"Don Foreman" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 03:35:14 -0500, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


Anyone who is honest about this issue has to realize that the whole carry
issue is based on at least 75% emotion and maybe 25% reality.

I think you've pegged it, Ed, re the gun matter whether carried or
not. It's largely emotion, including fear or at least anxiety, on
both sides of the issue. Some are just anxious about guns period.
Some want to tell others what they should or may do. This need is
often inversely proportional to how much power they feel they have
over their own lives and fates. Some are anxious that others would
deprive them of their guns, because there are clearly those who would
do so if they could.

I enjoy my guns. I intend to keep them. I enjoy shooting them, and I
enjoy them for the precision objects they are. I keep them secured.
I and they pose absolutely no threat or danger to any non-criminal, so
I would be quite displeased to have others deprive me of my objects
and activity to make themselves feel better.

I feel about the same way. As I used to say to a rabid anti-gun artist in an
ad agency I worked for, "what do MY guns have to do with YOUR crime
problem?"


Reason and rational thinking is often ineffective in addressing
emotion because folks aren't easily persuaded to think differently
than they feel. So, TMT pushes this hotbutton every few months to
enjoy the ****storm of rhetoric, argument, flames, smoke and feathers
it always produces.

The fact that it draws so much flak is a good indicator that it isn't a
rational issue to begin with, even though nearly everyone reaches for
rationalized arguments to defend their position. When you subject them to
the scrutiny of facts on the ground, they don't usually come out very well.

However, one's feeling of security is a personal thing, as you say, and a
legitimate reason to make one decision or another -- unless it's so far out
that it winds up impinging on someone else's rights or sense of security.
When it does, we have these conflicts. And that's what the conflicts a
battles about who is going to be empowered over whom, and the resulting
sense of security one feels or doesn't feel.

--
Ed Huntress