DETROIT: Large increase in women getting Concealed Pistol License.

[gejohnston]

65. I don't think so

The notion of "gun rights" perpetuates the "us versus them mentality, in the same way that borders do.

but gun rights existed before "antis", therefore it is the antis that are the dividers. Urban vs rural, us vs them, "civilized" vs "savages". Lately, thanks the latest trial and lynching by media, false accusations of racism claiming that any exculpatory evidence is "corporate media joining the defense team", which is a common theme in the posts here for example.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002700580
That is not liberal in my view. It is not in Bertrand Russell's view either, since it violates his ten commandments for teachers.
http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/2012/05/bertrand-russells-10-commandments-for.html

I think criminologist James Wright put it best in front of the House Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary:

[10. GUNS ARE PART OF THE AMERICAN CULTURE]

And then, finally, my tenth observation is that guns are
important elements of our history and our culture. Attempts to
control crime by regulating the ownership or use of firearms are
attempts to regulate the artifacts and activities of a culture that
in its own way is as unique as any of the other myriad cultures that
comprise the American ethnic mosaic. This is what is referred to as
the American gun culture, about which many have written, and, I
believe it remains among the least understood of any of the various
subcultural strands that make up modern society.
The existence and characteristics of the American gun culture
also have implications that are rarely appreciated. For one, gun
control deals with matters that people feel strongly about, that are
part of their background, and their heritage, and their upbringing
...and their worldview. Advocates for gun control are frequently
taken aback by the stridency with which their seemingly modest and
sensible proposals are attacked. But from the gun culture's point
of view, restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms amount to
the systematic destruction of a valued way of life, and are, in that
sense, a form of cultural genocide. Scholars, and criminologists,
and legislators, who speculate on the problem of guns and crime
and violence would, I think, profit to look at things, at least
occasionally, from the gun culture's point of view.
There are about 50,000,000 U.S. families who own firearms, and
hardly any of these families have ever harmed anyone with their
guns, and virtually none ever intend to. Nearly everything these
families will ever do with their guns is both legal, and largely
innocuous. So when we advocate restrictions on their rights to own
guns, as a means to fighting crime, we are casting aspersions on
their decency, as though we somehow hold them responsible for
the crime and violence that plague the nation. Is it any wonder
they object often loudly and vociferously to such slander?