Meir Kahane,

Have you ever been in the middle of a shoot out? I was a witness to a gang shooting in echo park. Someone was killed, an innocent man who'd stopped to get gas across the street from my apartment. The people who lived in the apartment below me were mostly teenagers but they had somehow assmembled an arsenal of guns that included semi automatic weapons. Over fifty rounds were fired as I talked to the 911 operator, it lasted a full minute. Even the police were very hesitant to come in until these guys were out of there. One person was convicted eventually. If I had been armed, if the man they were shooting at (mistaking him for a gang rival who had earlier fired on one of their members tagging the wall across from our apartment) had been armed, it wouldn't have done any good. The firepower was too overwhelming. Are we supposed to be always on guard, always ready to fire at each other? Many more shootings would happen that way. People who are anti gun control have obviously not spent much time in the inner city where it seems like everyone in fact DOES have a gun and the murder rates, the accidental shootings, the drunken rampages and domestic killings are extremely common. Maybe we should abolish gun control completely so all the stupid sheltered upper middle class suburbanites can shoot each other in fits of road rage. Then perhaps some nice real estate on the wes t side will become affordable.