perfidy

People in my neighborhood are armed. To the teeth. That's why shootings happen so often, including in front of the door to my building. Relaxing gun restrictions will increase the number of armed gangbangers. There are already a lot of them. People are shooting each other every day in this and other cities. 

So the solution is to arm everybody? That's rich. American society is already one of the most violent in the world. This is easily one of the worst neighborhoods on the planet. The goal should be to make society less violent, not more. I'm not convinced, regardless of any studies or books published (frankly, as an academic, I can say from experience that books and studies are often, though not always, full of shit), that arming everyone is the solution. When people have guns, they use them. 

As you allude, I am familiar with violence. I have been both its victim and its perpetrator. When I was two years old someone held a shotgun in my face and might have killed me had I not been rescued. Thus, it is because I am familiar with violence that I dislike it. In my post-adolescent years, I have considered it an absolute last resort. Would I defend myself again if necessary and able? Absolutely. But 4 or 5 attackers is more than most mortals can handle, or 3, and even 2, unless you get off a good suckerpunch on the first one. I don't want to live in a world where I have the option to blow people's heads off if I feel threatened. Quite honestly, I think if someone is really serious about hurting another human being, might as well embrace the atavistic, savage, merciless, vicious beast that the human animal really is beneath the surface. If a person really wants to kill someone else and isn't bad enough to kill someone bare-handed, they're not bad. They're a punk. People who use guns to shoot other people are small men trying to make themselves feel big. 

I never wait for the police, or even bother to call 911 when I hear shots. The police don't do anything. The current situation is that every day I live in this crime infested sewer of a neighborhood, I'm rolling the dice. That's life. I won't arm myself with a gun to make myself feel safe, or big. Quite frankly, I don't think that people are safe even with guns. That just leads to exchanging shots in an attempt to kill the opponent before they kill you. In a lot of cases around here, I think people who fire, instead of anticipating that the othe person has a gun and avoiding them, just try to get off the first shot. There was a guy here who was walking down the street with a friend of his. In passing two other people on the sidewalk, he bumped shoulders with the other guy, who turned and shot the first guy to death. If the first guy had a gun on him, he still would have been shot. If the first guy had a gun and fired after bumping shoulders with the other, he would have been guilty, just that their positions were reversed. But what happened is that someone was shot to death by a total stranger for no reason. If the victims of John Lee Malvo and John Muhammad had been armed, would they have been able to defend themselves? They never saw it coming. I am shocked and saddened by the amount of random violence in this world. More guns means more violence, not less. 

I don't pretend to have the answers. I have ideas. I think that reducing poverty and unemployment will also reduce crime significantly. I also think that putting guns in people's hands gives them the means to kill people that they wouldn't otherwise have. I don't have the power to take your gun. I am not actively doing anything to take your gun. But I think if I ever made you mad enough to do me physical harm, you'd do me the courtesy of a straight fight where the odds are even instead of shooting me. The assholes in my neighborhood probably won't, but I'll just have to take my chances. 

Everybody has to die of something. If I get shot, which is a fairly strong possibility given the large numbers of people who get shot in this city, then, so be it. I'll have to either live in agony, bleeding on the sidewalk, or die with that decision. As you pointed out, I have no family. No one relies on me. The world will not be significantly different without me in it. That's my choice. It's a short life in a hard world, where life turns on a dime, and having a gun won't change that.