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Bee
It is interesting to note that some of my friends who are lifelong soldiers, or law enforcement individuals, just don't feel comfortable without their sidearms...I wonder if I will feel that way about my pack after a while....!!!!!!
There are different mentalities around the world regarding guns. Israel, for example, has a limitation on numbers of guns owned; a gun is licensed to a particular person (not a permit process) and that license can be withdrawn, and there is legal liability for gun use except in certain situations. I believe, for example, theft of the gun results in liability to the owner for negligently allowing that theft to occur; guns carried cannot legally be used to stop an event without clear personal threat ( as a fleeing bank robber). It appears that Isreal, as other countries, has a more utilitarian view of gun ownership. (I'm sure I will be corrected if I got this wrong)
In this country, almost any moron can obtain a gun without even a pretense of need, skill, fitness or a background check (sales or transfers between individuals). There are many who have imbued guns with power and prestige as an expression of capacity for self-defense and as the final arbitrator of any disagreement. There are many who have an almost religious obsession with the Second Amendment and seem to lack any sort of balanced view of appropiate personal use of guns. I cannot think of a single gun regulation or gun safety law PROMOTED by the NRA. That suggests to me a lack of appreciation that guns are inherently dangerous and certain actions need to be taken in a civil society to reduce risks associated with them.
This whole issue is like an insidious, slowly replicating but deadly virus spreading inexorably through the population that will be hard to stop and will, at some point, be seen as a tragic, fatal illness in American life.
The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan