From brettk at unica-usa.com Tue May 4 12:15:46 1999
I want to respond to Jordan who said I should buy a gun, learn
how to shoot it, etc., before making any pronouncements on the
gun control issues.
I'm glad you got back to me on this; but you seem to have forgotten to check exactly why I asked you to buy a gun. It wasn't so that you could defend yourself, or even that you could then have an "informed opinion"! It was in response to this that you wrote:
People are more tightly packed and come in contact with each
other constantly. There are plenty of frustrations to deal
with on a daily basis (traffic jams, lines at the supermarket,
job related stuff, whatever). Plus any crazies can kill that
many more people if they snap.
It seemed to me that you were claiming (and below it, you say "I don't have the facts, but ..." which -- and call me a glutton for fun, but -- always makes me want to post, over-quota or not) that if there were so many more guns (especially presumably in CCW states, which by the way, even given incredibly simple terms only generate 2-4% of the population even filling out the paperwork involved to do so -- I suspect this has more to do with paperwork than guns; further, as anyone who carries will tell you, it's an incredible burden to do so [sweaty, heavy, uncomfortable holsters; additional clothing, like a windbreaker, on hot days; you can forget having a beer at the ballpark; etc. All the same, I think it should be available to those who qualify and want to) we'd see lots more carnage for silly things like traffic altercations.
I suggested you buy a gun to see if you underwent the transformation that you seem to think 60M US-ers have gone through, into hot-tempered irrational shoot-first-ask-questions-later lunatics.
Really, from reading that, you'd think we were living in some kind of bad dream version of Westworld.
---
Anyway:
I decided there was no way I'd ever buy a gun for myself, at
least not for defense. Perhaps after a good training course
I'd feel differently, but I was a _LOUSY_ shot.
Shooting sports are just like any other sports: patience and attention will give a passable capability to just about anyone who doesn't have a predisposition to failure. You probably needed training wheels as a kid, too. On the other hand, I know plenty of Swiss who, despite their years of quazi-militia military training still couldn't hit the water falling out of a boat.
If you ever change your mind, maybe as an added incentive you could ask Kelley for a lesson! :)
/jordan