From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: Re: pagan self-defense
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 9 Sep 92 00:25:52 GMT

In article <eq0RqB5w165w@brewich.hou.tx.us> donal@brewich.hou.tx.us (Donal) writes:
>radzy@ICSI.Berkeley.EDU (T. O. Radzykewycz) writes:
>[...]
>> So, if you do those things and still want the gun, then go
>> ahead and get it/them.  Then, follow some basic safety
>> precautions. (e.g. Don't leave the gun loaded, or easily
>> accessible to anyone.)
>
>Tim... Do you really think that if an intruder is in your house you 
>are going to have the time and presence of mind to load your gun? I 
>keep mine loaded, without a shell in the chamber except when I am 
>travelling, and in the headboard of my bed. I do agree with everything 
>else you said. The only way to keep a gun is in the full knowledge 
>that you can and will use it should the need arise. And the only way 
>to keep it safely is education and training. Locking it away is dumb 
>as well, for the same reason keeping it unloaded won't work. You won't 
>have time to unlock it.

My SO the Magnificent Mikey and I were discussing this the other day,
and we came to the conclusion that we couldn't come to a conclusion.
You get a gun, a device that is capable of dropping someone like lead in
a millisecond, and to keep it safe until you need it, you unload it and
do all the safety things you've heard.  Then, when you need it, the gun
is in your sock drawer buried and the ammo is out in the toolshed.

However, you get the gun, load it and keep it handy, and one day a
neighbor kid takes it out and wastes Junior with it.  Or perhaps Junior
takes it out and wastes the neighbor kid, causing you to feel like slime
for th erest of your life, as well as having a big nasty lawsuit to
makes matters worse when the neighbors drag your ass in court as guilty
of endangering their kid's life by leaving a loaded gun where kids could
find it a play with it.

I understand your call for protection, and the attraction of guns
because of the totality of the protection they offer is something I
share.  However, concerns like this that NO ONE has yet to resolve make
them just too damned dangerous.  They are all one way or all the other
-- you either keep them loaded and capable of killing 100% of the time
or they are owrthless little hunks of cast-metal.

There just isn't a resolution for this question, especially if you have
kids in or around your house at any time.  

>Did you know that the average exchange of gunfire takes place at less 
>then 12 feet and takes less then 4 seconds?

Many of these exchanges are taking place TOO quickly, due to the fact
that sometimes -- and this is just too fucking bad for the NRA types --
the existence of guns does sometimes promote their use.  You lose your
temper, pick the thing up, and it acts so quickly that your freedom of
choice is effectively negated.  Before you have time to cool down and
think rationally, someone has been killed.  Guns are just too big a can
of worms for anyone to take a concrete stand on whether they should be
in the house or not. 

>BTW, I also load my pistol with an alternating load of Glazer safety 
>slugs, Silver-tip hollow points, and parabellum solids. The Glazer's 
>will not go thru walls, the hollow points will destroy anything they 
>hit, and the 9mm Parabellum has more penetration than a .357 and will 
>penetrate most brands of body armor, as well as stop the engine of a 
>mack truck.

Seems to me the hollow-tips would be best, or else some kind of
fragmenting ammunition.  That way, they hit what they are supposed to
hit, and lose so much kinetic energy in the process (dumping it into the
thing you're shooting at and destroying it) that they won't penetrate
anything else. 

>"An armed society is a polite society."

Nope.  An armed society is one where people are blown away constantly --
witness the good old U. S. of A.  An armed society is a murder-crazed
one.  An armed society is a dangerous society.  An armed society is a
psychotic society, needing only a small tip before it overturns and
crushed you underneath.  An armed society is a deadly society.  Someone
once posted that in Canada (last year, I think) they had a total of 650
murders in the whole damned country; the place has 25,000,000 people.
650 won't even total the murders in one big American city, land of guns,
for one year.  I'm sorry -- an armed society forces ME to be armed; it
takes away MY freedom to remain unarmed.  It's either that, or allow
every man on the street the power to rape and murder me at will.  (Keep
in mind also that when I took riflery at Penn State, I shot 227 out of
300; I also own a small recurve bow that I haven't shot for a long time.
I shot low 40's when I pulled my bow.  There is NOTHING like target
shooting, seeing if you can control your body movements so completely
that you are capable of duplicating exactly a series of movements and
stances.  I am not anti-gun; target shooting is fun as hell.  However, I
fucking refuse to pick up a gun like that and keep it loaded and worry
about intruders in my house constantly.  I will move somewhere else
first; there are countries that are likely going to remain stable for my
lifetime.  I will NOT live like that.  A knife, okay.  I have one.  BUt
a gun is just too damned FINAL.  The things are incredibly dangerous, an
accident waiting to happen -- again, especially if kids are around.
Pagans and Witches and other people on the right-wing's hit list who
have kids are forced to remain at the mercy of the armed freaks around
them.) 

This little epigram smacks of too many old Clint Eastwood movies.  If I
can imagine Dirty Harry saying it, I'm not going to subscribe to the
sentiment. 

Blessings,
Janis 
Newsgroups: alt.pagan