> If he becomes deranged enough to brandish his weapon
> irresponsibly and threaten to shoot the general citizenry or actually
> begins doing so, is dumb enough not to realize that pull trigger =
> forever dead, or intent upon murdering a specific person (say, his
> wife or one of his children) then by all means gun his ass down,
> and pry his gun from his cold dead fingers, for he is an intolerable
> danger to his fellow citizens. If not, then do not knock down his
> door to get his gun; leave him alone. I never said anything about
> repealing the 2nd amendment, but irresponsible people (violent
> criminals, the mentally deranged and/or deficient, children, and
> spouse and/or child abusers) should not be given the opportunity to
> blow people away just to protect other peoples' freedoms (without
> life, freedom does not exist).
That's a reasonable statement of position. The comment (I realize it was not by you) that I objected to was that our theoretical citizen who had done nothing but express the opinion that anyone coming to take his gun was in grave danger was, by virute of this quite reasonable statement alone, also worthy of having that right denied him. Your position, that one must actually have had some proven history of violence to deny that right is more justifiable, though some definitions of "mentally deficient" or "abusive" and even "child" may be wide enough to drive a truck through. Many such restrictions are of course already in place and don't do a damned thing to reduce violence, but I they are generally not too objectionable to the NRA and other advocates. What they object to is the more draconian proposals like universal registrations, bans on specific weapons, etc.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC