Guns and Safety

I love how how this article frames the argument in exactly the NRA's terms:

Violence hasn't subsided this year, from courthouse shootings in Atlanta and Tyler, Texas, to the school killings at Red Lake, Minn., the most deadly since Columbine. But the reaction has spurred something far different, drawing on the idea that if the victims had weapons they might not be victims.

Right--we'll all be safer if everyone's blazing away, not just the bad guys. Because we know that bullets fired by good guys in "self defense" only hit bad guys--innocent bystanders are protected by an invisible NRA Good Guy shield, just like in the movies.

But I'll meet 'em halfway. If people want to keep as many guns as they want in their homes for personal defense, more power to them. (I recomomend the use of trigger locks, locked gun cabinets, etc., but hey--it's their families, not mine.) But the minute some psychopath or some stupid kid trying to make points with the gangstas or get back at the jocks at school or some paranoid nutcase in traffic wants to carry his/her "right to self defense" into a school, office, highway, or other public place he/she shares with me--that's where I draw the line.

[Notes to Second Amendment absolutists: if the Founding Fathers had really intended an unrestricted right to bear arms, why put a qualifying clause about "a well-regulated militia" at the beginning of the amendment (the only amendment to carry such a qualification)? And if guns are really no more deadly or dangerous to the public at large than knives, clubs, etc., why do all these millions of firearm fans want to carry guns instead of knives, clubs, etc.?]