Tag: gun control

“Does she want to serve me Cheez Whiz on Triscuits, or bust a cap in my ass?”

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Via Tam, I visited the Creative Loafing web site for a review of the book She’s Got a Gun by Georgia State University photography professor Nancy Floyd. This book is similar to Kyle Cassidy’s recent Armed America, but it concentrates specifically on the fairer sex. It’s a pretty good piece, and I’ll probably pick up a copy of the book, but the site also has a slide show of some of the images from the book, narrated by the writer of the Creative Loafing review.

You’ve GOT to watch that.

Here are a few images from that slide show:

That last young lady is eleven years old. According to the review, her comment for the piece was “Shooting is FUN!”

Indeed it is.

Another Debate Invitation Refused

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I swear, you’d think I intimidate them or something. Reader Bob gave me a link to a web page that asked the question What Ever Happened to Gun Control? Like its disappearance as a political topic was a bad thing.

I questioned the author, an economist who writes on heath-care topics, on some of her “statistics,” and I invited her not once, not twice, but three times to discuss the topic of gun control either publicly or privately.

She declined. Oh well.

But the subject of this post comes from another comment posted at that site. One “robertdfeineman” wrote:

A couple of years ago I posted a diary about gun control where I suggested treating it as a public health issue. As I recall I defined several classes of gun control issues:

1. Accidental injury
1a. by children
1b. by adults
2. Injury in the course of a crime
3. Injury in the course of a domestic disturbance
4. Injury caused by a mentally unbalanced individual
5. Suicide

I asked those who opposed gun control to select any category of their choosing and suggest what steps should be taken to lessen the rate of injury.

As you have discovered vitriol was quickly forthcoming, however useful suggestions – none.

Even the example of Canada isn’t able to bring any sanity to the discussion. Canada has a fairly high level of gun ownership (mostly sports and hunting), but has a much lower level of misuse. There seems to be no discussion of why this is so.

Without getting too deep into the American psyche there just seems to be a vocal core of gun supporters who are motivated by something deeper than rational arguments. As with most such inexplicable attitudes it is likely that it has its basis in a deep seated fear, of what isn’t clear.

As simple observation will show other advanced countries, that don’t permit the same freedom of gun ownership and use, are not overrun by people in black helicopters, nor by crazed gangs or druggies, nor by criminals threatening home and family. Whence the insecurity?

Given that the US is in a fortress mentality mode (personal Hummers, gated communities, domestic surveillance, etc.) expecting rationality about guns seems unlikely for the immediate future.

Coming from a guy who apparently believes that the world is suffering from overpopulation and resource shortages (I guess he’s never heard of Paul Erlich and The Population Bomb), he seems to believe that capitalism is outmoded and needs to be replaced by a “steady-state” economy (AKA “zero-sum” – the model every socialist system has based its economic system on).

Quelle suprise.

But I thought I’d take a shot at providing some useful suggestions without vitriol.

Here we go:

1. Accidental injury
1a. by children
1b. by adults

The answer to this is obvious, ongoing, and highly successful.

Education, education, education.

And it’s obviously been working for quite some time, too. Accidental death and injury by firearm in this country is at an all-time low, and has been declining ever since we started collecting statistics. This despite the fact that 3-4 million new firearms are added to the total in private hands in this country each and every year. It doesn’t require new (and dubious) safety features on guns, it doesn’t require free trigger locks to be given away by government agencies, it simply requires education – and the firearms industry and the NRA are doing apparently a damned good job.

Which is more than can be said for the Brady Campaign or the Violence Policy Center.

Doubt me? Do you doubt the Centers for Disease Control?

Total accidental gunshot deaths by year:

1981 – 1,871 (Crude rate, 0.82/100,000)
1982 – 1,756
1983 – 1,695
1984 – 1,668
1985 – 1,649
…
1990 – 1,416
1991 – 1,441
1992 – 1,409
1993 – 1,521
1994 – 1,356
1995 – 1,225
…
2000 – 776
2001 – 802
2002 – 762
2003 – 730
2004 – 649
2005 – 789 (Crude rate 0.27/100,000)

The actual incidence of death by accidental gunshot wound has dropped 58%. The rate has dropped by 67% (the overall population has gone up over the same period.)

