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 *****. But I do not sit around and obsess about guns or ********, 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 ********. If a problem comes, I'll deal with it... just as I always have... just as my ****** did and his ****** 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 ******. 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 *** 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 **** them all because they make sane, reasonable *** owners look bad. It's the same reason I **** 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 *** owners do the same thing to those of us who aren't squirrely in the head.