Reply #22: I hope you did not interpret my post as some sort of condemnation

[JDPriestly]

of your point of view. I am just saying that it is a very complex issue. I have family in rural America. They hunt a lot. That's great in my view. So I don't have a problem with that.

I live in Los Angeles. My first neighbor here had a bumper sticker saying, "God created man. Smith & Wesson keeps them equal." He was very scary. One night the police came to my door and asked me "Do you know where your children are?" I was just shocked because I thought my children (aged 7 and 9) were sleeping in their beds in their room where I had just put them maybe an hour earlier. You cannot imagine how frightened I was because I thought the officers were going to tell me that something had happened to my children.

I answered the officer, "Yes. They are in bed in their room -- sleeping." He looked at me in a very puzzled way. And then a bit later he said something about ". . . the wrong house." Of course, the right house was the guy who needed the Smith & Wesson to feel equal.

We live in a crowded city. I treat all my neighbors well. I don't really want to live next to a neighbor who is as likely as not to have a shoot-out with the police while my young children are sleeping in their beds in their room right next to his house. So, this is a very complicated issue.

Communities should perhaps have the right to establish their own restrictions on gun permits. Nothing wrong with a gun permit for the right person in the right situation.

But do I really want a dangerous person with a gun permit right next door? And very often just how dangerous or crazy a person is does not become evident until they start shooting at someone. It's a really tough call. I'm not sure where I stand.