Reply #69: duh, eh?

[iverglas]

But of course. Everyone, every single one, who has not been caught committing a crime, and prosecuted for it, is one o' them "law-abiding gun owners", or "honest citizens", as some here are bizarrely fond of terming them. (Strikes me that's a hard standard to live up to -- to be not only law-abiding, but honest too, and of course to be a citizen to boot.)

All of those things stashed away in the car trunks and closets of the many drug trade executives who seem so fond of them, they all belong to "law-abiding gun owners" and "honest citizens", 'cause the people who've got 'em have never been convicted of a crime.

Until they commit one. Like the guy in Toronto who had met the relatively stringent requirements for owning a handgun for sporting purposes, and decided one night to shove it in his pants and take it out to a local nightclub, where, after being evicted, he took a shot at the bouncer and struck and killed a passerby on the sidewalk.

If he hadn't been an "honest citizen" and "law-abiding gun owner", he would not have been in lawful possession of that handgun, which he was ... right up until the point he shoved it down his pants and walked out his door. Then he was in unlawful possession of it. And then he killed someone with it.

Even then, had he not decided to actually try to shoot somebody with it, he could have successfully passed for a law-abiding gun owner and honest citizen for the rest of his life. Even though he wasn't.

Such a conundrum, this life business. Time, and how things change over it, and people do things today they didn't do yesterday and had never done before; what a concept, eh?