I guess I don't care as much about concealment of weapons as I do about who gets access to them.

That is precisely it. If, in a perfect world, you're allowed to carry a gun, I don't need to see it. In an imperfect world, you'll probably hide the fucker anyway.

Would you be offended to learn he knows fluent Mandarin, can kill you with a plastic knife, has only one testicle and hates battered onions?

Probably not. Can Mandarin, solitary testicles or onions kill me? No.

As for the ability to kill with non-obvious weapons, well, I'd be pretty put off to discover this ability without his saying anything about it; like, if he killed someone else (say, for a good reason), and then turned to me to explain this heretofore unknown ability, I would have a powerful sense of "whoa, I don't know you, stay away from me" going on.

Maybe I'd manage to restrain myself and be politely grateful, but underneath that would be, "What I don't know could hurt me."

I guess I don't care as much about concealment of weapons as I do about who gets access to them.

Yup. I can think of good and bad reasons for both concealing and displaying weapons. They all depend on who's carrying, and what for.

Jessica, that page demonstrated to me exactly how much French I've lost. I can still read all the basic I go, I went, I will go, I would go, I am going, but then I get to something like Indicatif Passé Antérieur and I don't even remember what that means, let alone what all the "fussy" stuff is.

The thing about people carrying guns for self protection is that some of them believe that just seeing a gun will scare off a prospective attacker. Not always so. And you end up with people who are either not prepared to actually fire the gun (REALLY bad if the gun gets taken away and used against them) or not properly trained to use them. I'd just as soon those people carry mace.

too late to offer my opinion on the French. Which is good because when I went to Paris nobody could understand a fucking word I said. Unless they really could and were just incredibly rude. That's 50/50.

Ah. I sense I'm not going to get your PoV, Nutty, even academically. Most everyone can kill, in my book. Some more easily than others, but I don't have a line which, when crossed, triggers alerts.

Dying is so easy. Killing just slightly less so.

I'm worried about a) those that want to kill and b) those that don't want to, but just might by mistake. The how (plastic knife, fist, car, gun) doesn't concern me.

What I hate is that the very question of access to guns has turned into such a divisive political issue for so many Americans. It seems to me that the Democrats could have found a way to present mandatory background checks in such a way as to reassure the vast majority of gun owners that their access to owning weapons was not being threatened. However, the right has done an amazing job in taking a single, relatively unimportant issue and using it to sway people who no other reason to vote for them.

Um.

[link]

My favorite thing about gun control was said on the West Wing:

"I don't understand why the Democrats don't all join the NRA."

Dana: Ha! Wrong, and yet funny.