Susan, I understood it, but have a hard time relating it to the discussion at hand. I have solved this problem in "my own back yard" by refusing to own a gun, or allow one in my house. That doesn't solve the problem, which still may encroach upon my backyard at any time. Given the mobility of society and commerce in the modern world, the only way to solve this problem in my back yard is to enact and enforce laws that would severely restrict the availability of guns in our society.

I'm really not enthusiastic about getting into the gun control debate again in this forum -- it simply is not what I come to the Mudcat for. But I have to agree with Aldus; the argument that we need unrestricted access to as much firepower as we can get our hands on so that the King of England will stay away is absurd, and the Second Amendment argument is only seriously advanced by people with little understanding of the Constitution.

As for the argument that we need to be able to match firepower with our own government in order to guarantee our freedom, that is madness. My government possesses "arms" in abundance, including heavy conventional weapons, nuclear bombs, nerve gas, biological weapons, etc. I can't hope to match that, nor would I want to. The threat that concerns me now, in the year 2000, is not from my own government -- it is from a society that is growing increasingly violent and irrational at the level of the individual. THAT is what is directly threatening my freedom today; the Redcoats don't even come into it.