everyone should be prepared for eventualities, some of them remote.
If you decide that you will exercise your right of self defense you
should at least have some idea of how you will respond if attacked.
Such thinking is the jump start you may need if and when the time ever
comes, it is not indicative of foolishness, and will not of itself
bring on conflict.
Gunners posting was meant to be humorous, and also there were some
important truths about conflict. Mainly that we should be better
prepared than any adversary when the time of conflict comes, I don't
think that is bad advice.