Should America work towards becoming a gun-free Country?

[The Straight Story]

263. I don't really agree with your view

" But it's kind of like getting over the addiction to cars and providing good public transport."

Public transportation in some big city areas is great and a good goal. Not going to work in Montana, Alaska, and many other states except in small pockets. Which is an admirable goal but it does not apply to a great many in this country.

" I am talking to people who feel that the world is so dangerous they need to carry lethal weapons for self-defense."

I ain't getting younger and my health isn't getting better. In the hood I live in I wouldn't stand much of a chance during a robbery or with thugs on the streets here. People fighting right in front of my home with ball bats, machetes, and on occasion guns flashing. Cops are slow to get here. I don't own a gun now but eventually I wouldn't mind having one around here. I have memorized the number to the police dispatcher here (not 911). The violence around here is fueled by drugs (pill heads, pot, crack). Fact of the matter is the world can be a dangerous place and being able to defend oneself when not in great health isn't something I think people should be made to feel bad about.

"It's not only the grim statistics, the daily carnage, it's the selling of a commodity to a gullible fearful public that does in no way make people safer, under false pretenses. "

The fact that you know someone owns a gun can be a deterrent. That won't show up in stats. I know most the people here our small hood (about 86 homes) and the druggies here know it as well. Don't work much for those who come here from elsewhere. One neighbor down in the court had someone breaking in and he got his gun and scared them off. Elderly man who lives alone. He called the cops and they took a report and nothing more was done. I have called the cops who caught people breaking into abandoned homes here and they have done nothing, no report, no arrests, no follow ups.


"Americans are so cautious, suspicious, untrusting, basically paranoid. "

Yes we are - and this is fueled by people in both parties. See something, say something campaigns. Can't carry bottled water on planes. And a news media that generally shows one side of an issue when it comes to guns. You have over 45 million stories a day of people who own guns who don't do anything at all bad with them but we shown the few and told to fear the many.

Growing up our biggest fear was stranger danger and the Soviets. Everyone not your relative or neighbor was a potential kidnapper. There would be a nuclear war any day unless the us government had more money for military and pulled odd policy stunts.

Self defense is a natural concern and the ability to level the playing field is a good idea. Some may take that to an extreme and carry a gun everywhere (and personally I could see that in this area where people are selling drugs at the gas station and there have been shootings and the like there) but overall most I know generally keep a gun at home. My dad never carries his - but he did take it out last year to the front of the house during a big dust up with the druggies who were parked in front of our house and shouting at the neighbors. We also had a mini riot here with about twenty people swinging bats, one (maybe more) had a gun they tossed when the cops finally showed up, and this was two doors down from us. A gang of people in the street beating each other up over stupid shit.

My brother and two of my nieces have been robbed at gun point, my nephew was at the gas station when a dealer shot at someone. My one niece has been robbed twice, once at work and once outside a store where she was pistol whipped and her car stolen (she got it back).

You want a little less crime? Don't worry about the guns so much as the drugs/addictions/mental issues that go unchecked. The day after that little riot the guy whose house the lady kicked in the door was down here talking to me. A deputy pulled up and talked to him and I about it all (the cops all know him....) and the guy asked why he didn't just shoot her when she kicked in the door. He couldn't own a gun as he is felon but he did go buy a black powder pistol after that (which he can own).

The cops ain't coming to save you - they are coming to clean up the mess and take a report that will be buried under a mountain of other ones.

Guns are tools just like anything else. You want crime to drop get to the root of the problem. I have watched this area go from a safe and decent place growing up to a drug infested and crime ridden hell hole - and it wasn't guns that did it.