OK, Rick, having given my smart ass answer, I'll now bare my soul.

1) I have no gun, never have. Have fired a rifle on two occasions with lots of noise and not much effect. Do not plan on ever owning one.

2) I believe in the lawful possession of pistols, rifles and shotguns. Also think that to buy a weapon, testing and training should be required. I do not believe that possession of semi-automatic rifles, mega-clips and armor piercing ammo should be generally allowed.

3) I believe that weapons owners should be responsible for havoc caused by their weapons, whether personnally used, loaned or stolen.

4) The current hysteria against guns is just that. We Americans want a quick fix for everything. No matter the slight danger, no matter the crime, no matter the insensitivity of speech, etc., we want more regulation. I personally do not care to live in a place like Singapore or a fundamentalist Muslim country where we are very, very safe from each other, but lack personal freedom. (Hell, we probably couldn't even have this discussion.)

5) What we do need is for each of us to own our own actions...to accept personal responsibility, to think of the commonweal and not just our own convenience.

6) I'll close with my own rhetorical question. Can you even imagine a 21st century American family attempting to settle a wilderness of the 19th century? The first lawsuit would be against the manufacturer of the conestoga wagon for design failure and would escalate from there!

John