General Discussion

s away and your cohort's response is madly hysterical abandon, extreme over-reaction to extreme over-reaction, and because you have already decided, without anything much more than ANONYMOUS and likely dishonest say-so, apparently, that the take the guns away minority will succeed to some extent (and, btw, we are to assume whatever degree thereof, whether quite tiny or more widely affecting gun owners, it's ALL the same huge travesty of everyone's rights), that justifies whole hog maxed out weapons ownership and threats of violence, ostensibly toward the government, but quite possibly, under the dire circumstances that all of you predict, more likely also coercing local citizenry to mind their political ps and qs or lose their jobs, or not get that contract, or see "friendships" end, or not get hired, or . . . . any of the myriad other forms of fascistic political extortion that ARE possible by means of threats.

Do you know what self-fulfilling prophecy is? Your expectations shape reality. It amounts to this, re gun-ownership, if you depend solely upon your gun to make you safe, when a threat actually materializes, when someone else(s) with a gun(s) eventually shows up, it's too late. You're not safe. You have already shaped reality by how you define it in such severely limited and violent terms and your safety was long gone before your own situation actually got around to revealing that fact to you.

Personally, I'm willing to live with your over-simplification of everything into guns, IF you don't coerce others about it, but not only is that highly unlikely, but also in light of all of the ignored (on the average) responsibilities of citizens to the commonweal, that is, responsibilities to so many OTHER very different aspects of what makes people authentically safe that are left completely to beg in favor of threats and violence, I do wonder why you so desperately want something that fails so completely to keep you safe.

I'm a tolerant person, but my tolerance is coerced by your weapons. There isn't much I can do about that so I'll live with it. But I think you fiddle with your guns while "Rome" burns and then use the "burning" as further justification to ignore and actively cop-out on, OTHER responsibilities and to fiddle even more and more and more. It's a circular, completely self-referential, culture.

And if/when it all comes crashing down, we'll hear "I told you so"s from those who couldn't do anything but pass the buck to others and are, thus, part of the cause of the destruction, a mistaken part that was never under any threat to begin with, a cohort that justifies vast injustices on the basis of a propagandized mistakes about threat to your gun ownership, but a very different kind of part nonetheless, because unlike other problematic causes, such as those that I myself and others contribute, more or less un-wittingly, any of the other non-gun problems that you are responsible for, and which add up to threats to your own safety, are perpetrated by your answer to everything, the point of a gun.

BTW, I'd be glad to hear how your social and economic justice activism is comensurate with or exceeds your gun activism, so I await you to enlighten me.