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(not small change)
In the 1970s, Lily Tomlin developed an iconic comic character she named Ernestine--a telephone clerk who took perverse pleasure from hectoring customers. Her character was a perfect portrayal of the arrogance of AT&T, the monopolistic telephone giant of that day. In one skit on on the TV show, Laugh-In, Tomlin had Ernestine delivering a TV pitch for the corporation:
GUN ADVOCATES IN CONGRESS
The iidea that carrying guns will discourage violence is not just paranoid, it's the adult version of the Wild West fantasies we have as children. Wow! Let's get the bad guys and save the town from certain destruction!! What about the horror story of the kid who finds Dad's gun and brings it to school and shoots some other kid? And Dad, of course, is a policeman who has trained his children to absolutely NEVER touch his guns! But kids like the idea of an equalizer.
Rooms and parks and public places full of people with guns with all the nuts imagining that any minute some bad guy is going to do something bad and we'll do what John Wayne or Roy Rogers would have done (if they were real). It's childhood fantasy in action! Equalizer time!
There's a rule in dramatic writing--if there's a gun on the table, it HAS to be used during the play (or film or whatever). And that's because people are like that. A gun has to be used or what's it for? Guns are not like that drawer full of nuts and bolts that we're sure we'll need someday. No one can strap on a gun without some degree of fantasy that this is the day they'll need it to save the world. And that, in effect, means all these gun-toters with their itchy trigger-fingers are just waiting for somebody to make a wrong move.
That's right. Just like in the Old West! It doesn't take much imagination to picture someone hauling out their six-shooter because someone else has just reached into their pocket in a suspicious way. Triple that for a bar where everyone is buzzed!
The NRA believes in teflon bullets, assault rifles, machine guns and anything else that spits lead. They also believe in minimal rules (read: inconveniences) to prevent nuts from getting them. Until NRA recognizes that this is not the Wild West and nobody is going to take away their guns, they cannot be trusted to make the rules for everyone else.
Kajabla may think he's still in the Old West and someone is waiting around the corner to do something bad to him. But he knows the odds of that are generally pretty small. We should not be increasing the odds of a shootout by arming everyone.
PS: My handle is indeed a remnant of my childhood. But I don't have a need to dress like Roy or carry a six-shooter!
-- posted by ROYROGERS at 3:25pm, September 8, 2009
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You missed the boat on this one...
It is the congress critters and other politicians who are afraid of the People and refuse to allow law abiding citizens to carry in the rare atmosphere of a political office.
Please note that all of the places you derided as being dangerous have previously been off limits to concealed carry holders and have had their tragedies due to mentally unstable folks with guns (or knives or flares) while the People were not allowed to defend themselves.
Yet, no one has ever tried to shoot up the crowd at a gun show where Joe America will certainly be packing. The deterrent value of guns was never better illustrated when a high school teacher retrieved his gun from his car and prevented a student from continuing his rampage. Look it up.
The Second Amendment is as valuable as the rest and it is time the politicians stopped cutting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to shreds.
-- posted by kajabla at 1:41am, September 8, 2009
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GUN ADVOCATES IN CONGRESS
A tombstone in an old, Wild West cemetery in Arizona is chiseled with the last thoughts of a young gunslinger: "I was expecting this, but not so soon."
Many politicians are hot to return to the gun slinging days of yesteryear. The answer to violent crime, they say, is simple: allow all law-abiding citizens to pack heat wherever they go.
In May, Congress passed a law okaying concealed weapons in our national parks. Now, they say, families will feel so much safer knowing that if some nut with an AK47 goes on a rampage at Yellowstone, vacationers from Peoria and Poughkeepsie will spring out of their minivans and gun him down.
Worried about your kid being massacred in math class? Hey, pack a piece in your kid's backpack. Going across state lines on a golfing adventure? Carry your Glock as well as your wedge. You never know who's gonna be in a bar, so always keep your own shots handy. And wouldn't church service be more serene if parishioners felt that reassuring heft of a godly weapon in their pockets? Hordes of politicos wave the Second Amendment while bellowing that Americans should be free to carry concealed weapons everywhere.
Everywhere? Well, they do make one exception: Their own workplace. The thought of an armed citizenry being inside our national and state capitals cause these blowhards to blanch--so they have metal detectors and armed guards to keep gun-toting constituents from entering America's legislative halls.
If they are so adamant that guns belong in our schools and parks, why are they so afraid of the American people bringing them inside Congress?