Imagine you are in a situation with a crazed shooter....

[Wetzelbill]

You are in a room of say 30 people, this guy starts blasting away, and then some guy like Dick Cheney pulls out his concealed weapon. Now remember, Dick Cheney, quintessential RW tough guy and avid hunter, shot up his own hunting partner while hunting quail, in a controlled environment when they practically have quail thrown in front of them to shoot. Not very stressful. Not too difficult. But somehow Cheney managed to panic and shoot another person.

Do you know that even trained police officers only hit their targets like 40 percent of the time in a heated battle? Do you realize how many trained soldiers are killed by other trained soldiers in friendly fire incidents? Last week, I think, even a Secret Service agent had a gun accidentally go off and injure others within the White House gates. You might think an SS agent has more experience with a gun and with safety than like 99 percent of the country. Consider what would happen if a whole society of yokels were armed.

I'm from Montana. Pretty much everybody I know hunts. Many friends and people I know have been in the military. I know lots of people in law enforcement. I literally know hundreds if not thousands of people who have experience handling guns.

You know how many of them I would trust to use a gun in a heated situation?

Maybe 4 or 5 of them at most.

In fact, the most gun experienced people I know also tend to be the goofiest. I know life long hunters who disparage Dems and other politicians for wanting gun control. Let me tell you these guys are not trustworthy. I know people who do stupid shit with guns all the time. Like this one guy who used to rail against Clinton, this guy and his family were always doing dumb things, like putting on several coats and shooting each other with birdshot. Yeah, that takes a genius. Or this one guy who used to take kittens and throw them off a train trestle and shoot them on the way down. Yeah, that's a guy I want pulling out a gun in a stressful situation.

Also, strictly speaking about men, it's a very unmanly thing to have to carry a gun around on your person out of fear like that. If a guy is so insecure, fearful and wimpy that he believes it's necessary to carry a gun at all times, then I would have to question their ability to handle themselves with a weapon in the first place. Plenty of guys I know think they are tough simply because they have a gun. Those types of men would be dangerous in a fire fight. Not to mention at other times. Imagine a wimp like that getting in an office argument. Would he out of insecurity decide to pull his gun out? Those types just aren't trustworthy. Unless somebody is in law enforcement or something like that, then feeling the need to carry a weapon around constantly is a serious character flaw, and a dangerous one.

You know, I have had guns pulled on me before. I have had a few knives pulled on me. Once I was even robbed. In those situations, you barely have time to think. In a knife situation myself and a few people started to rush the guy and he backed off and left. In the robbery once I saw the guy never had a weapon I tried to chase him down and he got away. But each time it all happened so fast that one false move on my part could have meant serious injury or death. I was fortunate enough to have kept my head. Now with the guns, I know for a fact that if I had a weapon on me and tried to pull it out I would have been shot to death. It was too fast, the people already had the gun pointed at me. If I went for something, trying to be a hero, it would have been over. That shit only happens to superheroes and in movies or in very lucky situations.

The rest of the time it's dangerous.

You know, I don't know the whole solution here, but I do know that it's insane to think that having everybody out there packing heat everywhere they go is a viable solution. It's just not and frankly anybody who thinks so has some serious problems.

Now maybe somebody with a gun could have stopped Cho from killing so many people. Maybe, but that is a big maybe.

And, in the end, having an armed class of insecure, jittery wimps like Dick Cheney would likely cause more shootings than anything. Just ask his quail hunting buddies.