All you gun Goons should read this

[larrymeyer]

http://www.thetimes-tribune.com/opin...r_goon_control

The case for Goon control
Published: October 18, 2009

Meleanie Hain was seldom seen in public without a gun on her hip, but she died unarmed at home.

Her beloved Glock 9mm pistol was in a backpack hanging from the front door when her husband, Scott Hain, burst into the kitchen of their Lebanon County home and shot her several times while their three young children shrieked nearby. He then went upstairs and ended himself with a shotgun, according to police.

If Mrs. Hain's handgun had been holstered at her side, she might have squeezed off a few rounds as she fell. The children would still be orphans, but at least she would have gone out in a blaze of glory worthy of a "Pistol-Packing Soccer Mom."

That's what "open-carry" advocates and the national media dubbed her in September 2008, when Mrs. Hain attended her 5-year-old daughter's soccer game with her pistol on her hip. Some "uptight" parents ignorant of the inherent risk of violent crime anytime kindergarteners gather complained to league officials. The officials referred the complaints to law enforcement.

Although she carried her gun openly, Mrs. Hain held a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Afflicted with the crazy notion that taking a lethal weapon to a children's soccer game is evidence one should not hold such a license, the county sheriff revoked it.

A star is born

Mrs. Hain appealed, and a star was born. Overnight, she became a heroine of the open-carry crowd, a bona fide "Dirty Harriet" standing up for God, guns and the American way in a country being destroyed from within by bleeding-heart ninnies who selfishly place the physical and psychological welfare of children above the childish fantasies of gun lovers.

A judge overturned the revocation, but said Mrs. Hain should conceal the gun if she still felt it necessary to carry it to children's soccer games. She told that silly judge she would do as she pleased, and filed a $1 million federal civil rights lawsuit against the sheriff.

The lawsuit outlived Mrs. Hain. She was 31 when her husband murdered her on Oct. 7, a week into National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. He was 33. If she "wins" her lawsuit, the proceeds will be placed in a trust for the couple's orphaned children, ages 2, 6 and 10. I'm sure the kids and their therapists will appreciate the money.

This is a tragedy from any angle, and my bleeding heart goes out to Meleanie Hain's family and friends. She did not deserve to die, and was not killed because she owned a gun or openly carried it. She was not killed because her husband owned a gun. She was a victim of domestic violence, and so are her children. Scott Hain could have killed his wife and himself by any number of means. She and he would be just as dead, their kids just as parentless.

The guns kept in Meleanie Hain's house did not cause her death, but they did not prevent it, either. That's bad news for the cause she spent the last year of her life advocating.

Like most fringe distractions masquerading as real issues, the open-carry cause is all hat and no cattle, a tantrum seeking an easily cowed audience. Advocates push it as a gun-rights crusade, but it's goon rights they're really out to protect and expand.

Open-carry 'movement'

Inside most open-carry advocates is a spoiled child stamping his or her feet. You can't tell me what to do. I have a right to flash a loaded weapon wherever, whenever I like. Says so right in the Constitution. What else is in the Constitution? Who cares? Don't push me, pal, this thing is loaded.

Open-carry is not about personal security. It is about selfishness, conceit, intimidation, empty bravado and a pathetically self-righteous sense of victimhood that prizes individual preference over the common good.

Although its adherents refer to it as such, the open-carry "movement" is no such thing. Most gun owners are responsible, law-abiding folks who don't find it necessary or smart to carry guns openly. The so-called movement exists only on the Internet and in the shallow minds of open-carry advocates and cable "news" producers.

The open-carry crowd desperately wants to become a movement, but sanity and society keep getting in the way. An entry I stumbled upon while trawling open-carry Web sites says it all: "More and more of us need to carry openly so people begin to see it as normal again."

Good luck with that. The last time it was "normal" for civilians to openly carry firearms was the 1880s, when you might need a six-shooter to fend off bushwhackers on the trail or pick off a rattler before it spooked your pony. Also normal back then: cattle rustling, typhoid and public hangings as entertainment.

We've come a long way since the West was won, but if the Sept. 29 meeting of Scranton City Council is any gauge, we've got a ways to go.

Council introduced a measure that would (gasp!) require gun owners to report the loss or theft of a gun within 48 hours or face a $1,000 fine, 90 days in jail, or both. Eight other Pennsylvania cities have adopted similar ordinances. Ordinances in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have already been tested in the courts.

