Posted by Phil Lee (208.19.133.132) on May 24, 2001 at 12:52:
To paraphrase a quote, "if the sole purpose of guns is to kill and injure people, mine are defective and have been so for many years." The truth is that crimes are defeated every day by decent people who wish to harm no one. Most will use a gun to stop a criminal attack without firing a shot. Typically, in less than one of 1000 such defensive uses is it necessary to fire a gun to stop an attack.
Frailty increases with age and guns become increasingly important to people with grey hair. This grey-hair hopes that I never have to use a gun to defend myself, but the police have not assigned a bodyguard to me. So, I must prepare to do what I can for myself. Unarmed resistance to a 25 year old thug is out of the question for me and I refuse the idea that I should prepare to do nothing but to submit to whatever a thug might wish to do to me.
Gun control laws are counterproductive because they protect criminal activities by discouraging decent people in owning their best means of self protection. In order to pass gun control measures, the proponents of controls target and vilify gun owners. Such actions are intended to dehumanize us so that our interests can be ignored. On behalf of grey-haired gun owners everywhere I request that you please make an effort to see us for the decent people we are, and not for the objects we own.