Over the period between 1981 and 2005 (25 years) the number of firearms in the U.S. has increased by approximately 100,000,000. Yes, that’s right, one hundred million, of which about 40 million were handguns. Over that same period the number of states with “shall-issue” concealed-carry laws has increased from eight (8) to 35 (now 37). The number of “no issue” states has declined from 15 to two.

I don’t know about you, but I call that “improvement.”

Topic: 2. Injury in the course of a crime

Well, for one thing, since 1990 the number of deaths and injuries from criminal assault have been declining rapidly to levels not seen since the 1960s. Homicide, highly variable over the nation’s history, has dropped dramatically, according to this Bureau of Justice Statistics chart:

Non-fatal attacks are down significantly, too:

What caused this? Well it wasn’t “gun control” by any indication. The only “gun control” law passed during this period was the 1994 “Assault Weapon Ban” (that wasn’t), but in 2005 even the New York Times admitted:

Gun crime has plummeted since the early 1990’s. But a study for the National Institute of Justice said that it could not “clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.”

Research for the study in several cities did show a significant decline in the criminal use of assault weapons during the ban. According to the study, however, that decline was offset by the “steady or rising use” of other guns equipped with high-capacity magazines – ammunition-feeding devices that hold more than 10 rounds.

So, should one conclude from this that “high-capacity magazines” lead to a decrease in overall violent crime?

The first thing that leads to a decrease in injury in the course of crime is to reduce crime. How? Well, it would appear that a good economy helps. Of course, incarcerating more than 1% of the population might be contributing factor, too. I’ll leave that up to you to decide whether that’s a good thing or not. But how about defense with a firearm of your own?

Only about 29% of criminal assaults involve a perpetrator with a firearm, and even if they are so armed, defending yourself with your own firearm has proven to be the most likely way to escape without injury. That is, if you believe Gary Kleck’s analysis of Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization survey data. Kleck’s study indicates that defending yourself with a firearm reduces your chances of injury below any other method, including not resisting at all.

Topic 3. Injury in the course of a domestic disturbance

That’s a tough one. Congress passed a law that is supposed to disarm anyone who has received so much as a ticket for misdemeanor domestic violence. Of course, like the Brady background check, the law has been equally effective at actually disarming dangerous people – that is “not at all.” Generally, in this situation on party or the other may get a restraining order, but these have proven to be nothing more than tissue paper. Reciprocal restraining orders only guarantee that the one who is willing to kill is ensured of a defenseless victim, and then a knife will do as well as a gun. Here I’m going to have to admit defeat, and state plainly that I see no way to legally, constitutionally, affect this problem.

Strike one!

Topic 4. Injury caused by a mentally unbalanced individual

Again, a law has been passed that supposedly disarms people who have been adjudged mentally imbalanced or a danger to themselves or others. Again, as the Virginia Tech massacre proved, the effectiveness of this law is less than stellar. Too, there is the doctor-patient relationship which is supposed to be legally sacrosanct, the fear being, of course, that if doctors can be compelled to report about their patients to the legal authorities, some (perhaps many) would refuse to seek help at all.

Personally, I’m convinced that the recent (last decade or two) upswing in rampage killing / suicides is due to the use of anti-depressants that have a bad effect on a tiny percentage of the people who use them. That percentage is so small as to be statistical noise, but it has resulted in the deaths of a significant number of people. What to do about it? I don’t know. It’s a Catch-22 situation, and again, the best I can hope for is that someone law-abiding and armed can end any such situation before the perpetrator decides he’s finished.

Topic 5. Suicide.

I have already considered this one in great detail. Basically, my conclusion is that while Americans do use firearms in large proportion to commit suicide, firearms are not the cause of their decision to end their own lives. America is on the low end of the scale for nations with relatively high GNPs, ranking below Norway, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Switzerland, France, Austria, Denmark and Finland for suicide rates. The leading method of suicide varies with each nation, but it appears that if you really want to kill yourself (as opposed to a “cry for help”) you find a way. This is especially true among young people, as evidenced by Australia’s youth suicide problem. For no apparent reason, in Australia the leading method of suicide of young men changed from firearms to asphyxiation by hanging. There were no gun laws passed during the period during which this occurred to account for the shift.

A study of the Brady 3-day waiting period found that it reduced the number of suicides by firearm among people 55 and older, but that it didn’t affect any overall suicide rate. In other words, people that might have used a firearm found another, equally effective method.

