How to respond?

[Purplehood]

The only thing the government and police know to look for is a card in my wallet. The rest is just assumption.

[HoustonSy]

Gents,
Thanks for all the thoughtful replys. On reflection, I believe her fearful comment is the result of ignorance of guns and/or never having personally experienced crime. I believe this (by VMI77) sums it up: "If having (a CHL) one makes you a government target then we'll be well beyond the point of no return as a nation."

[cheezit]

the govt and the police know who and what to look for....

yes they do a fine job at the crime scene.

[rdcrags]

And you didn't have to have a CHL to get your guns confiscated after Katrina --plus, who knows, maybe in a situation like that you'll stand a better chance of keeping a gun if you have a CHL than if you don't.

I lived in N.O. twice and have wondered if that would have made any difference. Could be.

[Texas Dan Mosby]

When I told a close friend that I have a CHL, she responded: "My only thought about the CHL - the govt and the police know who and what to look for." My wife has expressed the same concern. Any ideas what my response should be?

It doesn't take a seasoned cop to realize that the individual holding a weapon and demanding you perform tasks detrimental to your health is indeed a threat. NOR does it take a "government" agent, OR a rocket scientist, to realize that a firearm may very well be the tool one needs to defend themselves from those stronger, faster, and younger than themselves.

If we ALL had armed personal representatives of government and LEO agencies at our disposal 24/7, we wouldn't need arms.

But we don't...

[csmintx]

It is estimated that there are 350,000,000 privately owned firearms is the United States of America. I'd venture that it would be an unmanageable task for some governmental agency to keep track of all of them, and virtually impossible to even contemplate a plan to confiscate them.

That of course will never happen. The Supreme Court decision makes the issue "settled law." The second ammendment means what it says.

[Drewthetexan]

I bought my first AR15 on the off-chance that they do come looking for my other firearms.

Sounds extremist and fanatical, but no one expects the spanish inquisition either.

[zaroffhunts]

If we ALL had armed personal representatives of government and LEO agencies at our disposal 24/7, we wouldn't need arms.

We would need them even more.

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?'
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn