It never was about defending one’s self or home, but of defending the country at a time when the United States didn’t have the funds to keep a large defensive standing army.

The tradition of mandatory weapons ownership and proficiency goes back to the days of the longbow in England. Every able-bodied man between twelve and sixty was required to own and practice with a longbow in the very likely event that the kingdom was invaded or their services otherwise needed for a war. That tradition went forward until modern times when private ownership of guns was severely curtailed – and the crime rates went down in England.

Today, a bunch of yahoos standing around with their OTC weapons in defense of the country (or more likely thinking about fighting against it) can be taken out from twenty miles away by a Predator drone or one round of artillery. The government has bigger, better guns. Private citizens don’t need them.

I have read a lot of stories where someone picks up a gun to shoot at someone else, but never have they successfully defended their own home before being robbed, beaten or nearly killed – at least not since 1978. I’m sure it happens, but in a country where over a million Americans have died by firearms (murder, suicide, accident, etc) since 1978 all for the sake of an Amendment which is no longer necessary (The U.S. can afford a large standing army today and doesn’t even want people to bring their own weapons to war with them), one would think the people would get tired of headlines in which a depressed family member slaughters the entire family and themselves with the gun they bought for “home protection”.

Given the number of times that kind of tragedy happens (pretty much daily), versus the number of times defending the home happens (almost never), the whole fallacy of owning a gun for home or personal protection pretty much falls apart.

Were it up to me, I’d ban the ownership of all single-handed guns and constitutionally define “arms” as, “a non-breach-loading, non-cartridge using, firearm, no less than 36 inches long, capable of an average rate of fire no greater than four rounds per minute.” That way hunters would be able to hunt and the home would be defended the way homes were back then – with a muzzle loader. They make excellent clubs once the gun’s been fired.

MY personal home defense weapon is a Wakizashi. The Katana I also have is a bit long for home defense. I have not had the occasion to use either of them on real people, but I can cut a pig’s head off in a single stroke with both of them. (Obviously, I’m not a pacifist!)

My feeling about guns is that they’re not terribly useful. If a person has to have a gun to feel safe or to defend themselves, they need to turn on their man-card and join the long line of cowards hiding behind a hunk of metal bathed in the blood of more Americans than have died in all of our wars combined.

Man, what a soup sandwich! Don’t want to do crack because I’ll probably like it. I guess I’ll just give in to the hope of the hopeless and buy a 40 oz., a lottery ticket and keep up with the Kardashians.

In the case of your elderly patient, it seems like your efforts were wasted – as well as the efforts of the hospital and staff – when the patient was deposited back in his own filth. A great deal of resources and tax dollars went into this useless “transaction.”

But would classifying this man as retarded have solved anything? A life of institutionalization – albeit a clean one?

Can a retarded person also be ignorant? Where is the line drawn?

Ultimately, the answer can be found in some of the training you received in your career: identifying those who are most likely to survive and adapt.

The problem is that we’re too bound by weak-willed legislation and illogical elements of a spineless morality that just won’t allow otherwise intelligent people to make such distinctions.

And as it happens, I have recently heard a story about how a co-worker (actually someone who was fired from my place of employment) who threatened a homeless man with a handgun. As the story goes, he was driving slowly down the alley in back of our workplace when a homeless man jumped onto the running board of his truck and reached in to steal change out of the ashtray. This was a bold and stupid maneuver to say the least. My co-worker pulled a gun out of his glove compartment and stuck it in the mans face, demanding his change back, and making the man get off of his car. People laugh about this incident, but when it was told to me I had a different take that was not popular among my peers. (As usual.) I said the following:

“So a homeless guy was trying to steal some change, and he threatened him with death? That’s the dumbest thing I have ever heard. What it the guy grabbed the gun and tried to wrestle it away from him? Then he is there, trying to drive down and alley and keep a deadly weapon from being taken from him. For what? Change? That’s just stupid. As soon as he pulled out that gun, there was no good outcome to that situation if the homeless dude decided to resist. What if he had actually shot that guy in the face? What would the police do to you for killing a guy over some change? That whole situation was pointless.”

They asked me what I would have done.

“I would have just accelerated until he fell off the car if I thought he was dangerous. Or maybe just kicked open the door. Or…how about this…let the sad fucker have the change and laugh it off while I drove away. I’m living in the same world you all are living in, and I have had plenty of similar things happen. I have never felt the need to use a gun to guard the precious change in my car’s ashtray.”

And so…I didn’t count this event when I was thinking about people I knew who had defended themselves because I didn’t think it was an APPROPRIATE mode of defense. Which brings up a criticism I have with Kleck’s argument. I could probably go up and ask any number of ‘countrified Kentuckians’ if they ever have used a gun to defend themselves. Would I ever hear that they woke up to some masked intruder in their home? Or would I hear a bunch of stories of peppering the neighbor’s kids asses with rock salt after some episode of cow tipping? Or threatening a homeless dude with death to save the change in their ashtray?

Study idea! We need a large survey of gun owners. We need to come up with an objective set of criteria for judging whether or not the threat of deadly force was necessary given a set of circumstances. Cops have to do this all the time. So we may be able to start with something like the cops use and modify it for private gun owners. Then every time we get a positive for gun use in self defense, we apply the criteria to see if the use of a gun was appropriate in that context. I would love to see those numbers. If Kleck is right, he is right. But my hypothesis is that the average gun owner is just itching for a reason to skin that smoke wagon so he or she can feel like a big shot. The study should also include all instances that subjects can recall when self defense was needed. Did other people have similar experiences, and were they able to solve those without a deadly weapon. As I said…I encounter annoying and invasive homeless people all the time. I don’t need a gun to get rid of them. The questionnaire could stratify people as far as education level and political affiliation as well. Are Republicans with low education levels more likely to threaten violence to solve a dispute then someone else? I think I will stop this comment before really pissing someone off…but I want to see those numbers.