I think gun control issues are a concern for everyone, including everyone who owns guns...and believe it or not, not just right wingers own guns.

Right wingers allow themselves the fantasy that someone who could actually make it happen wants to ban all their guns...that fantasy is owned, bought, and sold by the whackjobs at the NRA.

No one has the power to do it, of any political stripe...it's just a trigger issue to get people to vote for Republicans, even though who gets that particular office will have no effect whatsoever on gun ownership or gun use rights.

Why be hard on people who negligently shoot someone or something, or negligently leaves their gun around so someone else can do it with their gun?

Because the stakes are too high to allow those "mistakes" to happen.

On the extreme ends...if someone has their gun in a safe, unloaded, and someone busts it open with a blowtorch, steals the gun and ammo, and goes outside and shoots a cop, it's hard to blame that on the gunowner.

On the other hand, if a gunowner leaves a loaded firearm on the kitchen table, near an open window, and goes out to a bar to buy crack and his twice convicted felon cousin, who lives in the house, too, takes it and shoots up the pre-school next door, then the gunowner should burn right next to his cracked up cousin.

For hunters, though I think this is a pretty tangential issue to 'gun control' proper, you screw up and shoot somebody, you're done. Sorry...but me and my kids and my friend and their kids are out there, too.

There aren't any small accidents when someone is accidentally shot, unlike the differences between a fender bender because you weren't paying attention at a stop sign (a small accident) and running a bus off the road because you're engaged in boozed up road rage (not an accident at all).

Fish on...

Todd