Bearing Arms: David Loftus

This tale of monumental stupidity (on Billy Dean Riley’s part) doesn’t serve to illustrate anything with regard to gun rights or gun control. Riley should have known better than to break into someone’s house -- especially at that time of day, in that part of the country -- without announcing himself and making sure he was fully identified before entering. He had to have been drunk or stoned or completely out of his mind. Donna Jackson was on solid legal ground when she fired a gun at an unidentified and possibly violent intruder, but that may not make it much easier to live with herself afterward. A shotgun is not a very tactically useful weapon; perhaps a different sort of firearm would have been more effective -- for firing a warning shot and giving Riley a chance to come to his senses instead of having to die.

All that being said, I don’t see how anyone can still believe there’s an individual right to bear arms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, when the courts have repeatedly ruled that it is not so. I can’t understand how anyone still hasn’t grasped that people who keep firearms in their homes are statistically more likely to see themselves or their loved ones hurt by those guns, than to “protect themselves from an intruder.” (Ask yourself what would have happened if Jackson had not been armed; would Riley have beaten her up? Raped her? Robbed her? Unless he had an extensive criminal record, probably not. More likely, they would have ended up talking, and if he needed medical treatment or a tow truck for his vehicle, she would have helped him telephone the right folks.) And anyone who still buys that National Rifle Association hokum that “guns don’t kill people…” and actually believes that just as many wonderful folks would be dead today if we had tighter controls on who gets to own and use guns, simply isn’t using his common sense.

But that’s quasi-democratic representative government for you: a majority of moronic sheep are perfectly free to be led around by a vocal minority into “protecting” their own fear, insecurity, and lack of safety with jingoistic slogans and disregard for reason and reality.