-----Let us hope, dear reader, that should you own a gun, you can control it. If not, the fault shall be entirely your own, for the gun can not be expected to control itself. Allowing others to control the gun for you may also prove problematic. Who's to say where they will point the thing, or whether they shall cause it to discharge at an inopportune moment.
-----Guns, like automobiles, are expensive and potentially hazardous items. It is possible, despite the vigorous efforts of industry and society, to live without them. (It is even possible to live without computers or televisions, but who can afford a piano?) However in many situations, especially those involving rural residency where due to a lack of public transport, distance, and the presence of feral animals, the ownership of guns and/or autos becomes more of a necessity than a convenience.
-----At the present time there arises in the body politic ever more strident voices insisting that only the state and its immediate minions should have possession of fire-arms. As justification for this opinion they point to the mayhem caused by criminals and the deranged. The example of civilized nations which disallow the ownership of guns by their citizens is presented along with the expected statistics. How one is to protect themselves from criminally insane governments is dismissed as paranoid conjecture.
-----Oh, well.
-----I don't really give a flying fuck. I own a gun and a pickup truck.
-----It is my opinion that freedom is more important than inflicted safety.
-----I will posit that liberty is the one unifying factor of the entity known as The United States of America. The history of which has been a constant reaching for liberty, too often at the expense of that very liberty, but still an honest desire, and any liberty gained is more precious than all the nattering after hallucinatory sky monarchs or dependent utopias where not too chubby children swathed in nurf spheres are tethered to education machines.
-----At this point you may be thinking, "This guys some kind of right wing gun nut." Allow me to disabuse you. I generally vote Democratic because the Republicans and their Christian Coalition bullshit make me want to puke. I would vote Communist but the ACP folded back in '89 (oops!). I'd rather see taxes spent on people than weapons systems. I think it's a national embarrassment that the United States lacks a public health care system. It would be very nice if the government spent more on the arts, and in a spirit of liberty rather than some whining blather about colorful language and blasphemy.
-----Fuck Censorship!
-----So, my point on gun control is that it begins at home. It is the responsibility of the individual before it is the responsibility of the state. The greater good of the nation is achieved through the expansion of liberties for all citizens rather than the imposition of demands and denials towards some assumption of social improvement. To outlaw gun ownership will control guns about as much as outlawing drug usage controls drugs.