auntblabby wrote:
going in the opposite extreme, what if EVERYBODY were armed, with compulsory gun training starting in elementary school? where would we be then?
In some places and some families, like mine, gun safety started when I was about 3 and old enough to wonder what was in the wood box on the top shelf of my parent's bedroom closet. My first shooting trip my dad shot a grapefruit (roughly the size and consistency of a human brain) at 50 yards with a .22 to demonstrate that carelessness can be deadly even with tiny bullets.
In high school I had a US history teacher that was opposed to private gun ownership, but even she had to admit that studies and psychological experiments have found that kids who find and get a hold of guns without competent supervision tend to do Darwinian things with them, and kids that had safety training and go shooting tended to leave them alone until they get directions.
_________________
"Gun control is like trying to reduce drunk driving by making it tougher for sober people to own cars."
- Unknown
"A fear of weapons is a sign of ret*d sexual and emotional maturity."
-Sigmund Freud