Posted on 07/31/2007 4:11:14 PM PDT by DeFault User
1 less gun for grandkids to worry about DANNYE ROMINE POWELL "Maybe we should buy a gun," I told my husband.
As I waited for him to answer, I listened to the birds chirping. I looked toward the sky, hoping for rain.
"No, we shouldn't," he said finally.
"Listen to this," I said, picking up Sunday's paper. I read aloud from the front-page story, "Forced to Kill," about four Charlotte people who had each shot someone trying to protect themselves.
The killings were legal. Necessary. The police said so.
I could slip instantly into the shoes of one south Charlotte man, who woke to the sound of the doorbell seven years ago. When he heard loud banging, he grabbed a revolver and ran downstairs.
A young man had thrown an iron patio chair against the window, shattering the glass. The older man fired two safety shots. When the young man swung the chair again, the older man aimed a third time and fired, killing the intruder.
I could imagine us in the exact situation -- without a gun -- defenseless.
Not in my house
"Can't you see that happening to us?" I said."Sure, I can," my husband said. "But we have an alarm system. And we're not getting a gun."
"Your reason?"
"Two reasons," he said. "Our granddaughters."
That stopped me cold.
About 200 people in the United States kill someone each year in self-defense.
But how many die each year -- innocently -- from guns?
Let me tell you.
In the 10 years ending in 2006, 486 children under age 18 in North Carolina, alone, died from gun-related injuries.
Amazing the figure is that low, considering that 82,000 kids in this state are exposed each year to unsafely stored firearms.
Thanks to my husband's unruffled thinking, our grandchildren won't be among them -- not in our house.
Unforgettable near miss
Our conversation triggered a memory, one I usually manage to tamp down.
I was 9 years old, visiting a neighbor a year or so older, whose father had been a colonel in World War II.
Her mother ran out to the grocery store, leaving us alone for about half an hour.
As soon as she'd pulled away, my friend unearthed her father's gun -- a relic from the war -- ornate, as I recall. Official-looking, heavy.
It's not loaded, she said, pointing the gun at me.
We sat there, each of us cross-legged in our chair, about eight feet apart. She tried to squeeze the trigger.
I felt no fear. She'd said it wasn't loaded. Why doubt her?
She squeezed and squeezed, still pointing. The trigger didn't budge. When she heard her mother in the driveway, she ran to put the gun back.
My friend called the next day, tearful. Her father had found her out, and spanked her. The gun, she whispered, had been loaded after all.
I sat speechless, the phone to my ear.
She was lucky. I was luckier.
In our house, we'll remain unarmed.
Defenseless is better than discovering someone we love dead.
IN MY OPINION Dannye Romine Powell
Evolution at it’s best .......liberal whiners elect to die at the hands of those they protect.
It’s a good thing as Martha likes to say.
Yet they piss me off bad as they put their children in grave danger playing them as pawns in their great socialist experiment.
Doom on such parents who endanger their children in such a manner.......
If it was a 1911, the grip safety was off when the kid put her hands on the grips. The thumb safety would be off if the gun wasn't cocked. So if it was a 1911, the kid was saved either by the gun not being cocked or the thumb safety was on. Good thing the pistol wasn't a Glock.
Your example is perfect, except for not including some misleading statistic after the “And I knew” line.
And from your link, it looks like 121 unintentional firearm deaths in 2004 in the U.S. (who knows whether it was a grandfather’s cabinet situation in all these cases). With the author’s statistic of “about 200” killed in self defense (and undoubtedly many times more where the gun saved a life when the intruder fled), the actual data doesn’t make her case.
But of course, she wasn’t out to find the real truth, she was out to advocate against gun ownership regardless of the facts.
lol...
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