Happiness is a warm gun?

For deeper reflections on the arming of all citizens, as proposed in an opinion in today's Daily News, I refer you to Ari Herzog's blog and the comments on the article itself.

Only two of the comments are rational, in my opinion, however.

Let me just say that anyone can always find some statistics/a study that backs up any theory they want to propose. I can give you a study or two that say smoking is good and makes people sharper and better workers.

Get my point?

Anyway, one of the commenters on the DN site puts these points (among others) forth to bolster his/her argument:

[3]* Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1527 vs. 606).

And this is ... a good thing?

[9]* Currently, there are about 150,000 police officers on duty at any one time to protect a population of more than 250 million Americans -- or almost 1,700 citizens per officer.

Er, yeah, that's a swell argument for arming the citizenry.

When I was a teenager, I was babysitting for a family down the road. They had 2 small children, a boy and a girl. When it came time for them to go to bed, the boy objected. I insisted and he disappeared into a bedroom. I went into the kitchen.

A couple of minutes later I came out and found the boy - Ricky, his name was - standing in the doorway to the living room holding a shotgun that was aimed at me. He could not have been more than 7 years old.

I don't remember if I talked him into giving me the gun, or if he pulled the trigger and the gun was not loaded. I remember trying to talk him into giving me the gun.

The gun was not the problem. It was the parents of the kid who were the problem in this case.

I grew up in a state where everybody and his brother had at least a shotgun, for hunting. I don't think any of these people - the ones I knew - ever killed anyone with a gun (although my Uncle Bud once accidentally shot his dog in the ass, while out hunting; it survived).

It's those people filled with rage that I did, and still do, worry about. As Ari points out, take away the gun and these people turn to a crowbar, a hammer, a knife ... whatever they can get their hands on.

Arming the citizenry is not going to stop the flow of illegal guns into the country nor will it stop violent crime. That is the purview of the law and the guys who wrote the Constitution understood that: To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions (Article I, Section 8).