The easiest way to resolve, in your own mind, the gun control debate is to take this little test. 

1. Do you believe you have a right to live? 

2. Do you believe your spouse and children have a right to live? 

3. If someone is threatening to kill you and your family, do you think you have
a right to defend yourself? 

That's the objective, yes-or-no part of the quiz, and now here is one final essay question: 

How will you defend yourself and your family if you are confronted by na armed intruder or intruders? 

You could call 911 unless, as often happens these days, the intruders have taken the trouble to cut your telephone wires before they kick down your door. But if you did get the call off, you still have a problem: The intruders are there in your house and the police aren't. 

The sad fact is that, because of logistics, police can't protect you. In more than 99 percent of the cases, by the time the police receive a call, and certainly by the time they arrive, the crime has already been committed. 

The hard truth is that when you are confronted by a criminal, you're in the same situation today you would have been if you had lived alone on na isolated ranch on the American frontier. There's nobody at the dance but you and the criminal. You have to fight. You win, you live; you lose, you die. Simple as that. There's no alternative unless you want to depend on your begging and on some thug's mercy. 

But in serious encounters, by the time the cavalry gets there, there will be dead and wounded lying around. The question you have to answer is, Do you want to be among the dead or among the living? 

Now you may suppose that you are a glib talker and that when some crack-crazed thug sticks a gun in your face, you can reason with him. That's a very far-fetched supposition. I'd bet on the thug. 

Any honest street cop will tell you that the predators roaming around today are far more dangerous than even mob hit men of the past. The hit man would never kill without a reason. Today's thugs kill on a whim for no rational reason at all. And many of them will kill everyone there, including babies and children. 

The neototalitarians, sometimes known as the gun control crowd, will repeat the big lie that a gun kept for self-protection is more likely to injure you or your family than a criminal. The flawed study that lie is based on was discredited years ago. 

If you take a gun to a gunfight, you may not win; if you don't, you will surely lose. Credible studies by respected scholars with no bias show what common sense tells you -- that thousands of Americans every day save themselves from criminal harm by using a firearm -- most of the time without having to shoot. 

To me there is no more outrageous insult or bigger example of stupidity than a government that is such a gross failure at preventing criminal armed attacks on the population to take the position that the answer is to disarm the future victims. 

I take it as a given that any politician who proposes to deny honest people the means to defend their lives and the lives of their children is too evil or too stupid to tolerate in public office. 

Some guy once wrote that a characteristic of Southerners is that they take things personally. I know that's true in my case. When I hear some politician talk gun control, I think, "You (expletive deleted), you're endangering my children." 

You have a right to own a firearm. Don't let anyone take that right away from you. 

Maybe you fancy yourself a tough guy who can disarm the thug and punch his lights out. I'd still bet on the criminal. I know several very tough Korean tae kwon do masters, some of them former Korean central intelligence officers, and they all say, in a serious self-defense situation, use a gun.