My conclusion here is that the appearance of firearms being a cause of suicide is an illusion. If all firearms disappeared tomorrow, the rate of suicide would be essentially unchanged.

So in answer to your questions:

1: We’ve tremendously reduced accidental death and injury through education, even with a massive increase in the number of firearms in curculation. Perhaps if we want to affect this particular problem even more, we should be teaching firearm safety education in schools alongside sex education.

2: We’ve greatly reduced death and injury due to criminal acts over the recent decade, without any notably effective new firearms legislation. The “Assault Weapons Ban” didn’t seem to have any effect, and the worst thing you can say about the massive increase the number of states that have passed “shall-issue” concealed carry laws is that those laws might not have been responsible for any of the reduction in crime.

3: Injury in domestic disturbances has also decreased, but nowhere near as much as with other types of violent crime, and here I admit defeat. In a nation founded on the concept of individual sovereignty and individual rights, I really don’t see where we can affect this particular problem except by allowing the threatened parties to be armed in their own defense, and the law just isn’t written that way.

4: Mentally unbalanced people deciding to commit suicide and taking strangers, coworkers, or loved ones along with them present the same problem. The only thing I can think of here is for those coworkers or loved ones to pay attention to the situation and try to get obviously disturbed people into mental health care. Unfortunately, given the same rights as everyone else, this does not seem to be effective.

5: The suicide problem appears to be one of false perception. Yes, a lot of Americans who choose to end their own lives choose to do it by means of a firearm, but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t find another way if access to a firearm was denied to them. If “gun access” caused suicide, America’s suicide rate would far exceed any other nation in the world.

But perhaps instead of considering the beam in America’s eye, our neighbors to the North should consider the one in their own. Even our Roger Ebert has recognized that, while Canadians don’t murder each other as often as Americans do, their violent crime rate far exceeds our own.

Maybe Canada needs more guns.

UPDATE: See More “Reasoned Discourse”

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Want to Spend Some Quality Time?.

Matt Carmel of Constitution Arms emailed me this morning. He has compiled all of the Heller amici briefs into a single searchable database, available as a zipped download at www.constitutionarms.com/heller/heller.zip. If you have the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader (available here) you can search all of the briefs for any word or phrase. There’s also an excel spreadsheet that I can’t open because I don’t have Excel loaded on my home computer, but the Adobe documents are great in and of themselves. He reports that it took him about 80 hours to build the documents, and I believe him!

If you’re interested in this case, this is a very useful tool.

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CNN – The Most Busted Name in News.

Nothing like accuracy in journalism. Reader “homeboy” emailed me a link to a CNN report on YouTube designed to inspire PSH among the citizenry over “painted guns.” Yes, the “Hello Kitty” AR-15 and various other firearms refinished in Gun Kote and other finishes. They even get a spokesman from Law Enforcement to inform the public about the dangers of pink guns. As SayUncle put it, “if you see a gun-shaped object then it is in your best interest to assume it is a gun and act accordingly.”

But the point of this post is CNN’s legendary accuracy. It’s real, but it’s NOT a Glock:

But they think it is.

Hey, why not? CNN believed that a post-ban AK couldn’t destroy cinderblocks, and pre-ban AK’s were fully automatic.

There’s not a single recreational shooter working at CNN, is there?

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Another Gun Free Zone Does its Job.

Gunman Opens Fire at Northern Illinois University

A heavily armed man burst into a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University this afternoon and opened fire, wounding as many as 18 people, four of them critically, before taking his own life, authorities said.

According to radio reports, “heavily armed” was a shotgun and a pistol.

The shooter, a thin white male dressed in black and wearing a stocking cap, went into Cole Hall on the university’s campus in DeKalb, entered a science class through an emergency door and began shooting at students and a teacher, witnesses told a local radio station and a student newspaper.

Well, at least we’re back to the “angry white male” demographic.

There was conflicting information on fatalities. A hospital reported that there were none besides the gunman, but the Chicago Tribune quoted the campus police chief as saying four of the shooter’s victims had died.

Last I’d heard there were 17 victims, three critical, and the only dead was the shooter (not included in the 17.) However, those three were head wounds. I expect more fatalities.

NIU campus police chief Donald Grady told reporters that the gunman apparently had a shotgun and two handguns, including a Glock, but that only one of the handguns was immediately recovered. He said the shooter, who appeared to have been acting alone, had not expended all of his ammunition.

