The threads regarding the horrific Manheim Township murder have taken a predictable tack. Basically, any time there’s a terrible crime, you get the same thing.

The gun guys say, “If only the victims had a gun.”

Look, as a liberal I’m supposed to hate guns and want all sorts of new restrictions on them, but I don’t. Frankly, I just don’t think you’re ever going to get the kind of restrictions that will prevent stolen guns from showing up on the street. You will wind up taking guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens. And particularly over the course of the past few years, during Our Leader’s assault on the Constitution, I am very, very wary about abrogating Constitutional rights in any way. (I’m turning Libertarian in my old age, but that’s another story for another day).

And as the Manheim Township murders show, those who really want to kill will use whatever means are at hand. You might slow the pace of gun crimes by banning guns, but you don’t still the pathology that ultimately lies behind such crimes.

And in any event, no matter how much the public as a whole might want stricter gun laws, you are simply not going to steamroll the National Rifle Association. Period. And so what we would get, if anything, would be tiny, incremental laws that nibble around the edges, but have no real effect.

But.

All of this said, the gun lovers tend to be a little off their rockers.

I know gun guys; have one in my family, in fact. I don’t begrudge them their right to own whatever they want (though I would point out that in the Ludwig murder case, it was dad’s fondness for firearms that ultimately provided the weapon for his son).

But this idea that they are just short of caped superheroes who, with their gun, could have Prevented These Gruesome Crimes is just ludicrious.

You’re in your bed and you hear a commotion downstairs. In that case, maybe you do have the chance to grab your gun, confront the intruder, stand up for Truth, Justice and the American Way.

You wake up and the intruder is already standing over you with a knife, or with his gun: You are screwed.

You can have an AK-47 under the bed, and it isn’t going to do you a whit of good. Same deal if you’re walking down the street and suddenly some bullets fly by - a drive-by. We’ve had a couple of those in Lancaster recently. What are the gun types going to do - pull out the gat and return fire in the middle of a city?

At heart, gun types are paranoid. It’s a dangerous world out there, they think, and having a gun makes them feel safer. More power to them - as I said, I believe that’s their right, and I wouldn’t take it away.

But please, spare us the tall tales of the heroism you surely would show if that attacker had broken into your house rather than the Haines house. Maybe you would have stopped the intruder. Or maybe the intruder would have made a mockery of your claims that guns ultimately make you safer.

You can’t know until it happens to you. And that’s the thing about gun types; they all secretly wish it would happen to them. They all secretly want the chance to show they’re heroes, to use their gun in a situation like this.

They’d be better off hoping they never get the chance.