Michael Daly: Hysterical or an idiot?
The flyer for the 135th annual gathering of the National Rifle Association said to “bring your whole family” to see “acres of the latest guns.”
And a man behind the registration desk at the exhibition hall on Friday guaranteed this was no exaggeration.
“You won’t believe it!” he said.
He was right, for to enter the cavernous Midwest Airlines Center was to behold thousands of weapons, many of them handguns that have no real purpose other than to kill people and are produced in far greater numbers than the legitimate demand.
So, police carry handguns because the purpose is only to kill people? Well, folks in the sport of pin shooting, hunting, and a variety of other sports that involve a handgun would probably disagree. And what does he mean by legitimate demand? I figure if I want one and someone makes one, that is legitimate demand.
May 22nd, 2006 at 11:25 am
Correct answer would be C:
Hysterical idiot
May 22nd, 2006 at 1:25 pm
While I agree that sport/competitive shooting and hunting are great, I hope that the pro2A movement doesn’t fall back on them too much. I carry a handgun for one reason and one reason only: To stop a person or an animal from gravely hurting or killing me or someone I feel obligated to protect. (By ‘stop’ I mean that I will use my weapon until either the threat goes away or I can get away from the threat. Killing a bad guy would be an undesired consequence of attaining those goals.)
For my money, all the shooting competitions and hunting could fall off the face of the earth and my Right to self defense (and defense of others) would absolutely stand alone. I know you (and many others) feel the same, but I’m very uncomfortable with pro2A arguments having even the appearance of being predicated upon leisure activities or on statistics (competitions/hunting and ‘but CCW decreases crime’, respectively). Would your support for CCW and gun ownership in general change if suddenly no one wanted to hunt and it was decisively proven that CCW increases crime rates? Mine wouldn’t and so I think we need to be very careful lest future data prove unfavorable and we are defeated by our own arguments.
May 22nd, 2006 at 1:27 pm
I concur but it doesn’t mean their only purpose is killing, which was my point. And I tend to think that there is a huge difference between ‘killing’ and ‘killing in defense.’