StrayKat
Conquered By A Tiger
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2009
- Posts
- 3,645
A gun is wood and metal and plastic put together in a certain way so that it will do a certain thing. It is a tool. The uses that tool gets put to depend entirely on the hands that pick it up.
It can be used to commit crime, certainly, or to threaten and hurt others.
That is not it's only use.
It can be used to feed your family when they're hungry.
It can be used to protect them when they're in danger (not always from other people.)
It can be (as it is for me) used in a sort of recreation.
It can be part of a form of sport that is even included in the Olympics.
It can be a valuable collectors item.
You can, I suppose, hammer the nail with it too, but it doesnt mean the gun is a hammer. You can kill people with a screwdriver but screwdriver is not a tool made and perfected for killing. A gun is. A gun is a tool for killing. All other tools are made to make human life easier, this one was made to destroy it. So saying that a gun is just a tool like any other makes me sick. It is not.
There is a sort of fear around guns that I do understand. I believe that it comes in part from a simple lack of exposure to anything but the news items of people who have picked up that tool and done terrible things with it.
Or maybe your lack of fear comes from never being exposed to reality in which the guns are used as tools to bring death, to your neighbors, to you relatives, for no reason but because they are different nationality or race or religion.
If you cant understand a fear from guns, then you live a sheltered life in which guns are "tools" and toys. Dont assume everyone is so lucky.