Wednesday, January 30, 2013

I'm not anti-gun. I'm just not pro dumbass.

The title is a quote from Steve Mostyn, a gun owner, who is a friend of Paul Begala from page 2 on Inbox of the Time Magazine February 4th 2013.

I couldn't have said it better. And I must admit as safe as I was trained to be at age 8 with my own .22 rifle in 1956 there were times when my father had to lift my barrel and I shot once in the air as I was shooting at jack rabbits in the deserts out near Mojave and Lancaster, California on a weekend outing from Glendale  then so I didn't shoot my 13 year old male cousins who had stopped shooting and had decided in their excitement to run in front of me after the jack rabbits so they could get a better shot. And later that day at Red Rock Canyon (within an hour or two of there by car they were accidentally shooting in my direction coming up a gorge while shooting at more jack rabbits. So I had to lay down on the ground so I wouldn't get shot accidentally by my cousins because they didn't see me there yet. Remember a .22 long rifle cartridge has a range of a mile or more when shot through a rifle.(I'm not sure if it is the same through a pistol because of the shorter barrel. I don't think it stays at the same velocity through a pistol that far). So, I could see where they were because of the bullets flying over my head but they couldn't see me yet.

This still happens today among gun enthusiasts and many are not as lucky as me. It also happens when boys, men, women or girls show off their weapons to friends and don't realize that either they or their parents or some family member left a bullet in the chamber.

So, even though all of us were trained within an inch of our lives then to be safe with guns, and it was about being men at that time, we still got excited sometimes and this made us more dangerous than most adults who weren't drinking alcohol at the time with loaded guns.

So, Yes. I'm not anti-gun. I'm just not pro dumbass.

The problem now in addition to safety if you have a gun is now also becoming a little similar to abortion in that it is now 'Gun Rights' versus 'Gun Control'.

So, if you don't want anyone to have a gun for any purpose legally and want only criminals to have guns, you are for "Gun Control".

And Likewise if you are for defending yourself and your family against all comers like it has been since 1776 historically in the U.S. then you are for "Gun Rights".

So, this is the problem with the present dialog people are engaging in all around the U.S.

"Is it a right to own a gun or is it something to be controlled and done away with?"

My personal point of view after having traveled all over the world is that personal gun ownership is the only reason we don't live in a dictatorship already here in the U.S.

What people don't seem to understand is just how fragile our democracy actually is. It is mostly people who haven't traveled the world who think "Gun Control" is actually a useful answer. Whereas people who have traveled likely understand more that when Americans don't have the legal right to own guns to protect themselves and their nation we will be living in a dictatorship. It might not be the same decade but I can "predict with certainty" that within 50 years of us losing the legal right to own a gun to protect our families and country there will "ONLY" be dictatorships in the world at that point and nothing else left.

And then all the gun control people will realize finally what they have done by not realizing how important to the ongoing existence to our democracy or "Any Democracy" on earth is  the right to own a gun to protect your family and country from any threat both foreign and domestic.

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