Jane-y, Get Your Gun

You know what's fun? As some conservative rants about how my little liberal-ass wants to subjugate the 2nd amendment, I take my little Ladysmith from my purse and quietly lay it on the table.

Oh, you really should've seen this guy's reaction. His eyes bulged, his jaw dropped open. Then he took his Marine self off to order another beer. He stayed on the other side of the bar for the rest of the night. Which ... was a shame. He was kinda cute.

{Throat-clear}

I suppose the revelation that a liberal girl carries surprised the hell out of him.

Political assumptions will do that to you.

Like most Constitutional debates, the argument over the 2nd amendment boils down to a simple definition -- the definition of the word MILITIA. Does the word refer to citizens' rights to keep arms to protect themselves OR does it refer to the government's right to keep arms to provide protection on the citizens behalf?

Well, it's my opinion that the Constitution was written for one reason and one reason only -- to protect citizens from their government, NOT the other way around.

Individual writings as well as the Constitution clearly indicate to me that the Founding Fathers were concerned with the rights of the people. Setting rules to rein in government -- present and future -- was their overriding goal as they formed a framework to establish the United States. They knew all too well what happens when a government wields all the power and the people none.

Freedom. Freedom from an oppressive government running rough-shod over its people. That is what the Constitution is all about.

But, really. My little Ladysmith isn't going to stop a SWAT unit from taking me into custody if they so choose. The fact is that the government does indeed wield the bigger guns these days.

The constitutional semantics aside, the true issue and debate is whether crime rates would be lower if citizens weren't legally allowed to carry guns. Gun-control folks say yes. Gun-rights folks say no.

I say no! If guns were the absolute cause of crimes and murder, wouldn't Norway and Switzerland be heinous places to live with shoot outs in the streets at high-noon? Practically every household in Switzerland owns a gun -- yet the Swiss enjoy one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

The US follows a similar pattern. Those states with the LEAST restrictions on gun ownership enjoy lower crime rates. I could spend hours and hours digging up the stats, but you're all smart little internetters. You can find those on your own.

At the end of day ... what really matters to me is my legal right to own a weapon of self-defense. My little Ladysmith is preferred when I'm walking in a dark parking lot. For one, it fits in my purse better than a baseball bat, and for two, I don't need upper arm strength to wield its power against an attacker larger than me.

And it has come in handy as a deterrent. On one occasion a man followed me in a parking garage. It was dark, most of the cars were gone, no one else was around. I slipped the gun from my purse and made sure he saw it.

Now -- it could be he was walking to his car that happened to be in the same direction. Or it could be that he meant me harm. I don't know. What I DO KNOW for certain is that gun scared him off and I didn't have to find out whether the hairs on the back of my neck were right that night.

Unfortunately, the Ladysmith also scares off loud-mouth, yet cute, Marines in bars. Oh well.