Reply #88: okay [View All]

[iverglas]

It's not the guns themselves you should be concerned with. It's the "nut behind the wheel" - Improperly trained, stupid, or evil people with guns.

It's just that if we write it this way:

Improperly trained, stupid or evil people

-- leaving off the "with guns" -- one doesn't have to be nearly as concerned about them. The evil ones, maybe. The improperly trained and stupid ones, just not at all.

Take the firearm out of the equation and out of their hands, and an "improperly trained" person, in the identical situation, is harmless. The stupid person is virtually harmless, unless s/he manages to knock a bookshelf over on your head or something. (Here speaketh the person who pulled a bookshelf over onto her head, and was left having to try to assure the handsome young ER doctor that "bookshelf" was not a euphemism for "abusive spouse".)

So as far as I can tell, what we'd need to be concerned about would be a fraction of what we now need to be concerned about, if the people in question didn't have ready access to firearms.

There will always be moronic 18 year olds who'd be happy to sit around and drink beer and play with guns. And some of them will always have idiotic grandfathers who give them the guns to play with. And other people will have small children who will be eager to play with their parents' firearms, and so on and on.

But if the people with the firearms could not legally take possession of the firearms without first having a firearms licence, and if they had to successfully take the appropriate training course before they could get that licence, and if their ownership of the firearm were registered and the law required that when not in legitimate use it be stored unloaded and separately from ammunition ... well, a few lives might be saved, at no cost worth mentioning, to anyone.

(I mean, hey, I've got a computer program for that "registration" angle that you can have, cheap. Ha ha, a Liberal Party boondoggle joke. Have you heard the one that's playing out in Parliament this season, all about how the Liberals paid millions and millions of dollars to some of their cronies in Quebec for doing nothing at all? If you ever have a few mil to spare, the Liberals can always put it to good use.)

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