Re: Who shall be "allowed" to have a gun?

Lawrence responds further to the Canadian:

You worry about my not being able to square my belief in gun rights with a denial of guns to homicidal maniacs, etc. I have argued that you present an absurdity and claim it is a problem.

We want to be able to protect ourselves against predators, not equip them with weapons against us. I have no problem with denying them guns, but I want address something I didn’t address in my previous note, namely, that my denial my isn’t likely to influence predators. This isn’t one of your concerns, I know, but it is one of mine. If you make a law against owning guns, the law abiding, i.e., the people who need to be protected against predators may give up their guns, but predators won’t. They are by definition NOT law abiding. They won’t care about your law.

This is well known, and I don’t want to revisit it, but I do want to visit an issue I believe you won’t be able to “square.” On the one hand you recognize that predators shouldn’t have guns but, I ask you, why is it that your Big Brother, if he is so worried about your welfare, releases predators back into your society? Some people might chose to forgo buying a gun if Big Brother would keep these predators off their streets. But he won’t. Big Brother worries about the predator’s “right” to be back in society as much as possible. Our own U.S. government has been as bad. Big Brother says “Let us nurture the poor predator because he has never had any breaks in life. He has had a poor childhood, and has spent a lot of time in prisons or mental institutions. What a shame! What a statement about our society that we could let this happen. Let us give the poor predator another chance and after that another.”

As a consequence we have these predators walking our streets, and the sane amongst us want to have as much protection against them as possible. Why won’t Big Brother here in California let us carry guns when we go for a walk at night? Or, why doesn’t Big Brother do his job and eliminate this threat. He should put predators to death – or if he is too squeamish for that, put them in jail without possibility of parole. You, being Canadian, must believe in these irreconcilable positions: 1) that no one should own a gun for self-protection and 2) Predators must be coddled and rehabilitated and released back into society.

Lawrence Helm