I just don't like to think that the only way we can defend ourselves is this, "Well, you can put a hole in me, but I'm going to put a hole in you right back."
Defend is the key word. I'd say probably 99.9% of the people I currently know wouldn't even dream of shooting me, or anyone. So there's no reason to say, "if you do X, I will do X back at you." There's no question X will never happen. There's no need for defense -- in the vast majority of instances, because it's really "we're all law-abiding here."
But -- against those who would shoot/hurt/kill us, I will not give up any and all means at my disposal to defend my life and liberty. I don't see why I should have to.
Yes, of course I would prefer for other ways to 'prevent' any situation from becoming violent. I'd much rather the school shooters be noticed as not entirely there, get whatever help might've headed them off at the pass. But when the guy's standing in front of you ready and willing to kill you, it's too late for prevention, and there's only one cure: he kills you, or you kill him. And I kind of have this thing against dying anytime in the next fifty years, let alone in any circumstance that will prompt the leaving of stupid-ass pastel-colored plushies at some kind of "shrine" with candlelight vigils. Just contemplating that gives me hives.
Anyway. For those school shooters, predators, and rapists -- the cowardly kind of asshole who gets his jollies humiliating, brutalizing, and killing those less powerful -- I suspect the best kind of prevention is the threat of the cure: that their victims might shoot back.
For those who are law-abiding, I guess I always take it for granted that when I'm, say, in line at the grocery store behind a cop with a gun... that his gun will never be pointed at me, so I need have no fear, of him, or the gun.
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Date: 20 Apr 2007 04:21 am (UTC)Defend is the key word. I'd say probably 99.9% of the people I currently know wouldn't even dream of shooting me, or anyone. So there's no reason to say, "if you do X, I will do X back at you." There's no question X will never happen. There's no need for defense -- in the vast majority of instances, because it's really "we're all law-abiding here."
But -- against those who would shoot/hurt/kill us, I will not give up any and all means at my disposal to defend my life and liberty. I don't see why I should have to.
Yes, of course I would prefer for other ways to 'prevent' any situation from becoming violent. I'd much rather the school shooters be noticed as not entirely there, get whatever help might've headed them off at the pass. But when the guy's standing in front of you ready and willing to kill you, it's too late for prevention, and there's only one cure: he kills you, or you kill him. And I kind of have this thing against dying anytime in the next fifty years, let alone in any circumstance that will prompt the leaving of stupid-ass pastel-colored plushies at some kind of "shrine" with candlelight vigils. Just contemplating that gives me hives.
Anyway. For those school shooters, predators, and rapists -- the cowardly kind of asshole who gets his jollies humiliating, brutalizing, and killing those less powerful -- I suspect the best kind of prevention is the threat of the cure: that their victims might shoot back.
For those who are law-abiding, I guess I always take it for granted that when I'm, say, in line at the grocery store behind a cop with a gun... that his gun will never be pointed at me, so I need have no fear, of him, or the gun.