# Saturday, November 14, 2009
By: Joe Huffman Saturday, November 14, 2009 6:17:00 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00) ( Freedom | Gun Rights | Quote of the Day )

Never confuse motion with action.

Ben Franklin
[I believe many of the anti-gun people make this mistake. "We have to do something!" they say. No. We don't.

Even with a system optimally configured it's possible for something bad to happen. There are many, many trade-offs in life. We could reduce traffic fatalities to zero if we banned cars or made the speed limit 5 MPH. But the trade-off just isn't worth it.

And so it is with firearms. Even without a constitutional guarantee it would be wrong to remove the most effective defensive tool ever made from the hands of the people that might need them. Sure, make training easily available and affordable. Punish people who allow their dangerous objects (not just guns but gasoline, matches, and sharp knives) to get into the hands of small children or the mentally incompetent who hurt themselves or others.

But just because something bad happened doesn't mean that doing something won't make the totality of the situation worse or just rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic. You have to look at the downside of whatever action you demand to be taken instead of just the potential upside.--Joe]