Don,

Yes, that is my view regarding private ownership of guns.

I might add to that, that NO law will ever make life totally safe, nor will it make all people totally law-abiding. Laws are an attempt to regulate a situation, within certain reasonable limits. There should be certain restrictions on who is allowed to purchase a firearm...

You should have to take and pass a firearms safety course first, and you should be free of various types of criminal records (I won't bother going into specifics...I'm sure you can figure it out for yourself), and you should be over a certain minimum age requirement.

Other than that, I will say of firearms as I did of WMD's: "It is not a crime to have a weapon, it is a crime to use it unlawfully in an act of civil crime or international aggression."

Same principle exactly. I feel the same way about illegal drugs too. Possession (and private use) of the drug should NOT be deemed a crime. Trafficking in illegal substances...and commiting criminal acts under the influence of any drug (legal or illegal) SHOULD be considered a crime, just the same as it is in the absence of the drug.

You may imagine that I am "liberal", but I am just as well aware of liberal hypocrisies as I am of conservative hypocrisies.

- LH