[color:"red"]WARNING: This conversation is about to veer into some serious politics and I may need to kill this thread if it gets out of hand. [/color]

Disclaimer: I'm a life NRA member. My opinions are my own, not that of Equipped.org

Quote:
Anti-gun proponents scream for more gun restrictions when in fact the restrictions cause more deaths than they solve. Just look how well these laws have worked in NYC and DC. How many gun crimes are committed in areas with an abundance of legal gun owners?


I live in Pennsylvania. We have very moderate gun laws - i have a CCW permit, getting it was basically a matter of asking for it. You can get and use machine guns in PA with only a little fuss. While PA isn't as "gun freindly" as other states (like Vermont & Alaska), it's not anything like Illinois or New Jersey.

The point of this is that the patchwork of gun laws in the USA, coupled with the fact that there's maybe 200 million guns out there already means that if tomorrow we instituted Washington DC style gun bans it would be 100 years - probobly more - before the guns that were already in circulation stopped working, and if they stopped making ammo tomorrow it would be scores of years before the supplies in place ran out. So we're an armed society - but we're no longer gettng the other half of an armed society - the polite society. The latest outrage was for revenge for something that happened 20 years ago. What twisted mind holds a grudge for that long is bot for me to understand, all I need to know is that people like him are out there, everywhere and we'll never eradicate them. So I like to be prepared for them. I don't think that it's rational to hope nothing bad will happen and with that hope to not prepare for something bad - "just in case". Human history is a catalog of atrocities of man against man, wars over fine points of manners, anger over issues that are profound and absurd. In this context, I see school shootings as nothing less or more than the continuation of bad behaviors that have gone on for millenia.

To the point of "soft targets" like schools - of course predators strike where it's easiest. The question is how hard do we want & need to make our culture. I don't want Iraq to be the model of my future, and I don't want the UK to be either. I wish I were smarter, I'd give a terse, intelligent answer.