George Takei: We cannot be truly free so long as anyone, anywhere can start shooting at us.
Link to tweet
= new reply since forum marked as read
interesting. 
And I'm amused that you seem amused that I'm the one who provided the info, apparently because of my handle, which makes some people think of Westerns. I did have one grandfather who worked as a cowboy for a while, but that was after emigrating from Germany in his teens. And I was born in a town that was a frontier town in the mid-1800s, with a pretty wild, bad reputation and fewer restrictions than Dodge City (something I didn't realize till yesterday, when I googled it after reading that Smithsonian article). My dad, who worked in radio, once interviewed two stars of what I think was then the second-highest-rated TV Western, which was also my favorite show at the time. I was 10 or 11 then, years past wearing cowgirl outfits and playing with toy guns, though I still loved horses.
I hate guns now. I'd like to see the US adopt laws like those of more civilized countries. But I don't know how likely that is. I have some relatives who have concealed carry permits (and they live in states where they had to pay for training first), and some who own what to me sound like arsenals. Overcompensating, IMO. Thank God they're sane IMO and no real risk to people around them. But I would never want to count on them for any sort of protection, either. I doubt they shoot well enough, suspect they'd be likely to hit bystanders if they ever tried to respond to an active shooter.
