On Sun, 16 May 2004 19:08:27 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

John, a man who cannot -legally- defend his own (or a family member's)
life is not at all "free" in my opinion.

Never mind the legally, what about the competently?

In the military I had to qualify with rifle, sub-machine gun and
pistol every year although I was not a ground-pounder. I have fired a
browning automatic pistol many times but I do not consider myself
competent to handle a handgun in a face-to-face shoot out. That's
police work, and a good number of cops aren't all that skilled at it
either.

To me the idea that every individual can be his own armed guard is
scary. People can become homicidally violent for all sorts of reasons,
and reach for the nearest weapon-- a knife, a baseball bat, a broken
bottle. That's bad enough. But when you seed your environment
liberally with cheap handguns just because arms manufacturers want to
make a buck, and then sell even more guns for people to use to defend
themselves against the millions of weapons already out there, what
have you really done? You've added to the efficiency of the
homicidally bent, that's all you've done. Every individual you sell a
gun to is guaranteed to remain sane, sober and capable of making life
or death decisions under conditions of extreme stress you think?

I don't!

To say nothing of the kind of person who can't see why he shouldn't be
able to own things like fully automatic weapons, hand grenades,
anti-tank rocket launchers, flamethrowers and suchlike toys.