Instead of swimming pools or bathtubs, you make comparisons to driving, hospitals, and medicinal side effects. Don't you see the difference? Your car doesn't sit in the driveway all night waiting for you to get inside and fulfill its mission of mowing down pedestrians–it was built (and cars are used by practically everyone, every day) to help you get from point A to point B and back. Hospitals around the world are crowded with sick people who trust them to help make them well. Pharmaceuticals are manufactured, approved and sold (and then used by millions every day) to treat, comfort and heal people, not to kill them. A handgun, on the other hand, has no real use except to send a bullet flying at its target in order to inflict damage on that target–and every improvement made to handguns is designed to make them more effective in damaging just one type of target–human beings.

If you want to argue cost-benefit analyses of handguns vs. cars, pharmaceuticals, hospitals or swimming pools, the results aren't going to come out as you'd like them to.

I believe that hunters and recreational shooters should have the ability to procure tightly-regulated rifles and the ammunition for them, of a type and in a quantity as needed to serve their recreational purposes while posing the absolute lowest possible risk of “collateral damage” to other humans (Dick Cheney's aim notwithstanding). But if the Constitution is required to guarantee the ability to take a small arsenal of semiautomatic pistols to a shooting range, I say get a frickin' bow and arrow. They may not give the same rush of violent power, but they require more skill.

I don't know how to explain the Swiss' remarkable restraint when it comes to the number of firearms there–though it's worth noting that only some army officers (not enlisted men) are issued handguns and that ammunition is tightly regulated. The gun culture they've cultivated is obviously very different from ours, but I reject the idea that “we simply have too many scummy people who want to kill other people.” Which people are those? Are you saying we are a scummier society than the Swiss? Can you prove that with any real evidence other than our obscene gun-death statistics?

Even if we could both agree that the Swiss have a more prudent gun culture than ours–and the Swiss can't even agree on that, since there's an active (and sometimes successful) gun-control lobby there–then we should also be able to agree that our own gun culture, starting with the Second Amendment and the gun lobby's absolutism regarding any limitations to it, simply doesn't work. Where to go from there should be the question we're working to solve.

Instead of swimming pools or bathtubs, you make comparisons to driving, hospitals, and medicinal side effects. Don't you see the difference? Your car doesn't sit in the driveway all night waiting for you to get inside and fulfill its mission of mowing down pedestrians–it was built (and cars are used by practically everyone, every day) to help you get from point A to point B and back. Hospitals around the world are crowded with sick people who trust them to help make them well. Pharmaceuticals are manufactured, approved and sold (and then used by millions every day) to treat, comfort and heal people, not to kill them. A handgun, on the other hand, has no real use except to send a bullet flying at its target in order to inflict damage on that target–and every improvement made to handguns is designed to make them more effective in damaging just one type of target–human beings.

If you want to argue cost-benefit analyses of handguns vs. cars, pharmaceuticals, hospitals or swimming pools, the results aren't going to come out as you'd like them to.

I believe that hunters and recreational shooters should have the ability to procure tightly-regulated rifles and the ammunition for them, of a type and in a quantity as needed to serve their recreational purposes while posing the absolute lowest possible risk of “collateral damage” to other humans (Dick Cheney's aim notwithstanding). But if the Constitution is required to guarantee the ability to take a small arsenal of semiautomatic pistols to a shooting range, I say get a frickin' bow and arrow. They may not give the same rush of violent power, but they require more skill.

I don't know how to explain the Swiss' remarkable restraint when it comes to the number of firearms there–though it's worth noting that only some army officers (not enlisted men) are issued handguns and that ammunition is tightly regulated. The gun culture they've cultivated is obviously very different from ours, but I reject the idea that “we simply have too many scummy people who want to kill other people.” Which people are those? Are you saying we are a scummier society than the Swiss? Can you prove that with any real evidence other than our obscene gun-death statistics?

Even if we could both agree that the Swiss have a more prudent gun culture than ours–and the Swiss can't even agree on that, since there's an active (and sometimes successful) gun-control lobby there–then we should also be able to agree that our own gun culture, starting with the Second Amendment and the gun lobby's absolutism regarding any limitations to it, simply doesn't work. Where to go from there should be the question we're working to solve.

The question is similar to that surrounding any useful but potentially deadly technology. What is the trade-off between speed limit and traffic fatalities? How many deaths from the side effects of a drug should tip the scale toward banning the drug?

These are questions of judgment and individual values. Naturally, there won't be perfect agreement between people. My bias is to lean toward maximum freedom for the individual. If you want to take a risky drug, fine, why should the FDA be a grandma and say you can't. You want to play with pointed sticks? Fine, but you may poke your eye out. Your choice.

Instead of dealing with the real question, you pull out the wacky antics of Nugent or the mentally disturbed as props to dramatize the issue. You pull out the most extreme examples as ammunition. Haha. But as we all know, hard cases make bad law.

There is inherent truth in the proposition that people kill people, not guns. To illustrate, in Switzerland, every household has a gun. Their murder rate is half of ours. To quote Heston, “It's PEOPLE!” We simply have too many scummy people who want to kill other people. Whether we respond to that by the nanny state taking away the guns, or giving individuals the choice and means to defend themselves (and their neighbors) is largely a matter of values, and a question acceptable losses.

Don't tell me you don't believe in acceptable losses, or you'd be wanting to ban hospitals and automobiles, both responsible for tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths annually. Freedom, including Second Amendment freedom, has a price. It appears that in America, we value that freedom very highly, in spite of the risks.

Disclaimer: I probably have enough firearms to arm every home on my block, though I haven't shot a gun since I was six years old. It is an inherited collection. Still, I value my freedom to own them. And I vote accordingly.

If you look at statistics across nations, our rates of various crimes are not significantly different from those in other nations–EXCEPT when it comes to the use of guns, and the carnage they create. In other words, our rate of robberies committed without the use of guns, or murders committed without firearms, is very close to Canada's or Britain's. It's the extraordinary difference in gun-related crime and murder that is striking.

The human impulse toward crime probably will never disappear; the difference made when a society rids itself of guns is in the potential for that impulse to result in death or grievous injury. Most of the civilized world is happy to point out that whether you're talking about fists or knives or even homemade bombs, it's a lot more difficult to mug a person, or rob a store, or (particularly) kill one person or 32, when you can't use a gun to do it.

Back to your topic–one of the primary definitions of the word “state” holds that a governing entity doesn't rise to statehood until it holds a monopoly on the use of force within the area it governs. Heaven knows all the handgun packers out there–a large proportion of whom seem to distrust their own government to inordinate degrees–would have trouble organizing themselves enough to fight off Barney Fife, much less an invading force.

In fact, the scenario you note seems to apply perfectly…to Iraq. They sure were locked and loaded and ready to rock-and-roll when WE invaded…