I appreciated the comments I got yesterday. I have been turning myself inside out on the gun control issue ever since that guy laid his illegally purchased rifle across the counter at Tempo umpteen million years ago. If I had been a stronger person, I would have challenged the manager who decided it was okay to sell the gun to his mother. Alas, I was a young naive kid then and, even now, I can be a big chicken about speaking up unless I perceive imminent danger. So, yes, I agree that we have to keep guns out of the hands of those who are mentally unstable. And, as UKW points out, many of these folks are not receiving the services they need. The Tucson shooter certainly was not. Who is to blame there? I have no words.

On the other hand, I have spent my whole life around people who really do use guns responsibly. They are target shooters. They don’t shoot at people or animals. They don’t even try to pretend that they have a gun for self-defense. Target shooting is a hobby for these folks and, when a gun is not in use, it is stored safely. They doggedly pursue grumpy old police personnel to make sure their guns are properly registered and pass safety inspections. Guns are what they are and they are dangerous when used as weapons. It is people who choose how to use them. I don’t know what we need to do to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill but I don’t want us to characterize everyone who owns a gun in this country as an extreme right-wing “crazy” or whatever. Because not everyone is that. Including the democratic congresswoman who was shot in Tucson.

I think that different rules need to apply to semi-automatic guns like Glocks (which I have vaguely heard of but had to Google). From what little I’ve been able to pull together, they *were* more strictly monitored for a while but the law expired. I’m sure that somebody knows more about this than I do…

Finally, yes Jay, I’m sure that The Engineer knew exactly where Grandroobly’s guns were stored. Another person who used guns responsibly for target shooting.

Today? A snowstorm. We haven’t had a lot of snow yet this year on The Planet, so people are still trying to get their snow driving skills under control. I left work a wee bit early today but not as early as I wanted to because my loverly Windows work laptop would not shut down smoothly and I am not gonna say why because it involves a rather gnarly spreadsheet on our network and I’m not sure what the problem is but whatever it is, you do not wanna know. I finally went outside and faaarrrrred up the Ninja, then went back inside to finish the shut-down. And yes, it is safe to leave a running vee-hickle in my work parking lot. The only entity that parks anywhere near me is The Admiral and he parks in the pond and I haven’t seen him in a while, so I’m gonna guess he has flown to Florida.

Good night. Don’t hate me because my political views might seem a bit different than yours. They’re not as different as you might think… -KW

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 11th, 2011 at 7:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.