I've made that choice several times over the course of my life, Georges. I have a few scars on my knuckles, but none on my face. And when Sam was proudly posting pics of his guns in that other thread, I thought to myself,
"what a nice little collection." I'm an NRA Life Member and have been shooting since I was a child. But I do not sit around and obsess about guns or violence, or think about how I could take someone out. That would be a sign of mental illness. Now, I am a bit off (several ex girlfriends would likely testify to that). But I'm not clinically crazy. So I don't get all goofy about firearms or using violence. If a problem comes, I'll deal with it... just as I always have... just as my father did and his father before him. But as I was taught, being a
MAN is knowing how to handle a situation without having to act like Dirty Harry. Any punk can pull a pistol. Any punk can throw a punch. But it takes a
MAN to handle a situation without anybody getting hurt,
if it can be avoided.
Actually defending yourself is one thing, and that's fine. But we have too many Billy the Kid wannabes in this country now. And just like this wannabe cop, Georgie Zimmerman, they either end up being stretched out in the church or stretching somebody else out. I hate them all because they make sane, reasonable gun owners look bad. It's the same reason I hate ignorant rednecks from the south. I have a bit of an accent and I used to be self-conscious about it, because having a southern accent made a lot of other people assume I was as dumb, racist or as simple as the rednecks they'd met or heard about. If it was within my power, I would wipe these inbred, lowlife people from the face of the earth. And by the same token, the paranoid freaks among gun owners do the same thing to those of us who aren't squirrely in the head.