Gwendolyn Blanston is a longtime Alaskan and advocate for making fun of gun owners who falsely believe that when their family is attacked in the middle of the night by other gun owners, that they’ll actually be able to get out of bed, run to the gun safe, unlock the safe, take out the gun, load the gun, and successfully use it against the intruder without making matters worse overall for everyone involved.
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Guns Are Soooo Great! 
Dear Gwen,
You certainly have identified many negative anecdotes regarding firearms ownership right here in our own state!
While I doubt I fully agree with you, I am curious as to what you think should be done in order to address the problems you have identified. You may have posted on this in the past but I did not see any categories for an agenda.
Cheers,
Chris
Thanks for writing Chris. I advocate getting rid of guns and melting them down. I think that reasonable people who own guns need to come to terms with the monster they’ve helped create. Reasonable people, when shown facts, react reasonably. For example, when Sarah Palin was exposed by the national press, her numbers plummeted. I think we need a movement to enforce the 2nd Amendment whereby the well-regulated militia can have firearms, but not every American as is currently practiced. The Supreme Court has ruled that the “well regulated militia” specifically applies to the National Guard, but by the time they did so, it was too late. It’s time to make use of the Constitution’s “living/breathing” capability, and update it for life in America in 2010. The military, guard, and cops can have ‘em, but not everyone. That’s what I advocate. Enjoy…
Gwen,
I am no fan of Sarah Palin. Honestly I have been disappointed… At first I was excited that an Alaskan got catapulted into the national spotlight and thought it might bring some positive spotlight to the state, but as events unfolded, “Any press is good press” only goes so far… :-\
I’m afraid that I disagree with many of your proposals regarding firearms ownership, although I do appreciate your candor. It is your blog however and it seems impolite to argue with a host in their own “virtual house.”
Cheers,
Chris
Hello,
Check out the discussion at this F-Man editorial. It seems that if you are against a shooting range location, then your just anti-gun.
http://tinyurl.com/Shooting-range-blues
Thought you might be intersted.
Regards
I reached your website via twitter, and even though I am a pro-gun advocate, I did find your rantings quite funny. The only problem is your propaganda consists of only mishaps of gun use, in which the user is stupid or psychotic in murdering themselves. I’m actually quite supportive of that because we won’t have to deal with those people. Hand someone a gun and their real side comes out.
I was totally there. But nonetheless, we as American citizens are guarenteed the right to bear arms, and no, in fact, I would not keep my gun in the gun cellar behind a locked door. Instead, I would keep it in the room I reside in most in a hidden but easy-to-reach spot.
Thank you,
Nathan Berger
Gosh, Gwen, you are soooo full of crap –
Latest news: Not only (per the SCOTUS decision in Heller v. D.C.) does the Second Amendment explicitly document the right to keep and bear arms as an INDIVIDUAL (as opposed to “collective”, i.e., National Guard or other “organized militia”) right on a FEDERAL level, but (per the SCOTUS decision in McDonald v. Chicago) it is now explicitly documented as an INDIVIDUAL right on ALL levels of Government (i.e., it is extended to the States and to all local Government levels.
INDIVIDUAL gun rights are therefore now clearly and explicitly documented, by the highest Court in the land, and may be REASONABLY regulated, but may NOT be abolished or willfully violated by any level of Government.
Since you are flippant about the idea that citizens can use guns in self defense, I would have to point you to this blog that logs self-defense incidents: http://www.thearmedcitizen.com/
Apparently there are a lot of people who manage to use their gun before the criminal does.
Besides, even in your scenario, you make several mistakes:
1. That the intruder who is breaking into your home is going to have a gun–it could be a knife, or a bat, or a pitch-fork, or even bare fists and 300 lbs of muscle–all of which could be used to rape or maim those who are in the household.
2. That the person wouldn’t be awakened by the sound of someone breaking in (or even just up late reading), get his gun, and be ready for when the intruder comes into the bedroom.
