Joe Huffman points out the irrational feeling many in our society have for guns.
A man in the parking lot adjusting his concealed carry piece is a "gruff, dangerous man" who is ready to kill everyone.
A woman talking on a cell phone from, gasp, out of state has a pistol in her purse with children present!
Etc.
The poster on "The Gun Guys" (who, btw, didn't fool me for a minute when I started reading the gun blogosphere) is either truly terrified of these scenarios or trying to add a bit of melodrama around the scenes to scare the rest of us. The latter is a time-honored technique, honed and polished to a shining turd in the national discourse. Bush and his cronies were very effective and have made their little friends billions of dollars using this tactic. And if you think the left is going to sit by and not learn from their, ahem, little advancements, you're fooling yourself.
As for me, I recognize the fear here. I used to feel it when I saw a gun in public, as I detailed a few posts ago. Guns are equated in the modern media with rapid-fire death. Guns are shown as the "way to solve problems" in 99% of the situations we see portrayed on TV and in the movies. I like a good shoot-em up as much as the next guy, but honestly, the depictions are far from reality. Bam bam! Problem solved and I get the girl. Uh huh.
So consider this:
There are millions of people carrying responsibly each day around you. On your next trip to Starbucks or Nordstrom, consider that someone in your immediate periphery has a legal handgun tucked away for self defense. How many times have you seen a shoot out? Pools of blood at the park or in the restaurant because someone had a gun around children!
Not often. It does happen, and criminals will continue on occasion to perpetrate their evil.
But for the law abiding citizen like myself, that gun is there only to defend myself and my family. And unlike TV, it will only happen as an ultimate last resort. I'll get myself out of most every predicament, even dangerous ones, without having to draw it.
And personally, I've decided that I will only do so to save myself or my family. If I were in a supermarket and a shoot out happened in front, I'd take myself out the back. No heroics. I just don't want to pay the price for mistakes if I shoot the wrong person or a ricochet hits a bystander. If they come at me in said supermarket, different story, but that is my current thinking. I hear that there is a $10K price tag attached to each bullet I shoot. Ouch. I'll only spend that when absolutely necessary.
So unlike that terrible crime drama you shouldn't watch on TV (read a book, please) I won't go looking to solve every problem with a gun. Blood will not run in the streets. Kids are perfectly safe around me (mine are) and that won't change because some misguided person tries to scare everyone else into thinking otherwise.
How about you?
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