by Wisconsin. And Sikhs, of all people. I don’t know a lot about them but a year or two ago something inspired me to read about them. I just remember a lot of peace and love, and like Catholics, a strong focus on service. Oh wow, reading the Wikipedia entry now. “Protecting the religious and political rights of all people and preventing discrimination is an integral part of the Sikh faith.” Yeah, I can see why someone would want to shoot them.
Can we talk about a little gun control, now??
I’ve been goofing off. That’s the Bachelor Pad below. I was watching that earlier. Currently, I’m going back and forth between Dr. Who and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and later it will be Olympics, Olympics, Olympics. That is my Sunday. Because I worked really hard yesterday.
Not real proud to be a Wisconsinite after this news. Or last week, when our attorney general opined on the radio that if he’d been in the theater in Colorado, and allowed his concealed carry in the theater, he could have taken out the gunman. I kid you not. He went on to say his 11-year-old daughter uses an assault rifle for hunting because she can’t handle a regular shotgun. And this is our attorney general, for the love of God.
Sigh. I wish the president would convene a panel of people from both sides, moderates from both sides, and ask them to compromise and come up with a solution and televise their deliberations. Or would that just make both sides grandstand? There must be a way around it.
Just say no grandstanding, this is about acknowledging the problem and coming up with solutions. Neither side can demonize the other.
You’re a bigger person than me. I kind of want to demonize Van Hollen (or at least mock him a bit) for indulging in this kind of gun-toting fantasy on the air.
I’m not a bigger person. I just sometimes go into “keep your eyes on the prize” mode.
Hi Stacy,
here is the unfortunate, brutal and regrettable truth. Sometimes the only possible defense that is available to you is self defense.
No one despises this fact more than I. Stacy, you have read my posts. You understand that I am a fairly literate guy. My interests run to artistic and literary subjects. Right now I am reading Gore Vidal’s second autobiography, Point to Point Navigation.
The police officer who taught my wife to shoot wanted her to drive around with her gun in her lap all the time. He said something like, “We can come over and make a nice chalk outline around your body and try to find out who killed you, but you’ll be dead.”
We have enormous amounts of gun control in the country already. It varies from state to state. But in New York City, just how likely is it for the Gambinos, the Bonnanos, the Luchesis, the Colombos, or the Genoveses to get rid of all of their guns?
And if they did, they would just use bombs, knives and garrottes.
How likely is it for the Hell’s Angels, the Bandidos, the Outlaws, the Pagans, or the Sons of Silence to melt all of their guns down and turn them into plowshares?
And say in some fictional world these things were possible. What is a 5-foot-3, 100 pound girl supposed to do when one or two 6-foot, 200-pound men break in to rape her? How on earth is she going to defend herself?
If someone in the Wisconsin Sikh temple had been armed, there is a real possibility that some lives could have been saved. the truth is that many, many people across the Us are capable of fighting back when they are put in a corner and have no other options.
The Sikhs are a very fierce warrior people. They were attacked for centuries by Muslims. You can see some of their traditional swordsmanship on YouTube. One Sikh swordsman was said to repel 50 Hindus who tried to overrun the Golden Temple.
Hostility has existed in the Punjab and the rest of India for a very long time. Sikhs assassinated Indira Gandhi. The conflict is over resources. The Punjab is the rich, fertile breadbasket for the rest of India. So India makes demands on the Punjab, and the Sikhs feel that these demands are unreasonable. The conflict spills over in violence from time to time.
Had one of these Sikhs the means to fight back, there is a real possibility they would have done so.
No one despises all this more than I. Believe me, man’s brutality to man is something that has always been with us and apparently is endemic to the human condition. It’s simply not fixable.
At this second, if I hear the tinkle of glass from someone breaking in, I very possibly will be able to avoid Helter-Skelter or In Cold Blood or other home invasion nightmares since my wife and I are armed and prepared to use force if it is necessary.
Mayor Bloomberg has a huge complement of armed body guards around him for a reason. Those of us who are ordinary citizens often only have ourselves to rely on.
If anyone ever comes up with another way for one to defend oneself where running or hiding is not an option, I will give it my fullest attention. Right now this is simply does not exist.
I’m not sure how helpful it is to point out some Sikhs can be aggressive sometimes.
Back to gun control. To begin:
– Ban assault weapons.
– Better background checks.
– Longer wait times.