Comment Re:Missing the point. (Score 1) 1013
Here's a scenario for you which also happens to be a true story.
When I was a teenager we lived out in the country; 10-15 minutes from the nearest (very) small town. One summer my father had to take a job in a city about 3 hours away. Since it made no sense to spend 6 hours per day commuting he stayed in the city during the week and only came home on the weekends. This left me, as the oldest male child, to be the "man" of the house.
Now just down the road from us lived a young married couple. About once or twice a month the husband would get rip-roaring drunk and on most of those occasions he would then proceed to viciously beat his wife. For reasons that were never quite clear to me, she always decided to seek sanctuary at our house. Inevitably when this happened the husband would stumble up to our house in a frothing rage demanding his wife's return. And so it would fall to me, a short, scrawny, nerdy, 80 lbs soaking wet, 14 year old to deal with a raging drunk 6+ ft thug out to continue beating his wife and not particularly interested in who else might be in his way.
I don't think I had an easy night's sleep that entire summer but I was thankful that I had the option to defend my family and this tragically abused young woman with lethal force if it became necessary. Fortunately it never came to that. Fortunately he never came on to our property with a weapon that I could see. But he knew I had one and he believed I would use it and that was all that was necessary to send him back to his house to sleep off his drunk until the next time.
You want to talk about love? I love my family and I didn't want to see them harmed by this criminal. Even though I didn't particularly like her, I was also showing love for this abused girl; she had a place of sanctuary.
The alternative which extreme gun-control advocates would foist upon everyone in the country was to remain defenseless against this individual. We were, at best, 15 minutes from a law enforcement officer arriving and that would have only been if they happened to be in town and waiting by the phone for our call. In reality it likely would have taken twice that long for the police to arrive. She could have pressed charges against her husband and have him locked up, but she wouldn't and didn't. If my father tried to have him locked up for trespassing, she would go bail him out.
The sad thing is you're correct: normal people shouldn't have to worry about this sort of thing. Unfortunately, it is all too often the case that the real world fails to match up with our ideals.