Willravel

That sounds really cool in movies, but it has no real life meaning. Again (and again and again), they aren't pulling the trigger. You are. They are tempting you to take their life, sure, but it's not like you don't have a choice. YOU pull the trigger. You always have a choice, and it's in that choice that you either take responsibility for their life or not. You make it seem as if you lose the ability to control yourself if threatened. If that's the case, you have no business with a weapon. If that's not the case, you're wrong and have proven my point.

In conclusion, when you have a gun, you take other people's lives in to your hands, usually without permission. No one made you go buy a gun and carry the thing around (though a criminal making you buy a gun for defence at gunpoint would be very ironic).
Not hardly. You made a Rambo argument (the "don't fuck with me or I'll go midevil" argument), then you repeated it.
But what about bird flu? You're more likely to get bird flu than to be involved in or even be near a cop/criminal shootout of the kind that was at that Hollywood shootout, therefore you should be ready for bird flu, THEN you should be ready for a shootout (the "prioritize the most likely" argument).

dksuddeth, baring military service, you'll never be in a shootout. I can say that with certianty. The "but what if" arguments are so statistically improbable that they become laughable, espically those of the armed-home-invasion-when-you're-home or massive-drawn-out police/well-armed-criminal-shootout persuasion. You won't need your gun. I wouldn't need a gun if I had one. Ch'i wouldn't need a gun if he had one. Because you'll never need your gun, you'll want to use it to excuse your having it. That's kinda dangerous. Combine that with the Rambo mentality, and you've got a recipe for 'accedenal death', 'involuntary manslaughter', or 'criminal neglegence'.