Perhaps gun-shy after going off half-cocked on an unenforceable citywide indoor smoking ban, council voted 4-1 to table the issue until legal questions are answered. Or maybe it was the guys who showed up with guns.

A handful of open-carry advocates attended the meeting to protest an ordinance aimed at preventing the illegal resale of stolen guns. Some residents expressed alarm at the impromptu gun show and asked council to ban guns at City Hall. After a review of the state law, solicitor Amil Minora decided a ban is not legally supportable. Seriously.

Let's review: Because secondhand smoke poses long-term health risks to nonsmokers, I can't light up in City Hall (not that I would, mind you). And yet any goon with a John Wayne complex can stroll into Council Chambers with the means to kill or maim several people in a heartbeat. Council can have someone removed for violating the five-minute limit on public speaking, but not for bringing a deadly weapon into the room.

Want to really get council's attention? Bring in a flamethrower. Council won't stop you, and you'll be an instant hero to the open-carry crowd, so long as none of them is accidentally immolated.

I'll close today with an obligatory disclaimer that will mean nothing to those who will angrily write me off as just another bleeding-heart ninny who hates God, guns and the American way:

I love God, and God loves me. Says so right in the Bible. I am not anti-gun, though I'd have a hard time explaining that to Jesus. I come from a long line of farmers, hunters and responsible gun owners. Half the households in my extended family have had deer's heads hung in their living rooms, and I see taxidermy as art. Creepy, but art.

I learned the safe use of and proper respect for firearms as a boy, and grew up to believe that a populace with access to arms is among the best defenses against tyranny. That said, if the 1st Infantry Division ever rolls down my street, I don't harbor any delusions about the efficacy of a 30-06 against an Abrams tank. "Red Dawn" was an '80s action film, not a documentary.

As a journalist, I understand that my greatest responsibility is to support and defend the U.S. Constitution, which includes, but is not limited to, the Second Amendment. As a man, I understand that my greatest responsibility is to support and defend my family. I have never encountered a situation in which these two responsibilities conflict, which for me is some of the best evidence that the American experiment is among the best ever conceived.

I am staunchly, passionately, unapologetically anti-goon. I have encountered many in my 41 years, and most had no business owning a houseplant, let alone a deadly weapon. A goon with a gun is infinitely more dangerous than a goon without a gun.

Guns don't kill people; goons do. Guns make a goon's work easier, however, and if you have an argument against that logic, there are three orphaned children in Lebanon County I dare you to share it with.

CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, is licensed to carry a concealed weapon, but can't remember the last time he felt it necessary to do so. E-mail: kellysworld@timesshamrock.com

[rev214]

common sense has left the building...

[normanvin]

I don't really care that he is an anti. More power to him.

But it is an abuse of his position as a reporter to use his paper as a soap box to stand on. This is not reporting, it is making personal statements.

[mjm0771]

This article stinks of Bryan Miller of CeaseFire NJ.

Seriously, a lot of words he typcially uses in his non-sensical ramblings and rhetoric is also used here. I smell strong traces of him and his hoplophobic elk...

-mike

[Strapped]

So where do you get one of these "permit to carry a concealed weapon" ?

[Delcoadvocate]

Well, at least he picked the right music for his fat inbread lookin dumb ass as went down the Lack...

http://link.brightcove.com/services/...id=42983217001

I think if we were able to hear him read his own article, it'd sound JUST like a pig squeeling.

I can see why he never feels the need to carry conceiled, for a vast majority of those that do, put down the donuts and leave the sofa every once in awhile.

[YBNORMAL]

I posted a comment, lets see if thier mods put it up. Wow is all I can say, oh and:

Fail!

[falcn]

Way to use an unfortunate murder of a nice woman as the stairs to climbing on your soap-box to rant against OC. Asshole.

[Delcoadvocate]

What the hell is a goon? I don't think I am one. But I don't know. I don't want to respond directly to his article via emial for the fear that this would imply an admission of guilt, of *gasp* being a goon.

[redeye202]

Boys and girls,the man is baiting us to see our reaction. He has a public forum to use[newspaper] that will let him use a much space as he needs without being edited, we can only post comments wich may be edited in the paper. Remember that we who carry fire arms have taken on a great responsibility to be polite and civil in our dailey lives unlike Mr. Kelly who shows neither responsibility,politeness or civility. We are better than him and his ilk.