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Comment Re:What do we really know about history, anyway? (Score 1) 139

What do we really know about history, anyway? You get different accounts of the same event by people who were actually there. Then, as the stories are propagated by those who weren't there, you get even more different stories. Eventually, things may be written down, and you may find evidence that fits with some stories but not others, but, in the end, what do we really know?

Man, that's a depressing paragraph. Sounds like you're writing that in a darkened room with walls painted black, while listening to the Cure.

Comment Re:Ah, paranoia (Score 3, Insightful) 746

"Law abiding gun owners aren't the problem, the follow laws... They are the ones who sometimes stop crimes before the police arrive. They are the ones who have CCW permits and stop deranged sociopaths who are going on public murder sprees before they can kill or before they can kill as many people as they'd like to."

Do you have an example of this? I haven't done a lot of research, but it seems that when "deranged sociopaths" do go on "public murder sprees," they tend to have specific targets in mind, say Columbine high school or the Holocaust museum, rather than just random murders of people. And in most of these exceedingly rare cases of mass murder, it's been trained professionals that put an end to the incident, not some Joe Blow packing heat. Even in situations where citizens did act--the Kip Kinkle school shooting and the September 11th flight over Pennsylvania, for example--they acted, and were effective, unarmed.

I mean, sure, public murder sprees happen movies and NRA wet dreams, but not so much in real life. Hypothetical mass murders being an argument for concealed weapons is weak at best. It's specious reasoning because if someone's nutty enough to want to go shooting, they aren't likely to give a shit whether anyone out there is armed or not. You can't guard against something like that any more than you can prevent earthquakes or lightning strikes.

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