This thread of comments is a great illustration of why we can't have a productive conversation about guns in the US. Gun control advocates, and anti-gun advocat

This thread of comments is a great illustration of why we can't have a productive conversation about guns in the US. Gun control advocates, and anti-gun advocates, jump straight to "that's a dumb idea" without ever considering it, or without giving the idea the respect of a reasoned rebuttal. There are plenty of cases where having an armed "good guy" present at the time a "bad guy" starts shooting has had a positive outcome. The good guy stops the bad guy by shooting him. If you refuse to accept this, you are part of the problem, not the solution, regardless of your stance on guns. The down side to the "more guns" argument is that the very presence of guns leads to a probablistic increase in gun accidents and gun incidents. A gun accident is when a gun is discharged unintentionally, like in the case of the DEA agent who shot himself in the foot [1]. Here we have a highly trained individual who commits a cardinal sin of gun safety. He reverses the order of the drop mag, clear chamber ritual. Whoops. A gun incident is when someone decides to use the gun for evil, which also occurs all too frequently in the US. Humans are falliable. We're prone to mistakes and departure from sane thought. That's the point that everyone should make in counter to the "more guns" argument. It's not "dumb", it has additional negative consequences that we'd rather not accept. There in lies the problem with the entire conversation though. Each side looks at the problem, proposes their solution, then the other side says "that won't solve the entire problem!" Let's take a step back and re-frame our expectations. Let's not try to conquer Rome in a day. Let's just say we want to improve the situation, and stop calling each other stupid for proposing non-aboslute solutions. 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7ufT_6Kgy0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7ufT_6Kgy0