Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

A couple things:

Firstly, it's not possible for people to unintentionally shoot others with properly secured guns. Responsible gun owners (a silent and often overlooked majority) are never in the news, because their kids never grab their guns when they aren't looking. It's easy, cheap, and well documented. Securing guns is not a hard thing to do. It is the unthinking few who cause all the news and political attention.

You may live in an area where you never have to confront a gun weilding assailant, but many of the rest of us are not so fortunate. Some of us have experienced home invasion robberies. It is not possible to put into words the sheer terror such things invoke. If it is illegal for homeowners to own guns, home invasion robberies are a far more attractive proposition. Conversely, if I were a criminal, I'd be far less likely to commit violent crimes if I thought it quite likely that the victim was armed. Look at Switzerland for an example of a society with pervasive gun ownership and a very low incidence of violent crime. (Every 18 year old male is issued a gun by the military, and entire towns go out to the shooting range on sunday afternoons)

Lastly, laws for or against gun ownership only apply to law abiding people. Criminals will have guns even if law abiding citizens don't, and when they know that it is unlikely for their victims to be armed, they are much more bold. Look at cases involving guns in England, for good examples. Criminals with handguns are fearless.

There's also the hobby aspect... Gun ownership has been an American tradition for a long time, and many people enjoy it in the same way that others enjoy collecting antique furniture.

I myself am still confused on the desire to bear arms - not the right. Laws affect the right to bear arms and so redirects the discussion and energy from the real issue of why you want to own one.

Personally, I can't wrap my brain around the hobby aspect of guns. They were designed to create permanent and/or fatal damage so the thought of using one to play just doesn't make sense and does not appeal at all to me.

While I appreciate the responsibility factor of gun owners and storage security, it seems like this works against the theory of owning one for personal protection from an armed criminal. Successful criminals exploit the element of surprise and therefore I don't see how even if you have one in a secured location, etc. that you could get to it in time. And if you did, don't you inadvertently raise the risk of more bullet injury to yourself and others by encouraging a shoot out? At some point I think that more just equals more here. Boldness seems irrelevant when you now have two highly charged and scared individuals both with guns and high adrenaline confronting each other. The bottom line hasn't decreased for bodily harm and death, it was just multiplied.

I do agree completely that most bad things that happen are the result of stupid and nonthinking actions of people. This is all the more reason to me to remove/reduce as many harmful and/or deadly objects out there, especially from the common people who don't really know enough about how or why to use one but buy into the security argument of ownership making you more safe. There is no safe place in our world today devoid of crime. What you described doesn't exist. I live in a major metro area and this factor doesn't make me want to own a gun.

I simply don't understand why people want to own and use guns. None of it adds up to me and it doesn't have to. I just don't get it.

Holly