…to stop a bad guy with a gun”…

You’d expect a shopping mall in Texas, gun nut capital of the Oikumene, where concealed weapons carry is legal if not mandatory, would be perfectly prepared to take out a mucker with an assault rifle. But no one stepped forward, did they?

Not that I blame them. If I had my subcompact 9mm tucked away in an ankle holster I wouldn’t be eager to engage a nutter wearing body armor and packing an automatic rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. I know if I had been there, and so equipped, I would have run the other way, not confronted the guy with the hardware. Besides, can you imagine what would happen if the cops showed up and there was a whole platoon of amateur handgunners shooting it out with Rocky Raccoon?

Sure, sure, I suppose somewhere, sometime in Battlefield America a legally armed citizen has dispatched a criminal before he could carry out his full rampage, but I’m sure it has no statistical significance. Carrying a legal concealed firearm makes sense if you are engaging in potentially risky behavior, like having to go to the ATM in the middle of the night, or driving to a sketchy part of town to rescue someone stranded there with a breakdown; but arming the populace is, in general, not a good idea.

I don’t believe guns should be banned. In our fucked up gun culture, we must be free to protect our lives and our property. We have every right to be armed in our homes, or in our conveyance (car, boat), or in a lawless, remote wilderness area. But no one has the right to carry a gun into MY house, or into a public place where I am peaceably assembled with others. That is intruding into my constitutional right to be safe. I don’t know which amendment that is, but it trumps the 2nd.

I propose that the first gun control measure to be instituted should be that no firearms be allowed outside one’s home unless they are unloaded, dismantled and cased while they are in transit to an authorized shooting place (hunting ground, firing range, or wilderness area).

Gun fetishists need to be indoctrinated that indulging their sick hobby around people who don’t share it is risky, and potentially expensive, not just bad manners. Everyone speeds occasionally, but that doesn’t mean speed limits should be abolished.

This may not stop the muckers altogether, but I bet it will reduce them substantially.