Man arrested for 2x4 labeled "High Powered Rifle"
The same can be said about martial arts and self-defense as a whole. FMA knife skills in the wrong hand can be a scary thing. Same with offtopic and boxing--there are instances of boxers or offtopic fighters using their skills in domestic violence assaults or in rapes. Should we, from this, decide that maybe martial arts are too violent or too "unfair" for you or I to be training in? Of course not. Because boxing doesn't punch innocent people; people do.
Of course guns are "unfair" weapons. Since when does self-defense have anything to do with fairness? I thought self-defense-oriented arts generally assumed the attackers would be unfair (bigger, more people, element of surprise, armed attackers). So why does a potential crime victim need to worry about whether his/her self-defense is "fair"? The objective is to survive an attack that is, by its very nature, unfair.
Take the case of Sarah McKinley in Oklahoma. Does a shotgun give someone an unfair advantage over someone who doesn't have a gun? Sure it does. That's the point. She was a teen mother, recently widowed, home alone with her baby. Two men who had been stalking her broke into her house with knives. 911 response was not going to be there in time to protect her (she was on the phone with a dispatcher for 21 minutes before they broke through her front door, and police had still not reached her house. So she shot and killed one with a shotgun and the other fled. Yes, the shotgun gave her an "unfair" advantage. That's a good thing in the hands of someone trying to defend themselves. Was there any unarmed self-defense training a teen mother could have that would have allowed her to defeat two larger attackers with knives while she was standing her ground to protect a baby (instead of disengaging at the first chance and fleeing)?
http://abcnews.go.com/US/okla-woman-shoots-kills-intruder911-operators-shoot/story?id=15285605#.UN9DiaDTmR4
I think the comparison is a good one. offtopic used to be banned in parts of the US because it was "too violent" so legislators thought there was no legitimate reason for it to exist in a civilized society. offtopic in the wrong hands leads to grim, spectacle-oriented underground fight clubs. But in the right hands, it's an exciting sport and an excellent training regime. So the bans were lifted, something I supported 100%. A semi-auto pistol in the wrong hands can be used in a massacre, but in the right hands is an accurate, concealable, easily-reloadable self-defense weapon for someone who needs to defend against the potential of larger or multiple attackers.
Just because you don't agree with the comparison doesn't mean you should be calling me dishonest or insincere. That's totally out of line.