Which matches the radio report with the exception of the extra handgun.

School officials said they knew of no motive for the shooting. The gunman does not appear to have been a student at the university but may have been a student somewhere else, they said. He emerged from behind a curtain near the stage and began firing, they said. The man has been identified, but his identity has not yet been released.

“This is a tragedy, but from all indications we did everything we could when we found out,” Peters said. “Our security people were there right away.”

Yes, when seconds count, the authorities are only minutes away.

Grady said police officers were at the scene within two minutes of the shooting and that a campus-wide alert was issued within 15 minutes.

As I said…

And once again a rampage shooting ends when the shooter decides he’s done.

According to this story, there have been four fatalities in addition to the shooter, but this is the part that sticks with me:

Katie Wagner, a student who was inside the classroom, tells CBS 2 that there were 70 students inside room 101 at Cole Hall when the shooting happened. She said the gunman entered from a side door near the front of the lecture hall and started to fire shots.

She described the gunman as white, tall, skinny and wearing a black tee shirt – and maybe something red.

She said she went to the ground immediately and just started staring at the floor.

Waiting to die.

I am reminded once again of Tam’s declaration:

I ain’t goin’ out like that. Whether it’s some Columbine wannabe who’s heard the backward-masked messages on his Marilyn Manson discs, distressed daytrader off his Prozac, homegrown Hadji sympathetic with his oppressed brothers in Baghdad, or a bugnuts whackjob picking up Robert Frost quotes transmitted from Langley on the fillings in his molars, I am going to do my level best to smoke that goblin before my carcass goes on the pile. I am not going to go out curled into a fetal ball and praying for help that won’t arrive in time.

—

Even if the police are right there, it might not do me any good. Heck, I might not do me any good. But, dammit, I am going to try.

There doesn’t seem to be much of that attitude in today’s youth.

Expect there to be immediate blaming of the guns for this.

I, for one, wonder if the shooter was on anti-depressants.

UPDATE: From ABC News:

Stephen Kazmierczak, the 27-year-old who opened fire on a crowded Northern Illinois University lecture hall, killing five and then himself Thursday, was described as “fairly normal” and an “unstressed person” by NIU campus Police Chief Donald Grady.

But in the last few weeks his behavior had become erratic, according to Grady, and it is believed the Kazmierczak had stopped taking his medication. The type of medication he was on is unknown.

UPDATE II: According to the same report, the shooter purchased two of his four firearms last Saturday, from a licensed dealer in Champaign. According to this report, it was nine days ago.

Illinois has a 24 hour waiting period for long gun purchases, and a 72 hour waiting period for handguns. I’d assume he started the purchase nine days ago and picked them up on Saturday after the 72 hour waiting period for the handgun.

Boy, that waiting period really helped.

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Personally, I Think “Violence Policy Center” is a HELL of a Name

for a gun store!

They could use Jeff Cooper’s quote on “violence policy” in their advertising:

One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that “violence begets violence.” I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure—and in some cases I have—that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.

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Quote of the Day.

From this PSH story linked to by many concerning a “buy-back” (how can they “buy back” what they never sold in the first place?) in which anti-gun California State Senate President pro-tem Don Perata “sold back” a .357 Magnum revolver, but admits he keeps a shotgun at home for protection.

But what’s the QotD? This:

Perata introduced the program last month at a news conference outside the Piedmont Avenue piano store where 10-year-old Christopher Rodriguez was hit during a piano lesson by a stray bullet fired during a nearby robbery. He was left partially paralyzed.

“What happened to Christopher is sad,” said Perata. “Guns are causing this kind of violence everywhere, and we have to stop it.”

So long as you keep misidentifying the cause, you’re never going to stop it.

There’s a second interesting part to this story, as well. Perata turned in his revolver but,

He said he had a permit to carry a concealed handgun until it lapsed a few years ago.

Must be nice to be connected. However:

In December, a gun-wielding man robbed Perata of his sporty state-leased car at a red light in North Oakland.

“Nothing brings it home like having a gun pointed 6 inches from your face,” he said.

