Car Crash and Gun Nut Salad

If this article in the Naples Florida News, Guns & Children was a salad, it would be raw tuna, whipped cream, avocado bits, dried dates, Grape Nuts, black olives and nougat on a bed of white asparagus and sea urchin roe. I sent her an email:

I believe-and don't ask me how I know this- that you know absolutely nothing you wrote about in your Guns & Children. Ask me about firearms in my house and I say it's none of your business. If you don't like my answer, don't visit. Although at your question, I've already pulled in the welcome mat. Let me ask you a question about "our children" and what we want for Florida or any state. First, on a personal level, how safe for children is a home with firearms compared to a mother's womb? One child in four gunned down by the mother would be about equivalent. On a larger scale, the laws vary from state to state as to how a firearm permit holder can discharge his weapon. Here in MN we do not have a Castle Doctrine, and I must retreat, may use my firearm only in fear of great bodily harm or death, and can fire to save another only, as my instructor put it, "For those persons to whom you would donate an organ." On a personal level, if I walk into a bank and see a knife to your throat, I will be fleeing the scene and dialing 911, not testing my not very rusty shooting skills. (By the way, do you have any idea the range at which most shootings, of all kinds, police, criminal, citizen, occur? Under 20 feet. A criminal with a knife can close 33 feet in about 2 seconds. A really skilled person can draw from holster in concealment in 2-3 seconds.) And lastly, on a vulgar level, this, "We’ve registered cars and required skills training for those licenses since forever without banning motor vehicles." If you want to make this argument, then everytime someone without a license to drive kills someone in an accident, punitive laws affecting all those people who did not kill someone in an accident, or shoot someone with their legal firearm, should be enacted. Like limits on the number of cylinders in engines. Waiting periods for car purchases of at least six weeks to three months. No more private sales of cars from individual to individual. We've got to close the car show loophole. The restriction of auto usage to professional drivers, after all, cars are designed only to kill when crashing into children. Cars must be kept in steel garages with multiple locks, batteries disconnected, spark plugs taken out and tires deflated. These are just "common sense car laws" after all, no? Aren't 50,000 automobile deaths a year enough?

One more thing...the article is described as a guest commentary. Guest(sic)? Guessed. Heh.