Sunday, March 28, 2010

Where do They Come From?

Here's an old but in a way, timeless article from the Ethical Spectacle. Link provided by Laci.

Like most people, I have always associated the NRA with the slogan, "If guns are illegal, only criminals will have guns." In a time when many Americans, NRA members and otherwise, apparently sleep with loaded guns beside their beds, waiting for the day they may have to defend themselves against an intruder, the NRA slogan conjures the image of the attack occurring....but only the intruder has the gun.

The more you look into it, though, the more it appears that the intruder and the homeowner have both bought their gun from the same person. An illegal gun in the United States, unlike an illegal drug, is not one smuggled into the country or made in a basement laboratory; it is always a gun that began its odyssey with a legal sale by a gunshop to somebody, somewhere.

Is the NRA aggressively protecting our right to arm ourselves against felons, or is it mainly protecting the people who arm the felons-- and starting an arms race, in which the rest of us then get sucked up?

Here's another question which concerns me even more, on a personal level, since I am a New Yorker. Since all the murder weapons on the streets here are legally purchased in the South: why should I, my wife and my kid have to live frightened so that you can have your gun hobby?
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

7 comments:

  1. “why should I, my wife and my kid have to live frightened so that you can have your gun hobby?”

    You don’t have to be afraid.

    -TS

    ReplyDelete
  2. If the guns in the hands of both the homeowner and criminal come from the same place, then can't be illegal in one person's hand while legal in another's. They are either both legal or both illegal.

    Cocaine isn't legal in certain hands. It's illegal in all hands. Thus the drug analogy fails.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "Since all the murder weapons on the streets here are legally purchased in the South: why should I, my wife and my kid have to live frightened so that you can have your gun hobby?"

    Why should I have to give up my gun hobby because you, your wife, and kid live frightened?

    ReplyDelete
  4. "why should I, my wife and my kid have to live frightened so that you can have your gun hobby?"

    I don't live frightened. Sounds like a personal problem. If gun control fails there, what makes them think it will be successful elsewhere? Silly.

    ReplyDelete
  5. “why should I, my wife and my kid have to live frightened so that you can have your gun hobby?”

    First off, to correct the glaring error, that should read:

    “why should I, my wife and my kid have to live frightened so that you can have your Constitutional right?”

    ReplyDelete
  6. “why should I, my wife and my kid have to live frightened so that you can have your gun hobby?”

    Assumes facts not in evidence:

    That depriving people of their "gun hobby" will greatly improve the situation that causes him to "live frightened."

    ReplyDelete
  7. “An illegal gun in the United States, unlike an illegal drug, is not one smuggled into the country or made in a basement laboratory;”

    And if all guns were illegal, that is the way criminals would get them; smuggled into the country and made in basement machine shops.
    The question also begs to be answered; if I give up my gun hobby, and this guy still lives his life in fear, do I get my rights back?

    -TS

    ReplyDelete