Cold dead hands (or a lawyer), was Bowling for Columbine

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboy_mn at y...> wrote:

> Those three event simply do NOT spontaneously occur. Oh yes, I 
> forgot to mention the most important part, the gun has to be
> loaded. It must have amunnition in it, and that should never occur 
> unless you are in a situation that actually requires that it be 
> loaded; in the wood, on the rifle range, in defense of your life, 
> etc....

I hope very much that I don't irritate the gun-lovers, but it has 
often occured to me that the advised safety practise of keeping the 
unloaded gun locked in one drawer and the ammunition locked in a 
different drawer kind of interferes with the idea of keeping a gun at 
home for self-defense from people who break into the home during 
the night. If a person is sleeping peaceably in their own bed and 
suddenly awoken by the sound of a burglar or rapist climbing into 
their bedroom window, or worse yet by feeling the rapist grab them, 
they don't have time to unlock two drawers and load the gun. 

Same for carrying a gun for protection against muggers who might 
attack a lone person waiting at a bus stop late at night ... a person 
who has just had the bad guy's gun stuck in their face doesn't have 
time to take the gun out of their briefcase and the ammunition out of 
their pocket and load the gun.

I once read an account in which most of the guns found by the airport 
screeners at DFW back in the 1980s were hand-bag guns carried by 
ladies who had completely forgotten that they were there. It occured 
to me that a gun is not useful for protection if the person carrying 
it doesn't even remember that it's there, or even if she remembers, 
its buried somewhere in all the clutter that weighs down at least MY 
purse.