2001-03-19 - 04:13 p.m.

Why I Hate Diane Feinstein

I've avoided doing this so far, but today's diary is about gun control.

When Marc and I went to see _Enemy at the Gates_ on Saturday night, a woman approached me. She wanted me to sign a petition to get a referendum on Michigan's concealed carry laws on the ballot. I thought her language was loaded, but not to the degree that I wanted to have a big confrontation over it, so I politely explained that I was one of the people who lobbied for the new law and that I opposed her proposal. She said, "Well, that's why we have democracy," and walked away. A pleasant conversation, right?

Nope. As she walked off, she just had to give me a parting shot. In a snide way, she said, "So we can shoot each other."

Well, fuck her and the horse she rode in under. I'm sick of the entire gun control debate. I'm not going to bore you all with details. Let's just have a few bullet points, right from my brain to yours.

In a free society, we do not make things illegal just because nobody can explain why they should be legal. We make things illegal only when we must do so to protect people.

There has never been one study- not *one*- linking the legal availability of guns to crime rates. We can debate why that is all night, but it's still a fact. No gun control proposal in American history has *ever* had the crime- and violence-reducing effects advertised.

That's all I have to say. That's all anyone should have to say. Yet gun enthusiasts have to endure a barrage of media hysteria based on the notion that guns are evil. And I'm sick of it. If I meet that lady again, we're gonna have the gun control debate, right there, right then. And I fully intend to leave her sobbing in dismay, just like I left the last bleeding-heart unencephalic jackass who picked a fight with me without an intellectual leg to stand on. Because I'm just plain fed up.

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