Annie Get Your Gun

Over the years, various gun advocate groups have been pushing legislation, at the state and local level, to allow people to carry guns, either openly or concealed. One of the catalysts for this movement has been the shooting incidents at workplaces and on campuses throughout the country. In my home state of Illinois such legislation is being considered, in response to the incident at Northern Illinois University on February 14, 2008.

Today, there was again a tragic gun incident at the workplace, where an overly stressed man killed five of his co-workers before being apprehended. I'm not sure that there will be any calls for more carry laws, as the man was a soldier and the incident occurred outside of Baghdad.

This shows the pure lunacy of these concealed carry laws. In March of 1981, a man pulled a gun on a group of people in Washington D.C. and manged to shoot several of them, despite the fact that many in the group were the best trained and best equipped bodyguards in the world. The man was John Hinckley and the bodyguards were the U.S. Secret Service. But I'm sure that an untrained, ill-equipped person at a college campus could do much better.

I've held an unloaded pistol in my hand, with my palm flat, for about two seconds before returning it to my cop friend. That is my hands on experience with guns. But it shouldn't take a gun expert to know that you pretty much have to have the gun loaded, in your hand, with the safety off and aimed at the evil-doer in order for it to have preventative value.

A gun is an offensive weapon, not a defensive one. The only way to defend yourself with a gun, to ensure that someone doesn't shoot you, is to shoot him first. You know, like the Bush Doctrine. Of course, if that someone doesn't have a gun or their intent wasn't to inflict harm, that would be a big problem for you. You know, like the Bush Doctrine.

But the gun advocates feel that since there are a lot of untoward people with guns (Gee! How did that happen?!?) that they feel the need to protect themselves. Or, they argue that the bad guys won't feel so free to use them if they know that their potential victim is carrying. I think that if thieves thought that their potential victims were carrying, they would shoot first and rob later. You know, like the Bush Doctrine.

Maybe its that they feel they need to belong to a bigger crowd of like-minded thinkers. Happiness is a warm gun. If every man, woman and child was packing, we would feel the love. You get a gun and I'll get a gun honey and we'll all go down to the . . . no, wait that's a line and a pole. If everyone started carrying I think the song going through some people's minds would be Bruce Cockburn's "If I Had a Rocket Launcher."

But I guess the gun advocates possess that innate quality to identify the bad guys. And there seems to be this old wild west idea that you can out draw the bad guy. I don't get it.

Hell, even Wyatt Earp didn't get it. That's why he banned guns in town.