Virginia vs. Iraq

[SacTown Chronic]

If all the students at Va Tech had been armed, the death toll from the murderer's gun might have been lower, but there probably would have been crossfire wounds and/or deaths. Panicked civilians armed with guns will only make the situation worse.

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

In most instances where someone is threatened with a gun ... someone else drawing will only result in gunfire where far more people get hurt or killed.

I've never told this story before because, frankly, I would prefer to forget it ever happened, but I'll share it now:

Last fall a punk kid (his girlfriend was driving) pulled a gun on me - with my family sitting in our car not 20 feet away - and accused me of cutting him off in traffic. Up until the moment he flashed the gun at me I had been trying to play the role of appeaser and peacekeeper. I didn't cut him off but I felt the best way to diffuse the situation was to tell him I didn't realize I had cut him off and I apologized for it. This obviously wasn't what the guy was after and he pulled the gun. Instead of the fear that he so much wanted to see, he got my anger. I told him he could either get the fvck away from me or get his face beaten beyond recognition. The (false) confidence he felt because he was holding the gun turned to panic and he told the girl to punch it. When he was safely out of my reach, he fired a single shot straight up towards the sky.

Pulling that gun in front of my family stirred up incredible anger in me and to this day I'm thankful that I have an aversion to guns because had I been armed, I think I might have shot the punk.

I thought I had been unaffected by the incident but two nights later I had a horrible dream that involved me staring down the barrel of a gun the size of a rocket launcher. I woke up sweating and shaking.