Even in AZ we have a few...

Dan admits he is not a native. Does he live such an insulated life that he's never before seen anyone carrying guns in Arizona in 30 years? If anything, he sounds more like a recent transplant who wants to reap the benefits of AZ's low-tax government but also misses the stringent controls on us retrograde gun owners like back home in New Massanoisfornia.

And anyone who likes the idea of denying other people a specific enumerated Constitutional right should leave my state. Anyone who is afraid of people exercising that right should leave my state.

Au revoir, Dan. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

You gotta wonder about the good sense of someone who would drive 15 miles for soup and a salad.

This is a clear example of projection. The writer is so scared that he validates his own fears by thinking the gun owner is the one with the irrational fear.
As an outsider, we can see his irrationality, however since his fear lies in his subconscious, he cannot understand it himself.
He should go to a psychologist and have that looked at

You definitely nailed the antigun logic!

"This week, I drove over 15 miles to eat at a healthy place that served soup and salad."

Sounds like a transplant from California.

If you read the article, you would see that Dan has lived in Arizona for 30 years, which doesn't make him a recent transplant. Indeed, if he moved from California it would have been before most of the draconian gun laws which primarily were a response to the gang problem of the 1980's.

I do agree he must lead a very sheltered life if he lives in the Southwest and has never seen a gun before.

In my experience, most people with a gun phobia either have (a) no experience with guns or (b) a single bad experience. Rather than condemning Dan, I would see him as a potential convert to the cause, or at least to move to a neutral position.

Ash,

Notice how I said that it would be *impossible* of him to be in AZ without seeing guns for thirty years? Maybe he's been a snowbird for thirty consecutive years (where he would spend time among other liberal snowbirds), but that hardly counts as being a full time resident.

Methinks he's simply throwing that out there to deflect criticism from natives (like me) who think outsiders shouldn't mess with our gun laws.

(What sounds better: "I just moved here from (insert northern state) and I hate your guns!" or "I've been living here for thirty years and I hate your guns!")

I noticed one recurring theme in one of the anti’s comments: It went something to the effect that if a bad guy is pointing a gun at you, you can’t do anything even if you’re armed.

My answer to that is: If you believe the bad guy is going to shoot you, you’d dam* well better do something! Getting shot defending yourself is a better alternative than just standing there and taking a bullet. The defeatist attitude of, “He’s gonna kill me and there’s nothing I can do will only add to the bad guy’s body count.

I personally subscribe to Nathan Bedford Forrest’s doctrine of: “No man will ever kill me and live.”

[W-III]

I find it pretty difficult to believe that Dan has lived in Goodyear for 30 years and never seen folks walking around with guns on their hips. Jiminy - maybe instead of the Pepto, Dan should get glasses....

W W Woodward: According to Gary Cleck's Point Blank study, the safest thing you can do when a criminal points a gun at you is to silently draw your own and start shooting immediately.

"I got sick to my stomach and left the restaurant."

What I get from this. Is clearly, do not eat the soup.

LOL