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Posted by Sherman in Idaho [72.47.9.37] on Friday, December 14, 2012 at 18:54:59 :
In Reply to: Re: Unbelievable. posted by Steve Andersen [24.92.18.172] on Friday, December 14, 2012 at 18:29:22 :
A crazy man with a gun is a bad thing, no getting around it, and there were no guns there could be no crazy men with guns. I sometimes wonder what I would do if confronted with such a person, and I couldn't get away. Normally, even if you're dealing with an angry drunk, they are somewhat predictable in their behavior. But what do you do with a guy who may be so far off his rocker that his ears aren't even connected to his brain any more? About all you can do is shoot him, but first of all, most of us don't go around carrying a gun all the time, and secondly, do you really want to shoot somebody just because he looks like he might be about to go crazy? What if he's just bluffing, or it's a plastic gun, or...? Most of us thankfully never have to make that decision.
I have to disagree with you about them "all" showing signs of being a danger to society. They don't. Inevitably the friends and neighbors say they never had a clue he could do something like this. If the people who know him best don't know he's about to go nuts and start shooting people, what makes you or even a trained psychiatrist better? Usually the guy is a little bit odd in some way, but are we going to lock up (or take away the gun rights of) anyone who sometimes seems a little bit odd?
A crazy man with a gun is literally the proverbial loose cannon. There are obviously some who get stopped, because someone recognizes that they're dangerous and has them committed, or they can't get a gun, or somehow the police manage to get there before anyone gets killed, but there are always a few who seemed as normal as anybody until they do their mass murder. The more people there are in this world, the more chance there is of one of them being a dangerous nut job. We can do lots of little things to make this sort of rampage less likely, but I don't see how we can ever stop them completely and still maintain a semblance of freedom. That's my $.02 worth anyway. Sometimes an awful tragedy is just an awful tragedy.
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