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Many people, including me, never would want to carry a gun. In my case, it's because I lack the confidence in my own ability to use it responsibly. I'd almost certainly freeze in a situation requiring me to use the dang thing, and that would be a fatal mistake. Moreover, my left eye is 20/150 and thus I have virtually no visual depth perception, which would complicate severely any accuracy I might hope to have with a firearm.
The thing is that carrying a firearm may be the exercise of a constitutional right (duly regulated) but it is also a grave responsibility, and nobody should undertake to exercise that right without being sure that he or she is capable of assuming and willing to live up to that responsibility.
That's why, in some ways, television shows' cavalier depiction of firearms use annoys and disturbs me. It gives viewers who have never fired a weapon all sorts of silly ideas about what it's like and how easy it would be and how safe they will feel once they are carrying a firearm.
In particular, that's why I am not sure, yet again, why people are calling the character of Kelly in 90210 a hero. It's not a heroic act to kill an attacker in self-defense. It is an act of self-defense that wreaks injury on actor and target alike. And, even though the person who kills in self-defense is legally and (in my view) morally justified, the trauma attendant on killing is serious and lasting. It does not go away.
That's why I hope that 90210 this fall will address that very question -- the effect on "Kelly" of having shot her attacker to death in self-defense. I'm not optimistic about the odds of that happening, but I can hope for it.
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