3. That the cops will be able to come to your aid at the exact moment of break-in, and will know exactly who the the victim is, and who the criminal is. After all, you can’t bring guns into the picture “without making matters worse overall for everyone involved”! And all that is assuming you could find your phone in the dark, and manage to call 911 before the criminal takes your phone away.
All that, and we all know that crime always goes up when more and more people get guns! Because guns cause crime, y’know, and no-one would ever die in an accident or by murder or by suicide, because only gun owners are negligent and murderous and suicidal. Indeed, it’s because of guns that people are negligent and murderous and suicidal!
I’m not at all flippant about those who have been able to use guns to prevent an attack from being successful–I love it when that happens, and if it happens in Alaska, I post it because I am fair. But if you think for a second that the balance of those situations is at all material when matched with all of the instances where guns are used to make life worse for people, then you’re not really thinking very clearly. Guns are used (not including the well regulated militia) to commit crime and mayhem far, far more often than they are used to prevent it. And often, criminals are getting their guns from folks like you, like it or not. The well regulated militia should have guns, our neighbors should not.
There’s a reason I keep a weapon in each room of my home.
Hi, Gwendolyn. Keep up the good work. We need to work together to expose the fallacy that a gun in the home is a good idea to protect the family, when the truth is that it is 22X more likely to harm that family than to protect them, through suicide, accidents, or by being used by others for homicide. Legally-purchased guns are also a stolen, sold on the black market, and used in over 50% of crimes. Criminals love it when a person buys a gun for self-protection.
Keep up the good fight for a safer community and nation!
Oh, and I’ve added you to my blogroll at New Trajectory. (http://newtrajectory.blogspot.com)
I like you and have linked to you.
If my house is attacked in the middle of the night, it will most likely not be by gun owners, but by thieves who may or may not be in possession of stolen firearms (that doesn’t make them owners, it makes them guilty of another crime). I also wouldn’t get one of the locked up guns, I’d go for the loaded gun next to my head or the loaded gun next to my right hand.
“I advocate getting rid of guns and melting them down. ”
How are you going to accomplish that? Any bright ideas?
I advocate getting rid of all cancer cells and incinerating them, because we can deal with complex problems using incredibly simplistic naive reactions that ignore reality.
Sorry? I don’t know why you’re trying to relate killing cancer cells to the melting down of guns. Guns are relatively easy to melt down, and it’s something our society should look into further to help prevent crime. I’m not sure why you’re talking about cancer.
Guns are very hard to melt down. In this country you will have arm many men with many guns and they will have to win many gun fights, then you will be able to melt down the guns they stole. The problem then is: how do you take away the guns from the men you armed?
Since there are more firearms in the hands of American citizens than there are in the hands of ALL of the military and police forces in the world combined, exactly how do you plan to go about your little “let’s just melt down all the guns” plan? You are outnumbered and outarmed, and a majority of the people (cops and soldiers) you’d have to use to get the guns are either gun owners themselves or are family and friends with gun owners or are pro-2nd Amendment.
So really, how the heck would such a plan work? About exactly the same as my facetious plan to incinerate all the cancer cells in the world – it can’t and won’t work at all in the real world and only works in your simple naive small minded childish imagination.
To clarify – I was relating your magical plan to melt down guns to a magical plan to incinerate all cancer cells to mock you and to draw attention to the absurdity and impossiblity of such a plan. While we are at it how about we imprison all the rapists and murderers and such BEFORE they commit a crime? After all, I just thought it and wrote it down and it must be easily done if I don’t bother (or lack the capacity) to think through the fundamental errors that damn such an insane plan to absolute failure. I am being facetious again.
But on a serious note, I’d love to know exactly how you plan to execute such a plan. Really, what are you going to do about the tens of millions of Americans who will fight to the death before they give up their guns? You advocated this plan, you said it was “relatively easy”, so it should be a breeze for you to explain exactly how you are going to beat the best armed and prepared insurgency in the history of the world while facing systemic insubordination and sabotage.