petition against pellet guns JROTC courses

Hmmm. OK, so teaching them sex-ed makes them all prostitutes?

>>>Yup, give a kid a pellet gun and you'll turn him into a violent offender. I think Alan Korwin's proposal to classify gun phobia as a form of emotional illness makes sense in this setting.

Reminds me of the story of the ROTC General and the woman reporter (apocryphal perhaps, but on point).

She said he was equipping them to be violent killers. He responded that she was equipped to be a prostitute, but suggested that she probably wasn't one.

t is self-defeating to search kids for weapons with metal detectors at the doors and then issue them weapons inside.

Well, THAT explains why they're not being taught a damn thing!

I could get worked up about the utter stupidity and hypocrisy displayed by the shrieking lunatics signing this, but what's the point? We know it, they'll never be able to admit, even under heavy medical attention, their disease and attempts to surrender their sanity and humanity.

I guess the only good news is soon "logical" and "sane" will be protected minority classes.

Some will make violence their civilian career and they may not remain in San Diego -- they could settle anywhere in the world

...like Hyde Park, for example?

The story about the general and the reporterette isn't true - but it ought to be. It illustrates perfectly the idiocy of the anti-gun position.

Thanks Flighterdoc. Perfect response. I'll start telling hoplophobes that rifle training condones violence the same way sex ed condones rape. Both do the opposite; they encourage responsible behavior. But people who see guns only in movies believe they are only for violence. My girlfriend was incredulous when I told her that among my activities, the most dangerous in order are 1)bicycling on public streets 2)motorcycling on public streets 3)working on construction sites, and that shooting does not begin to make the list at all compared to those. She thought a day at the range was like climbing the Eiger with a backpack full of rattlesnakes.

The primary problem with the line of thinking expressed by the loonies promoting this nonsense is that violence doesn't solve problems. Violence DOES solve problems. That is why gangs, the mafia, communists and fascists all use violence as a means to very easily achieve their ends.

Jeff Cooper noted that:

"The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles."

The issue is not violence per say, but who is using that violence. If Hitler is using violence, I think we all can agree that it is bad. Same for Stalin or Pablo Escobar or Sam Giancana. But if a soldier in the 506th PIR uses violence to defeat Hitler, or if an armed citizen uses violence to resist extortion or worse, then violence is not only good, but welcome. This works even for a leftist. In their minds, if the US uses violence to impose its "Imperialist" agenda on a people, those people SHOULD react by resisting that violence, generally with violence of their own (see Guevara, Che).

Violence solves far more problems than non-violence, it's just a matter of what you view as a problem. A guy in over his head in gambling debt to the Gambinos is no problem of mine and should not be hurt by anyone. But for the Gambinos, he's a big problem and that problem must be solved by, say, breaking his legs etc. until he pays. For me, the Gambinos are a problem, and they must be shut down by law enforcement, including cops armed with guns who will use them if necessary. If some guy off the street urged the Gambinos to solve their problems non-violently, the stripers in Jamaica Bay would be well fed one night, just as those who practiced non-violent resistance to Hitler ended up as air pollution.

So the issue is not violence, but who uses violence, and some people will always use violence. Banning all violence, even violence in defense of that which is good and decent, only stops the good and decent from ending the violence perpetrated by those with less noble or just motivations. That is why Col. Cooper was spot on, and why these Joyce Foundation nutjobs need to be stopped.

"I think Alan Korwin's proposal to classify gun phobia as a form of emotional illness makes sense in this setting."

I do believe Sigmund Freud said the very same thing,albeit in different words.

As for the stupid people who eschew all violence all I can say is that had I not been good at it, though reluctant, I would have been dead a good many years by now. That is enough reason for me to know they are full of shit.