Right. Well, at least you’ve made sure you can’t defend yourself on the street, so if “giving them what they want” isn’t enough…

From Comments:

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In the comments to Still a Man Hears What He Wants to Hear… below, Markadelphia responds (stereotypically) with:

So, this piece begs the question…what if guns were allowed in schools and people chose not to carry one? Would that person be a moron? Is anyone that choses not to arm themselves stupid?

My reply:

Mark, as noted in the piece, 97-99% of the eligible population chooses not to get a CCW permit in the first place. In 2006 there were approximately 836,000 sworn full-time police officers in the U.S. according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Approximately 70% of those are “field” officers, as opposed to desk officers, so that brings the number down to about 585,000. Split by three shifts, and you get about 200,000 officers “on the street” at any particular time.

Divide that up among a population of 300,000,000 and there is one cop for every 1,500 of us. Obviously we don’t have a uniform distribution of either population or police officers, but still, you can see why police officers so seldom prevent or stop a crime in progress, they show up afterwards usually to take a report.

“Most Americans,” Mark, don’t think about it. Many do, and weigh the odds of needing a firearm against the irritation and responsibility of actually carrying one, and decide that they like their chances. (And carrying a firearm is a pain in the ass.) I’m OK with that. It’s called rational decision-making. You pays your money and you takes your chances.

Some people are like Barry – terrified of the responsibility and convinced that they are not mature and competent enough to be trusted with a firearm. I’m OK with that, too so long as they do not work to deny me the right to choose for myself.

Consciously choosing not to carry is not a mark of stupidity. Not considering the question is, however.

As noted above, there are about 836,000 sworn officers in the U.S. – that’s about 0.3% of the total population. If 1% of the general adult population (which the CDC estimates at about 210,000,000) chose to carry concealed, an additional 2.1 million people would be out there, armed in defense of themselves and (one would hope) their neighbors.

Out of every 100 teachers and administrators, one would probably be armed, familiar with the school and staff, and on site if anything should happen that would require armed response – because when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

It’s not stupid to decide to go unarmed in this world, Markadelphia. It IS stupid (and in my view, evil) to deny people the CHOICE.

Still the Man Hears What He Wants to Hear and Disregards the Rest…

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(with apologies to Simon & Garfunkel)

Markadelphia dropped this in a comment on the post about the school shooting in Portsmith Ohio:

So, there were guns there and nothing could be done to stop it. Having people armed in schools will prevent nothing. While I think that if many people here were armed in a school would be responsible, most Americans, unlike Israelis, are fucking morons who jump at their own shadow and would probably shoot someone by accident. Simply put, I don’t trust most American and I don’t think you do either, Kevin, as evidenced by your writings.

Let us parse:

So, there were guns there and nothing could be done to stop it.

Really? You again exhibit your God-like powers of prescience and prognostication. Wherever do you find those? Is there a pill?

Having people armed in schools will prevent nothing.

Is that so? Well it is difficult to “prove a negative.” The probability that such an incident doesn’t happen because a gunman was dissuaded due to the fact that one of his victims might shoot back (or first) is, admittedly, impossible to calculate. Oregon school teacher Shirley Katz seems to believe with a weapon she could prevent her ex-husband from doing something unpleasant to her (since restraining orders are essentially tissue paper and she knows it), but the law requires her to be a disarmed target while she’s at work.

Just like Christi Layne.

However, it’s never really been that much about prevention, Markadelphia, it’s been about attenuation. Only two things will stop a rampage shooter – either he (or she) decides they’re done, or someone with a gun stops them.

As Tam put it so eloquently after the Montreal college shooting in 2006:

I ain’t goin’ out like that. Whether it’s some Columbine wannabe who’s heard the backward-masked messages on his Marilyn Manson discs, distressed daytrader off his Prozac, homegrown Hadji sympathetic with his oppressed brothers in Baghdad, or a bugnuts whackjob picking up Robert Frost quotes transmitted from Langley on the fillings in his molars, I am going to do my level best to smoke that goblin before my carcass goes on the pile. I am not going to go out curled into a fetal ball and praying for help that won’t arrive in time.

—

Even if the police are right there, it might not do me any good. Heck, I might not do me any good. But, dammit, I am going to try. If a 51 year-old nurse can overcome a hammer-wielding psycho with her bare hands, the least I can do is go out on my feet. I’m not going to wait for the coup de grace under a desk; I’m not going get in the abductor’s car; I’m not going to comply with their demands; I’m not going gently.

