Vector:
While I do not purport to say LEO's are more proficient than all regular citizens, I also do not assume that most gun owning citizens train more frequently than LEO's. As a matter of fact, I'd bet on average, LEO's train more on a % basis that the average gun owner. Many departments require range qualification once a year.
Vector, you need to shuck your doubletalk and clear your mind of the cant that fills it.
You have
no way to
know what "most" gun owning citizens or "average" gun owners do. No one can know such things. You also don't know what an "average" Law Enforcement Officer is, what training such a non-existant being undergoes, or how often one must qualify or even what the qualification involves. There is
no average LEO, and training and qualification requirements vary.
You might as well propose to discuss the feeding habits of "most" South Floridians who have Internet connections or the intelligence of the "average" South Floridan who is online.
Nonsense is nonsense no matter how you dress it. You've woven some theories and suppositions around a web of ignorance and callousness and are trying to masquerade it as a subject worth discussing. It isn't. All you're doing is parading your own prejudices and values.
But just to show you I'm a nice guy, I will agree that the life of
any law enforcement officer is worth more than yours or any member of your family. I like making people happy.
That's the real issue and you're distorting it. I don't know if you're doing it intentionally or out of ignorance: how devious or smart is the average South Floridian today, how well are they trained to think, and how often do they have to qualify their knowledge and intelligence before being allowed to communicate with other people online? Why are they even allowed online instead of letting the professionals handle such an important matter. Turn off Internet access to any South Floridian who can't demonstrate sufficient training to use it properly and who doesn't pass a qualification test at least annually.
So why not reintroduce the poll tax and literacy tests. Voting is too important a matter to be left to the poor or ill-educated.
I wouldn't argue that
your life is worth much, or perhaps anything at all. That's a matter for you to decide and it looks like you've already made that decision. I think it's your right to decide that your life is worthless and I will defend your decision against anyone who attempts to argue against it.
But you don't have the right to make that decision for me or for anyone else. You only think you have that right. But you're wrong.
When you set yourself up as someone who can discuss whether other people should have the
means to defend their lives you demonstrate incredible arrogance that attempts to dehumanize others but dehumanizes you.
You might have the gall to tell a little old lady who lives alone that she should not have a firearm with which to protect her life because she doesn't train often enough for you and doesn't qualify at least annually. I don't have that kind of gall. If I did I'd change my name to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Michael Bloomberg and run for public office, or name myself "Vector" and spout such inhuman nonsense on the Internet.
You tell the paraplegic with limited mobility and living on a small income that his life isn't worth defending. Tell the single mother, the elderly couple, the young college student, the retired man, the nineteen-year-old girl in her first apartment, the guy working two jobs to support his family, the pizza delivery guy, the taxi driver, the convalescent, the person undergoing cancer treatment, the nurses rooming together to save money--tell everyone who doesn't meet your standards for training and qualification that they can't have the means to try to save their lives against overwhelming deadly force. I won't do that.
Everyone who wants to live deserves a last best chance to defend their lives. You, no matter who you are, have no right to deny that to anyone else. Who do you think you are: Sarah Brady, Carolyn McCarthy, Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer, Adrian Fenty, or C. Ray Nagin?
I don't respect in the smallest degree anyone who wants to deny anyone else the opportunity for a last best chance to save his life against a deadly force attack or even proposes to discuss it as a possibility.
Again, because I am one great guy, I will agree that there
is a middle ground. The middle ground is that people who want to defend their lives should be allowed the means to do so and the people who don't want to defend their lives should not be forced to do so.
