jamstigator
Mar 2007
Registered
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Guns
I owned an AR-15 when I was in the Army. I bought it mainly so I could use that for qualifications, then while everyone else was stuck cleaning their M-16s for hours, I'd just turn in my dirty AR-15 and hit the bars. I later sold it, for about what I paid for it, to another soldier who used it for the same reason (laziness).
Since I got out of the Army, I've not seen much reason to buy a gun. If someone breaks into the house, I have all kinds of advantages over them: I know the layout, even in complete darkness, and I know where I keep various items that could be used as weapons in a pinch (fireplace pokers, baseball bats, knives, etc). Odds are, an intruder wouldn't get even one shot at me, and if he were fortunate enough to get one shot off, if he missed, he'd be history before he got off a second shot.
I played a game once with a Special Forces guy during the invasion of Grenada. He thought he was all bad-ass, so we made a bet: whoever could find the other person asleep and put a knife to his throat won a hundred bucks. His problem was, he wasn't committed to winning, or if he was, he wasn't really bright. It took me three days (sleeping on top of buildings, inside concrete tubes, inside an oil tank, and so on) but in the end, he woke up with my knife to his throat and I didn't remove it until he'd handed me the hundred bucks. The best weapon a person has is his mind, and to a lesser degree training, not any gun.
Personally, I think it was stupid to allow every Tom, Dick and Harry to own a gun. However, there are now so many guns in circulation (hundreds of millions, if not billions) that it's now effectively impossible to realistically ban them. So I accept that one of the downsides of living in the U.S., compared to various other more civilized nations, is the fact that in the U.S. your odds are much higher of getting shot, or having a family member get shot. Every country has pluses and minuses. That's one of the minuses for the U.S., and there's not really anything that will change that at this point, whatever the laws might be.
I still see no need to own a gun myself though; I'm plenty dangerous enough without one if there is ever again a time when I need to be dangerous. Guns are the calculators of violence. If you can't handle basic math, a calculator is a useful crutch. Likewise, if you aren't particularly adept at committing acts of violence on others, guns are a useful crutch.
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