The Liberal Case for Gun Ownership

[unixronin]

Linked for anyone on my F-list who hasn't seen it yet:  The Liberal Case for Gun Ownership

"Terrierman" gets it.

[...] Rudy Giuliani never rode the City Bus at midnight either.  Neither did Mitt Romney.  Or Sarah Brady.  And all of them are Republicans.

The point here is that the gun issue is not about Democrats vs. Republicans, or liberals vs. conservatives, or even rural residents vs. urban residents.

It's about something deeper and more important than that: it’s about empathy and respect and tolerance.

It’s about recognizing that not everyone goes to nine-to-five jobs in air conditioned offices while commuting down safe suburban streets.

It’s about recognizing that not everyone can afford to have an ADT alarm system installed in their house.

And, most important of all, it’s about not living in fear of the fact that people who look different from you, who think different from you, and who pray different from you, may have rights too.

And not just First Amendment Rights, but Second Amendment rights too, including the right to protect their house and home from invasion and robbery.

An excellent point he makes, that bears repeating and considering, especially if it's news to you:  Not only do armed citizens shoot and kill twice as many criminals every year as do police — they do so with one fifth of the error rate.  To put that another way, if you're a criminal, you're half as likely to be shot and killed by a police officer as by an armed "civilian" ... but if you're an innocent bystander, you're two and a half times more likely to be mistakenly killed by a police officer than by an armed citizen.

Comments

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

i am told that it's statistically more probably to be shot by a fellow officer, than a criminal. it happens a lot.

the police DO shoot a fair number of civilians, and kill them, that weren't involved in whatever was "going on". it's kinda spooky.

and you can bet a red cent that in washington DC, quite a few of those people who aren't supposed to have guns, have them. i believe kennedy was pretty famous on that front. most of "those guys" also have security that the average person could only dream of. armed guards and the whole shebang.

there is little to nothing stopping a would be mass murderer from walking into an office park, and meandering around the cube shooting people. certianly the people working there aren't suppoed to be armed. there are rarely guards or emergency alarm systems; and 99% of those guards that do exist are not armed in anyway (even tasers). pretty bad. you're probably less able to defend yourself at work (esp if you're a techy), than on your own property.

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[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Workplace and school shootings take place precisely because most workplaces and schools are "unarmed victim zones".

There was some rabid anti-gun journalist back in the 90s who lived in Washington D.C. who got in quite a bit of trouble because he went after some intruders with a handgun he wasn't supposed to have. Hypocrite.