Apparently it’s becoming perfectly acceptable to “Stand Your Ground” and shoot first, ask questions later. I’m referring to the bill passed into law in Florida in 2005 and similar legislation introduced or passed in other states, including Iowa.

The gist of Stand Your Ground is that if even feel threatened, even in a public area, you do not have to retreat. You may pull your gun and shoot. In light of this, maybe I should buy a gun, too, before its too late. I mean, don’t I have the right to defend myself?

Last month, Daily columnist Barry Snell wrote in “Your life is precious, protect it” that people should arm themselves because the police probably won’t make it in time to save you. Every time there’s a shooting rampage like Columbine or Virginia Tech, somebody inevitably says: “Well, if other people were armed, they could have stopped the shooter.”

Last month, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot dead in a gated community in Sampson, Fla., by self-proclaimed neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman. As of this writing, police have yet to arrest Zimmerman because claimed to be acting in self-defense under the Stand Your Ground law. I wonder what would have happened if Martin had had a gun and shot Zimmerman instead.

I’m hesitant to buy a gun, however, because I fear gun ownership would change my outlook on the world. For me, when the general populace of a region or a country is allowed to arm themselves, it represents the breakdown, or the perception of breakdown, of central authority in a given area. The above examples seem to support this.

I recall the philosophy class I took years ago where the professor discussed gun control. Somehow, he had dissected the argument down to the difference between handguns and bazookas.

“What’s the difference?” he asked the class in an accusatory tone, as if we didn’t know or understand.

I, being a smartass, responded, “One’s bigger than the other.”

“Really?” the professor said. “There is no difference. Both kill people!”

Again, being a smartass, I quoted that old cliché: “’Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.’”

Nobody laughed, and the professor continued on. To this day I’m still not sure if he really believed what he was saying, trying to goad the class into arguing with him, or both.

Years later, I realize much of the attention on gun control actually centers around the ownership and use of handguns. Bazookas and the like are really meant to take out vehicles and fortified positions. But handguns are meant to used to kill people, period. The majority of all deaths in the United States caused by firearms are from handguns. And the majority of all firearm deaths in the United States are suicides.

Putting suicides aside, bringing a handgun into a tense situation is likely to cause the death of the attacker or the victim. Thus, the stereotypical gun nut going on a rampage with an assault rifle is a very extreme case.

Stand Your Ground seems to ignore other consequences and circumstances. It takes the ideas of self-defense out of the private domain of the household and into the streets. How many innocent bystanders must get injured because two parties simply felt threatened by one another.

Furthermore, when somebody goes on a shooting rampage, and others use guns to stop him, how do the police tell the difference between those who are defending themselves and the original shooter? Hell, in the heat of the moment, is it not possible for those defending themselves to mistake each other for the original shooter?

Stand Your Ground would give them the option to shoot each other first and ask questions later.

Stand Your Ground seems to indicate that many people have an intrinsic desire to defend themselves, most likely from another person with a gun. But crime rates have generally dropped in the last decade or so, and around three-fourths of the American population is unarmed. So I’m not sure where this fear really comes from. American society has its problems, but it is stable.

Yet is it the breakdown of society that people fear? Or perhaps the violence of poor urban areas spilling into suburbia? Or are they afraid of big government trying to run their lives? Or the fear of the absence of government, America breaking down into feudal states dominated by warlords who constantly fight each other?

In that case, I’m reminded of Katharine Hepburn, playing Eleanor of Aquitaine in the 1968 movie “The Lion In Winter.” At one point, Prince John, played by Nigel Terry, exclaims, “A knife! He’s got a knife!” And Eleanor responds, “Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It’s 1183, and we’re barbarians!”

I believe if most Americans possessed handguns, the American society would become absolutely feudal.