If you ever read the various cruising and boat forums, I'm pretty sure that you have come across the endless "Guns on boats" banter and threads which I have decided is something of a rite of passage to anyone going cruising... To get a gun or not.
In my world purview, guns, are simply not the answer. In most cases simply make a bad situation worse. If guns WERE the answer we'd not still be be in Afghanistan which is now the longest war the USA has ever been involved in...
My first experience with gun violence was when one of my friends (who was six) found his dad's gun and decided to play cowboys with his younger brother who was four and to say that this tragedy destroyed the family is something of an understatement... My second experience came when one of my classmates in high school was gunned down at the entrance to our school because she had the bad luck of being in the general vicinity of a guy someone else thought was a problem that could be solved with a gun in the form of a drive by shooting. The guy who was the target did not get so much as a scratch but the innocent bystander died...
So yeah, I'm not so big on guns... Sadly, those have not been my only experiences of being around guns and their aftermath. So far I have yet to see a situation where guns do anything but make a bad situation even worse.
Not exactly a ho ho ho and a merry Christmas sort of post is it?
Just imagine the scenario of what could happen if Santa brought presents to some yahoo cruiser who was packing... The cruiser would not hit Santa but wind up shooting up the anchorage with dire results (spelled collateral damage for those of you who read the news) and when the dust had settled not only would said gun toting cruiser be in serious problems with the local law, he'd also be in the permanent "naughty, treat with extreme prejudice" list Santa keeps in his back pocket...
Trust me, pissing off Santa is not what you want to do...
So here's a thought... Let's quit with the "guns yeah or nay" threads and spend the time instead writing a few letters to our elected officials and tell them to bring our folks home, so no one has to spend another Christmas in Afghanistan or Iraq.