Help in this case didn’t arrive in time to stop the shooter before he decided he was finished, nor did it in the Baton Rouge shooting yesterday, but it did in the City Hall shooting in Missouri. There’s no way to know how many people Charles Lee ‘Cookie’ Thornton intended to kill before he decided he was finished, is there?

But now we get to the heart of the matter:

While I think that if many people here were armed in a school would be responsible, most Americans, unlike Israelis, are fucking morons who jump at their own shadow and would probably shoot someone by accident. Simply put, I don’t trust most American and I don’t think you do either, Kevin, as evidenced by your writings.

Then you’ve not been reading what I’ve been writing. (There’s a surprise.)

Prior to Florida starting the current trend in 1987, there were eight “shall-issue” states, where citizens who applied for a CCW permit and who passed a background check and a minor licensing requirement had to be issued a permit. It was not at the discretion of local law enforcement to deny. Vermont has always been a “no permit required” state. Seventeen states were “no issue” – you couldn’t get a CCW at all. Since then the number of “shall issue” states has increased to 37, Alaska has joined Vermont in not requiring a permit, and only two states remain “no issue.”

In each of the states where “shall issue” is the law, approximately 1-3% of the eligible population jumps through the relatively minor hoops in order to get a permit. The number of people who actually carry is unknown. What we do know is that those people are remarkably law-abiding. They are much less likely to be arrested for anything than the general population.

In point of fact, they do not “jump at their own shadow” or “shoot someone by accident” – at least if they do shoot someone by accident, it’s at rates far below those of police officers. It is a fact that the worst thing you can say about “shall issue” concealed-carry legislation is that it might not have contributed to the decline in violent crime during the same period. In state after state, opponents to the laws have had to admit that none of the “blood in the streets” and “shootouts over fender-bender” fearmongering came true.

You’re right, Markadelphia, I don’t trust “most Americans,” and with reason. Apparently “most Americans” are like you. But I do trust those who get CCW permits far above and beyond “most Americans” because – for the overwhelming majority – they’ve given thought to their own protection, and understand that the police can’t be everywhere, all the time. They are connected to reality in a way “most Americans” really aren’t.

And if you’re interested in the efficacy of concealed carry, I suggest you peruse the archives of Clayton Cramer’s Civilian Gun Self-Defense blog. Admittedly, the number of CCW defensive gun uses are low, but they do happen.

Contrast Tam’s words above with these of Barry of Inn of the Last Home from a while back:

I just…I just blink my eyes in amazement everytime this crops up – actually watching people feel the need to carry a concealed weapon in public…

If I were to take a live, armed weapon and carry it on my person, in public, it would eat away at my sanity just as if it were emitting lethal radiation. To know that I carried an instrument of sure and certain death on my person, available and ready to be pulled out and used at a moment’s notice to possibly kill…a child. A homeless person. An innocent.

Obviously that is not your intent. You want to protect yourself – maybe that is how you feel in California. But being brought up in Eastern Tennessee I’ve never once felt the need to protect myself from imminent bodily harm in public. And if I were aware of a location that might be unduly hazardous – a dark alley, a badly lighted parking area – I would avoid it. I’ve never been mugged, nor can I readily pull up a name of any person I’ve ever met that’s been mugged or even bodily threatened in my whole life.

What scares me most is the arbitrary nature of self-defense. What line must be crossed to signal to you that there is imminent danger or threat? Is it a criminal pulling a gun on you? In which case, unless you’re a gunslinger, you’re not going to outdraw him. Is it someone pulling a knife? Threatening words? Bad language or rude gestures? Where is that one point where you decide, “Yes, my life or the life of my loved ones is in danger and I must now take it upon myself to take the life of another person.” What if the guy is reaching into his jacket, and you are sure, absolutely certain that it is a weapon. You pull your gun and shoot–and see he’s reaching for his wallet. Or worse, you miss and hit a child running in the street. Where is that line?

The radiation would rot my brain and I would never be able to live with myself.

Maybe it’s different in California. Maybe it’s different in Tennessee. Maybe I don’t love my family enough…maybe I love them too much. But I know myself, and know that if I surrendered to the paranoia – and I mean that in the most basic sense – there would be no turning back.

You can bet your ass I don’t trust him to make decisions for me.

UPDATE:  Original JSKit/Echo comment thread is available here. Thank you, John Hardin.