On 19/05/2019 13:12, Dan Clough -> David Drummond wrote:

 >> I do not now, nor ever have had the desire to possess a gun. I do not hunt
 >> for food so cannot perceive a need.

 DC> There are other uses for guns.  Here are a couple:

 DC> 1. Sport/target shooting.  Challenging and fun.

Shooting at innocent chunks of clay hurled into the air is challenging and fun?
How about you are the chunks of clay and see how challenging and fun that it.

 DC> 2. Home/personal defense.  Here's a scenario for you - you're home asleep
at
 DC> 3:00AM, and are awoken by a noise.  Turns out it's a couple of thugs 
breaking
 DC> into your house to steal your property and/or rape/kill your wife and
teenage
 DC> daughter.  They're crazed out on drugs and have no fear, and either have
guns
 DC> or some other weapon of deadly force like a club or knife.  They come at
you
 DC> with clear intentions to kill you.  What are you gonna do?  Call the
police?
 DC> Yell and scream for help?  What will either of those actions get you?
 DC> That's right...... dead.

Oh - a hypothetical situation. I would cast my magic spell and send them to the
nearest police station.


The likelihood of your above scenario is so slim as to not warrant mention.
Remember - I DO NOT live in USA. Life is not ruled by firearms here.

 DC> For someone (like me) who has a loaded pistol in my nightstand, the
outcome
 DC> will likely be two dead thugs, and my family and property safe.

You live in fear of being attacked by armed intruders?

 DC> How can any sane person argue that that is not a valid need/use for a
 DC> gun?  Are you willing to give up your life, or your family's lives,
because you don't
 DC> "feel a need" to have a gun?

I see the risk of that happening as so slim that I can honestly say "I do not
feel the need to possess a firearm to defend myself from armed attackers".

It would appear that a very large percentage of Australian residents see it the
same way.

Wikipedia tells us:

Estimated number of civilian guns per capita by country:

1  United States 120.5
[..]
51  Australia 14.5

I can see why you're so terrified. Have you thought of migrating to
Australia... or maybe

162  Netherlands 2.6

or the home of Borat perhaps:

217  Uzbekistan 0.4

-- 

Gang warily
David

--- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.8.0