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And that makes it okay to shoot people!!

Obviously, this discussion will be moot until the gun nuts stop equating everything with everything else. "Cars kill people, so I can SHOOT people!" "Smoking kills people, so I can SHOOT people!" "You could kill somebody with a baseball bat, so I can SHOOT people!"

The scenarios run to similar patterns. Punks start shooting at each other in the street, and some baby asleep in her crib gets killed, or some boy sitting on his front stoop end up with a bullet in his brain. The parents of these children might have closets full of howitzers, but they didn't do the victims any good -- nor would they be likely to, given how many times the weapons in these shootings turn out to have been stolen.

In fact, the only time I ever had an incident is with some idiot redneck who cut me off in traffic and brandished his pistol at me because I had the audacity to blow my horn at him.

So no criminals here, just a douchebag trying to show me how tough he was.

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This is why my first instinct, when cops use deadly force, is to side with the cops. They have to face this every day of their lives -- the knowledge that anyone they approach, for any reason, could pull out a gun and start shooting. Suspected perp, little old lady, kid playing truant. The cops cannot for a moment assume there is not going to be a gun involved, or they can very likely end up dead.

Andy Williams wrote: I know plenty of "gun-nuts" and have never heard "cars kill people, so I can shoot people" from ANY of them.  The only people I've EVER heard that from are the rabid anti-gun nuts while having this same argument.

Absolutely disingenuous.  It's been said in this very thread, Andy.  Oh, not in so many words.  But there are people in this thread as well as in past gun threads that ask if we're going to outlaw guns because they kill people, why aren't we outlawing cars, baseball bats, knives, rope, and aspirin?  They kill people, but none of them are outlawed.  So why should guns be outlawed on the basis that they kill people...convienantly ignoring the fact that the only use for a gun is to kill.  That's it's intended purpose.  When you use a car, a baseball bat, a knife, a rope to kill, or overdose on aspirin, you're not using it in the manner it was intended.