Reply #9: Handguns are the best tool to carry for self-defense.

[Atypical Liberal]

Robert Farago and his friends are continually pushing the unacceptable leap in logic that works something like this:

1. Right to life
2. Right to self-defense
3. Right to carry a handgun

The distance between points 2 and 3 is too much for me, but Robert slips it into every discussion as if it's just fine.

That's because it is just fine.

The fact is, in 2011 the best portable tool to carry for self-defense is a handgun. This is why just about every police officer in the United States carries one, and has done so for well over a hundred years. There simply is no other better tool available today for the job. Tasers and stun guns are useful alternatives, particularly when police are already in control of the situation, but they have limited range and/or a limited number of shots.

There IS simply no other tool as effective as the handgun is today for self-defense.

So if you have the right to self-defense, it would be ludicrous to say that you cannot use the best tool available for that job, especially when our police forces have them and our Constitution specifically enumerates the right to carry them.

Please, Eugene, hopin' ain't gonna get it, man. Gun owners need to be screened carefully, CCW permit applicants even more so.

Actually, some states are now doing away with CCW permits altogether, because they have found out that, predictably, the people who go to the trouble to get such permits are hardly ever involved in any kind of crime. So there really isn't any great need to screen people who go to get CCW permits. Such people are willing to jump through needless bureaucratic hoops to do what criminals just do without a second thought. Such people are hyper-attentive to the law and rules and go to great lengths to be certain they are following them.

Could it be that your distrust or unbelief of people being so law-abiding when it comes to firearms stems from your own admitted criminal ownership of them?

We're past hoping that they get training and are intelligent enough to act responsibly. Some don't and some aren't. Here's my goal. And the way we're going to get there is this.

I am unable to comment on your goal and your method as I refuse to click on links to your blog. If you wish to have discussions here please post the relevant commentary here.