From TPM Reader LS …
I know that you have probably far too many emails about guns and tribes to deal with. However, I feel compelled to provide some additional lines of support for your position:
I am a competent, mentally healthy individual who is very successful in my field. I am also a ditz with respect to anything that requires coordination. I am the kind of person who drives into a drive-in window and has to back-up cause I went too far. Over Christmas, the family was talking to my brother in law –a sheriff in rural Maine, a hunter, an NRA member –about the possibility of limiting guns, and the “defense argument” –that we all need guns to defend ourselves.
He looked at me and said he definitely did not want me to carry! Then he made the serious point, that using guns to defend oneself or others takes both skill and emotional training. This is not something that just anyone can do. He could not imagine arming school teachers. And he noted, from 20 years as a sheriff, most gun deaths are from stupidity (accidents of various kinds) or family anger (and the human stupidity that encourages).
I do not want to be in a bar, in a mall, at a school –and I do not want my children in those places –where lots of even well-meaning but absolutely ordinary people have fire arms.
I want theaters, stores, and schools, and universities to be to say and enforce NO GUNS here, and I will go to those places. This is more like smoking or drunk driving than a gay parade! Second hand smoke kills, I have the right not to be subjected to it. Guns kill, I have the right to be able to go places without the added risk of those even nice –but imperfect –folks carrying guns.
