The Psychological and Public Health Benefits of gun ownership

[Rocky7]

Those who advocate gun control measures as solutions to tragedies like those in Newtown, Connecticut and Aurora, Colorado seem to be ignoring the fact that the perpetrators of the carnage in those towns were severely psychiatrically ill and could have chosen other lethal means to cause just as many deaths.

Explosives are one obvious example. ...............


As Thomas Jefferson wrote to his nephew Peter Carr in 1785, "A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the Body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind . . . "

The right to bear arms is a critical component of feeling competent and autonomous as individuals, rather than relying on the goodwill of a super-powerful, unassailable government.

A disarmed population is, by definition, a population that has completely ceded the power to defend its homes against local, state or federal authorities. This implies a level of trust much more consistent with that which children have for parents than that which thinking adults have for the institutions they have created to perform vital functions like defending the nation, keeping the peace, maintaining schools and providing clean water.
A disarmed population is allowed the toxic luxury of feeling as though our way of life and our safety from oppression comes without the tremendous responsibilities and moral complexities of wielding force. The same people who passively pay taxes that put tanks on the streets and fighter jets in the skies over our enemies' nations can cringe at the idea of owning guns themselves — projecting their survival instincts onto an all-powerful father figure (the state)...................

The psychological truth is that every gun privately and legally owned in America is a tiny impediment to the citizenry assuming a docile, nearly delusional perspective that the world will always be predictable, that one's home and loved ones will always be safe and that government will always tend toward light and never toward darkness.

Keith Ablow, M.D.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/...#ixzz2HzCvygFy

[Ryry4]

Don't forget that at least in the case of Conn. the guns were obtained illegally. Bad people will do bad things, more laws will never change that.

[6.5x47 lapua]

anybody been watching Piers Morgan? he has a set that clanks.come to america from britain and tell the american people what they should do for gun control? no wonder people are signing a petition to kick him out.