Even a hippie needs a gun

So I read this article in the school newspaper during lunch today. In it this chick, who claims she usually considered herself an anti-gun hippie, which is something that sticks out in the middle of Texas, describes how someone broke into her house, and so now she's gotta get a gun. She never once says that the guy actually had a gun or not, just that he was there. But no, now she's gotta get a gun. *Sigh.*

Even after writing about how anti-violence I am in real-life (see below), I feel the need to again state that I'm a pacifist. To a great extreme. I truely believe that life is a wonderful gift. Scientists can describe how a baby grows in the stomach, but there are any number of seemingly random connections that need to be made, and that ARE made 99.9% of the time, for a life to form. They can identify how this happens, but they can't tell you WHY something that is practically impossible happens every time a child is born. And they can't tell us where the driving spirit, be it soul, personality, whatever, comes from. So to me, every life is a precious gift, and no one has the right to end life prematurely. That's why I'm against the death penalty. And why I'm against guns in general.

Guns are one of many steps in a long ladder of tools man has developed to help him kill things quickly and efficiently. This is helpful with regard to hunting, back when men had to go out and find something to kill before they could eat it. Nowadays, hunting is an archaic practice, and too many people who hunt have no respect for that which they kill, and that sickens me. It is only worse when those weapons are turned on human beings. I have never believed that violence is the solution to anything. If someone believes something you don't, hitting / shooting them isn't going to make them think you're right, just that you're totally wacko about what you believe, and entirely unopen to suggestion.

Personally, if someone came into my house with a gun, and he was willing to kill me for my stuff, he's fucked up to begin with. I would defend myself, totally, but I wouldn't kill someone. I truely believe that being alive and living with guilt is the greatest punishment you can give to a criminal. Right away after 9/11 people were talking about how they would kill Osama bin Ladin, given the chance. What they all missed was that to kill someone, aside from making him a martyr, well, he dies believing that he's going to heaven to be met by 70 virgins for having done Allah's work. That's not fair. I vote we keep him around as long as we can, reminding him of what his act of cowardice caused, all the death and pain and agony he caused for innocent lives, in the name of "justice." Sigh... If you kill him it just strengthens his belief that he is right, that we are scared of what he did, and that we are as evil as he makes us out to be. I don't want us to do that.

So my personal self defence plans? A camera. I wonder what would happen if I swallowed a polaroid picture. I'll bet the CSI guys could recover the picture and use it to ID the purp, if I was killed. Or I could just set up a few security cameras to catch whoever tried to bust in. That would probably be ideal. Above all, I wouldn't kill him. Even in self defence. If he manages to kill me, that's on his head. I've got no regrets. I do want to keep living for as long as possible, I DO value my life, but I won't take his so that I can life. I would trade one life for two, if that's what it came down to, but I won't trade his life for my own.

Of course, this is all just me. I have nothing wrong with other people doing their jobs as police men or soldiers or whatever. But I'm not gonna be one of those people myself.

That is all. Something else crossed my mind, but it was (A) completely irrelevant compared to what I was talking about, and (B) gone now anyway, so whatever. Later folks.