another anti-gun article. thats 4 now

"Guns are bad" what a wonderful blanket statement, very original too.

Yes lets just ban guns. its a great idea because bans work really well. just like alcohol was banned in the 20s and marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine are banned today. Bans just plain and simply work.

oh wait a minute. i guess the people who go around mugging others forget that mugging people is banned in this country... so is murder, rape,

I’m sorry for your misfortune. You are so lucky to have not been seriously hurt or worse after getting mugged THREE times last year. Wake up!! Change your residence or life style. The next time you might not be so lucky. And the mace will do nothing for you, but I guess it’s better than nothing. You should buy a GUN. Kansas has a concealed carry law now that allows scrawny chicks like you the right to defend against evil doers. You should be thanking God that you live in a state that allows it citizens to protect themselves. Did you know that in some states you wouldn’t even be allowed to have mace? Blaming guns for crime is like blaming the hammer when it hits your finger. Dumb dumb dumb. The real question is not how many innocent people get shot with guns (not very many by the way), but how many times will you get mugged before you get smart and stop thinking like a victim and take care of the problem. At least stay away from there!

Bad people will ALWAYS have access to guns and the ability to do harm with them... it simply is not practical or intelligent to insist that moral people that have guns (yes, they do exist) be forced to relinquish them.

The writer advises, "...after being robbed in one form or another three times last year, I started feeling helpless,..."

She then goes on to advise that she has purchased mace. Good for her, but would someone please tell me why or how she felt the need to go into such a verbose diatribe about guns? I ask this as I assume she has never had a weapon equal to her attacker. I would also STRONGLY advise her to watch COPS or LIFE ON THE BEAT and see just how useless mace/pepper spray can be against most criminals. Due to her propensity to be seen as "helpless" by the criminal element in her locale, I honestly hope, for her sake, that the mace works instead of just inflaming an attacker to the point of angrily deciding to use a more substantial weapon.

As a reader, I can only assume she has used her personal experiences to bring out from left field an attack against guns and or gun owners. Her argument would have best been written (i.e. stated) against the criminals that perceived her as a helpless victim and attacked her based on this perception. I am familiar with over a dozen women that WOULD have been a victim of a violent crime had they not been armed with a gun.

Sometimes people who think or believe that guns are the problem in this country have no real sense of the criminals in this country. Guns are NOT the problem, and when it comes to criminals; regretfully, guns are sometimes the only means a law abiding citizen like Ms. Simmermon has of actually equalizing the force level an attacker brings to the crime.

Hopefully she won't have to learn this lesson the hard way, and with all due respect to you Ms. Simmermon, good luck with your mace vs. a maniac with a gun.

I can't really beat the post above me. Top_Down pretty much covered all my bases. I own three guns, and I use them in 100% legal ways. I am not a huge guy and I doubt I could do anything against somebody bigger than myself. I own my guns to level the playing field, not to lead some heroic "Die Hard style" shootout on the streets. Like the above post, I encourage the writer to buy a gun and learn to use it. You will see that they are not evil or bad.

I realize that it doesn;t matter what I say. Ms. Simmerman, you will do what you want. I pray that you figure out a system that works for you and I hope you are never attacked again

Having seen the Top_Down's comments as submitted, and the version that was posted here, all I can say is that someone here seems to have a problem with statistics and facts. Personal anecdotes are good and all, but censoring the facts serves no purpose, unless your intent is to deceive.

"How far will the line between self-defense and murder have to be blurred until people start realizing that giving guns to the everyday American might not be the brightest idea."

that's why it isn't the idea. we have background checks in place to purchase firearms and you have to be certified to CCH. By far the worst article out of this "paper" since i've been reading it in the last four years.

Oh wait, you forget that there are those who bypass background checks, and purchase guns to go on a mass kill spree (e.g., Columbine, Virginia Tech, etc.).

It's not a bad article because it puts a personal narrative into a story that has been so politicized that people don't know the facts from fiction. Just because you disagree doesn't not mean that it wasn't well written and did not deserve to be in this paper. Personal narratives are people one of the most powerful forms of persuasion because of its humanizing qualities. So unless those who support having guns have their own personal story to share about how carrying a gun has saved their life and the lives of others, then I would reevaluate epistemological foundation on guns and violence.

Hey, Simmermon:

Mace is an offensive weapon, not defensive. Unless you think that violent criminals are the stupidest people in the world, they're going to be paying more attention to your hands than you will. Any idiot knows to attack when the conditions most favor them and least favors the victim. Chances are, you're not going to have your OC gas ready to go when you do get assaulted.

And even if you do have your can of OC in your hand, it's probably not going to do anything but cause a dedicated attacker to prioritize your weapon hand before taking you to the ground. Hope you're a good wrestler. If you think you can perform the extremely fine motor manipulation of unsafing your OC gas while getting face planted, have fun with that idea and good luck in life.

My recommendations to you are from some personal experience and are also the recommendations of LE/military trainers but, please, don't consider me an expert:

Train like you're going fight because when things go south, you're going to fight like you train. That means that if you're still fixating on using that OC gas, have somebody actually tackle you in a mat room to see how fast you can get that in to action.

Learn some EFFECTIVE (read: lethal) open hand techniques. Don't be too worried about killing the other person because it's unlikely you're actually going to be able to do so--it's the mentality that's important. If somebody has assaulted you to the point that you have to use gas them, you have every right at that point to take their head off their shoulders in an act of self defense.

And invest in a good quality flashlight. As a bouncer and in normal life I've had to deal with many low light situations and confrontations where being able to blind a potential threat is invaluable. No matter how high a person is, being unable to see is a problem when it comes to executing a crime. And if all else fails, you can effectively use it as an impact weapon with basic, natural macro level motions. I have every-day -carried a Surefire E2D for almost two years now and while it was expensive given my budget back then (it's ~110 dollars at Sunflower) every time I have ever been spooked enough to use it, it pays for itself every single time.

You're not in Leawood anymore...

"Oh wait, you forget that there are those who bypass background checks, and purchase guns to go on a mass kill spree (e.g., Columbine, Virginia Tech, etc.)."

another load of crap.

the viginia tech killer went through the brady check and bought ALL of his guns through normal procedures. so how did he bypass these checks explain. or just take your load of bs back...

I'm not so sure that the rhetoric of "giving guns to the public" precisely does justice to the situation. It is true that not everybody who legally owns a gun is going to be responsible but I am also under the impression that a lot of the emotional arguments here lack external validity.

As for the Leawood comment, that was pretty funny. I must say, however, that being prepared is a mindset you take with you where ever you are, no matter how dangerous. It's nearly impossible for a single person to dictate the potential threats in their environments but having a defensive attitude and the skills to preserve your life when less-than-ideal events occur is within a greater degree of control.

I agree that there are systemic problems that must be addressed and that having a culture so fearful that we need to carry guns is undesirable but at the end of this internet argument, all other things being equal, it is still the person who is responsibly carrying a gun that is going to have an advantage over the unarmed in a violent, truly life threatening situation.

Again, tasers. They aren't even a cause of death anymore!