(no subject)

I watched Bowling for Columbine last weekend, and--well, I'm a flaming Canadian liberal, so of course I agreed with it. Honestly, I'm not sure that Michael Moore doesn't make too much of national differences between Canada and the US; essentially, he says that Canadians don't shoot people up as much as Americans do because they haven't gotten brainwashed by the mass media into a culture of fear. Truth is, I have hardly known anyone who really displays the kind of fearfulness that says the police aren't going to do anything to help you so you have to take care of yourself. There was one young man who rode my school bus and seemed to vastly overestimate his chances of getting shot up; and there was a then-boyfriend with whom I had a rather contentious debate on the whole gun issue. He thought I should have one. I thought not. I'd rather have my laptop stolen than shoot a guy; and for any situation more serious than that, the chances that I'd be able to successfully defend myself, given clumsiness and panic, are right around zero.

There was something else that I was unable to articulate. I feel as if--it would be bad for my soul. As if, if I owned a gun, I would be placing myself in a position of fearfulness. I would be giving in to the idea that I am in danger. That's the kind of thing that can't help but shape my attitudes, and the way I see the world, however subtly. I do not want to see people as my enemies.

But I lock my door, unlike the Canadians whose doors Moore opened at random to find out whether they were locked. So it's possible that I simply draw the line between paranoia and naive stupidity in a different way than people who have guns for self defense and don't want to see people as their enemies either.

I don't know. But I do know that I don't want to even think too hard about whether I would ever shoot someone.