The Second Amendment, North Korea and Iran: "Serious supporters of the Second Amendment and the right to self-defense of one's person, family and personal property, fully understand the amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with hunting, skeet and trap, or Cowboy Action Shooting. It has to do with protecting ourselves from a tyrannical out-of-control government. North Korea and Iran fear the same tyrannical government we do, and insist on being armed for the same reasons. I know the above is going to be a hard pill to swallow for many -- but the evidence is clear: a runaway government maneuvers to control the means of resistance from those it seeks to enslave."


Reality hits a Left-leaning Australian journalist living in NYC: "One thing you sense very quickly in the US is the gun culture. People get shot here all the time. So there’s no mileage in calling a stranger a dickhead, even when he is. That’s just inviting trouble..... since coming to live here, I’ve often contemplated getting a gun.... We live 15 blocks from Harlem, the biggest concentration of African Americans in the country. One in every three US black males aged between 15 and 30 is either in jail, on parole or awaiting trial. That’s a tragedy, but the point is a significant criminal element lives just up the road.... So what is a man supposed to do? Does he just sit there while a whole lot of drug-crazed, gun-toting Rudy Flemings hip-hop their way down a lawless Broadway to his unguarded apartment? Or does he think ahead, hire a car and drive to some Midwest state where buying a gun is as easy as ordering a pizza? With a gun, you’ve got a chance of keeping your family safe. Yet I hate guns. The idea of shooting anything is totally repugnant. And I think the National Rifle Association people are zealots who have too much clout in US politics. But at the same time, living in New York, I find myself looking differently at the right to bear arms. And I ask myself this: In a crisis, are my wife and three-year-old better served by an idealistic, principled, unarmed me, or by a calculating pragmatist wearing an ammunition belt?"