In the land of Mahatma Gandhi, Indian gun owners are coming out of the shadows for the first time to mobilize, U.S.-style, against proposed new curbs on bearing arms.
When gunmen attacked 10 sites in Mumbai in November 2008, including two five-star hotels and a train station, Mumbai resident Kumar Verma sat at home glued to the television, feeling outraged and unsafe.
Before the end of December, Verma and his friends had applied for gun licenses. He read up on India's gun laws and joined the Web forum Indians for Guns. When he got his license seven months later, he bought a black, secondhand, snub-nose Smith & Wesson revolver with a walnut grip.
This sounds like the same reason many people choose to arm themselves in the States, fear and paranoia. This guy Verma may have as little need for a gun as many other people who become so concerned with their powerlessness, so afraid that the frightening moment of lethal threat will someday come, that they decide a gun is the answer.
The gun rights organizations are the first ones to encourage people in this thinking. The gun manufacturers are behind it too. Before you know it accidents, suicides and murders are up. Then because of the murders, more people decide they need a gun. The cycle continues on and on until the baleful results become so undeniably obvious that even the most rabid gun lover will be compelled to admit that guns are bad news for everybody.
What's your opinion? How long do you think it'll be before my prediction is realized? I say, depending how it goes after McDonald, two or three years.
Please leave a comment.
How long do you think it'll be before my prediction is realized? I say, depending how it goes after McDonald, two or three years.
ReplyDeleteIt's not nice to indulge in all those powerful recreational pharmaceuticals, without bringing enough for everyone, Mikeb.
Violence plummeting; gun ownership skyrocketing.
You hate it, don't you, Mikeb? You can't wait for the bloodbath that will prove your point, and make even those of us who are worth a damn think we're better off being disarmed.
My suggestion? Learn to wait--because it's going to take longer than any of our lives.
You have a swell evening, ya' hear?
"This sounds like the same reason many people choose to arm themselves in the States, fear and paranoia."
ReplyDeleteIs it paranoia if it's after the fact? It's not like Verma is preparing for a zombie attack or TEOTWAWKI. He's preparing for something that has actually happened before and taking fairly conservative actions in doing so.
It's not like he went and bought an AR-15, body armor, a helmet, and 10k rounds of ammo. He's doing what millions of American's have already done. Buying a firearm and not depending solely on the police for his protection.
Zorro:
ReplyDeleteActually, reading your posts and mikey's it's pretty obvious that you can't wait for the bloodbath. It must be a total bitch living somewhere that you can have all the gunz you want while knowing that the target rich environments that you'd be happy in--if only they'd allow you to have your gunsm, there--are out of reach. You boys really ought to enlist and go to to Afghanistan so's you can kill the bad sortabrowns.
Democommie, I've done my time in the military, and hope I've done all the killing I'm going to. Memories of killing aren't something I want any more of.
ReplyDeleteMy family has served in every war (and undeclared "police actions," or whatever we're supposed to call them) the U.S. has fought in, since at least WWI (and probably longer than that).
If it's up to me, I'll be the last in that chain. My boys are taught that it's far better to avoid a situation where you can be ordered to kill--especially when you're ordered to kill people who are simply trying to push hated foreign invaders off their land--hated foreign invaders who would never have been there, except for some idiot's desire for a legacy as the "liberator" of Iraq.
Zorro, Thanks for showing me the biggest thing you and I have in common, a hope that our children will not end up fighting in a war like Iraq.
ReplyDeleteMikeb says:
ReplyDeleteZorro, Thanks for showing me the biggest thing you and I have in common, a hope that our children will not end up fighting in a war like Iraq.
Not an especially controversial point of agreement, but I guess it's nice to have found something on which we can agree.