Open carry in Oklahoma

[Tchocky]

Originally Posted by Platapus

When seconds count
The police are only minutes a way.

The police are there to enforce the law after the crime has been committed. The police are not there to protect people or to prevent crimes from being committed.

As soon as the police can guarantee that they will be there to prevent crimes from being committed, then I will start to believe that responsible citizens no longer need to keep weapons for self defense.

I see your point. I disagree about the necessity for citizens to be armed as a general civic ideal, but this is where the rub comes in regarding the US.

I don't see the country as being legislatively or socially willing to disarm the populace. THat's because the way it is now is how it's been for a very long time. Any change in this is incremental at very best, so talking up aggressive gun control or outright popular disarmament is just blowing smoke - I treat the same way I look at laws declaring "state guns" or suggesting that firearms be compulsory. When people start advocating that the government try to take all the weapons off the streets, it makes no sense. Like it or not, it's in the Constitution and that's difficult to change, which is both good and bad.

I wonder how the issue of reforming the Constitution will fare, given that there is now a not-insignificant chance that President Obama could be re-elected while losing the popular vote. The Electoral College system will come under scrutiny if it has delivered a counter-intuitive result twice in three elections. Whether this produces an appetite for constitutional reform is anyone's guess.

I think just making the system a little safer at a time, a little more responsive at a time, is the only way to go. The population will follow slowly.*


*=Maybe. Who knows. Not me.