shoot 'em up

I'm a pacifist. I'm not big on pronouncements, but I don't see that ever changing. Even if I lived in some post-apocalyptic world, I think my response would be more "take me out" than "yippee ki yay mother fucker!" if it came right down to it. A world where we're all armed to the teeth isn't one I'm much interested in. And I reluctantly support your right to legally bear arms, though I don't understand it, and I don't buy the "I need to protect myself" argument. How come I don't feel the need to "protect" myself, and never will? How come the majority of the people I know won't arm themselves and refuse to live in that kind of fear? You also hear gun-lovers talk about how, in situations like what happened in Arizona recently, someone carrying a legal concealed weapon would be able to take out the bad guy, and yet. And yet. THAT NEVER HAPPENS. Those legal gun lovers talk and talk about the intricacies of their gun collections in a near-fetishy way, about their rights to have said guns, about how much "safer" we all are with them around, but they fail to protect their families and neighbors in the way they assure us they will, their very reasoning for having weapons to begin with. Isn't that interesting? Instead, the people who saved the day, who saved lives, in this case and in other awful scenarios like this, are people who are willing to tackle the shooters, to hit them with their purse, to act fast and risk their own lives, without benefit of weapons. They are the people who take action while the gun lovers are fumbling with their guns, or loading them, or unlocking them, or are running away in fear. So you'll excuse me for not feeling safer that Citizen X who's passed a background check and is packing (so did shooter Jared Lee Loughner, who just had to have a Glock, and was easily granted one, after the military turned him down, and now 6 people are tragically gone), with empty visions of would-be heroism in his/her head, is standing next to me at a supposedly peaceful public event.