imported post
"You have the potential to end a life, whether right or wrong, and sometimes I think that gets missed on you guys."
I think everybody, not just people who carry guns, have this potential. I could put my four fingers into a tiger paw and jab somebody with a direct punch to their throat just below the larynx and dislocate their trachea and sit back and watch them suffocate to death.
I could strike somebody by pointing all four finger straight out like somebody would do when asking for a handout and break off the Xyphoid Process of the sturnum while grabbing up under the ribs and pulling violently upwards and left or right to puncture a lung and then sit back and watch my victim choke and die from their own blood.
I could take a #2 pencil and shove it violently up in an uppercut-like motion through the bottom of your chin close to the neck dorsally so it penetrates far enough to enter through the soft pallet of your mouth, through your nasal cavity and into the frontal lobe of your brain and then sit back and watch you spasm like a fish out of water until you become motionless.
I could sit here and write a novel about the many many many ways another person can cause serious bodily injury or death to another and then write another novel on the endless number of items one could use to do it.
To me, a gun is just a tool. I choose the gun as my tool because it is the only peice of equipment that a man can carry that is effective enough to deter all other forms of force that a dirt bag would use to bring harm to me or my family. I liken the gun to the US nuclear arsenal. The mere threat of force is enought to prevent disaster in the hopes that the force will NEVER have to be used.
I know you have heard this a million times, but guns don't kill people. People kill people, and like I described above in my examples, there are lots of ways to do it. If guns were all banned tomorrow, and somehow by miracle all the bad guys could no longer get them too, crime would still be the same or worse. The only difference is that the strong will take advantage of the weak, and the method of dealing death and destruction would switch from guns to all of the other methods that are available to human beings. There are still crowbars and baseball bats, knives, swords and our bare hands etc etc etc... the list goes on forever. I have even looked around the shopfloor at work and detailed about 75 to 100 things and ways to use my environment to take out an individual if need be. I actually laughed when I thought about the stuff around me and said to myself that I would actually feel sorry for an armed guy if he went on a rampage there because I could have him lyingin a pool of blood beggin for his life before he could empty his first clip using the 2" thick aluminum plate and the 12" dial calipers sitting next to me.
The moral of the story: Don't think for a second that most of us have not considered the seriousness of carrying a gun. I find that condescending and insulting that you would think the you areone of the only oneswho takes it seriously and that you have to odasity to think that the "irresponsible" posting of a miniscule amount of people on a forum on the internet will threaten your right to bear arms, concealed or otherwise.
I know you stand behind your point of view. I'm just letting you know how I feel about it. We don't have to agree. I know your position. I know I shouldn't pass judegement, but the way you have posted from the beginning has been disappointing. I don't see you entirely as a troll but more of a misguided individual who is passionate about their beliefs. I do question your motives though, as there are plenty of other forums of which you could join out there that share your point of view. You should have figured it out on your first day posting on here that your methods were out of line. This is not saying that the responses of the others were not equally out of line in some cases.
Of course this is all just my opinion. If you are truly an individual of merit, you will not post back to this forum in response to my comments and do as you said you would do and not come back. You have a chance to do the honorable thing and not fire back at me and show that you can also take someone's opinion without going off the handle. Be a man and take it for what it is. As far as I'm concerned, you owe everyone on this forum an apology for your conduct. If anything, I think YOU are the "guy who shouldn't have a gun"
Kevin