Rolled Out On: 6/9/2008 5:06 PM

i wanted to comment on his blog, but he doesn't allow us anonymice, so i'm bothering the fellow who pointed me at him instead.

"I find myself beginning to question why anyone really needs to own a gun at this point."

what's "need" got to do with it?

my neighbour owns a small speedboat, the kind crazy people strap on like a backpack and go racing with at ludicrous speed, that can run across the water with barely one blade of the propeller getting wet. occasionally he'll strap it to a roof rack on his truck, hook up his great big camping trailer, and take off for a few days --- i assume to go do borderline suicidal things on bodies of water elsewhere. he most assuredly does not need to own any one of those means of conveyance, and they each put him and others at risk.

guess what: in a free country, it's his perfect right to own stuff he doesn't need to own, if he wants to, provided he doesn't actually harm (or negligently endanger) anybody else. by the same logic, it's my perfect right to have that pump-action 20-gauge in the closet. my needless property is, if anything, a lesser risk to the community, since i'm too lazy to ever take it out and use it.

heck, i'm a far leftist and even i agree that the state should need some damn good reason to tell us what we can and cannot own. a newspaper and a TV station in the same geographic area is pushing my limits, since that gives one owner potentially undue influence and can be dangerously anti-competitive in a number of ways --- but private citizens owning firearms? no biggie, let 'em.

most people can be trusted to own dangerous stuff. like speedboats, motorcycles, and even guns. the vast majority of society just aren't going to screw up with such things, so there's no reason not to let them at it. i couldn't be a leftist, and argue for social equality like i do, if i didn't trust my fellow citizens to be decent folks when they and i are on an equal footing.