Maggie's Farm

In that horrible home invasion trial in Connecticut, the two animals at one point sent the mother into her bank --alone --to get some cash. Pity that no one handed her a revolver inside the bank.

Her family had one chance, and that was it --if only guns had not been driven so far beyond the pale in so many circles these days.

The sick kicker is that even the perps counted on her not even dreaming of hiding a pistol and bringing it home with the cash and shooting them both.

We've truly become sheep, counting on luck and the law of averages that the wolves will pick off sheep besides our own selves or our family and friends.

Bah!

Forgive me, Geoff, but are you saying that the number of murders that could be prevented by firearms in the house, is to be accepted, in order to prevent accidents among the family? If so, you may have a point, statistically --but the important stat is the one no one can quantify, that must tincture reality only by anecdote, is trhe number of crimes that are never even initiated at all, because the murderous mind apprehends that there may an armed killer inside, in the person of his intended victim.

That this anecdotal derivision may be large, can be inferred via county-by-county crime stats before and after guns in the home have or haven't been made or unmade officially difficult to own. Where these comparisons are available, the numbers say, rather resoundingly, "keep a gun in your home".

Further, neighbors should proselytize in that favor, on the basis of collective defense --a frontier principle. EDven now, every dwelling in Switzerland must have a weapon if there is someone to operate it. There's no violent crime in Switzerland, and it never gets invaded in wartime.