Does Owning a Gun Make You Safer?

ah now I see the cut of your jib

Dmonasg

private sales between persons are a horse of a different color. I must admit I don't purchase firearms from private individuals, just because I like to have a warranty with products.

The capacity thing I disagree on, but I can see where you are coming from. There are a lot of gun games that require higher capacity weapons, and also there have unfortunately been a number of civilian involved shootings where a person had to fight off, for lack of a better term, multiple attackers.

if you look at a lot of the guns used in crimes, many can't even hold more than 10 rounds. A lot of the handguns used for crime are just not in that category.

we'll come back to capacity restrictions in a minute-

I agree, some people on my side of the fence are a bit right of 'hard liner' with some of their views. Their thought process, or the thought process of some of the ones I've encountered, is as follows:

'death by a thousand papercuts' progressively more and more little bits of legislation to limit and price out many members of society from firearm ownership, until they have been forced to exist as a small minority- where they no longer have their rights respected.

many of those hard liners look at Australia and Great Britain, countries where legislation was increased, steadily for years, and then all of a sudden, their rights were stroked away with a single move of a pen. Overall violence in both countries went up after those pen strokes.

they are so fearful of being boxed into a corner that they lash out at any legislation.

I hate to make this reference, but it is one worth repeating. So I apologize in advance. Nazi Germany had gun laws that basically broke down as follows- you could own weapons for hunting, and you could store them at your local police station. To many, that sounds REASONABLE. some would say that its not a bad idea to have laws like that here.

we are obviously NOT nazi Germany; however, none of us can read the future. we don't know what rights our kids, our our grandchildren may need to be happy and healthy in our society. This goes beyond guns too. If we allow guns and the 2nd amendment to be gutted, we set precedent for the WHOLE bill of rights to fall under scrutiny.

I'm not against background checks- I think they are a great thing. The capacity ban I think is silly, just because most encounters and shootings in the civilian world happen with less than 5 rounds- its somewhere on the FBI website, but you can check.

so why limit something that isn't a problem?

A lot of people say, well what about that bank of America robbery in California? that was a terrible tragedy, where 2 crazy guys did some serious gun smithing and black market dealing to get some heavy weaponry.

but what ended it? Police, taking civilian legal guns (ar-15s) and putting the shooters down. what was the response of California? ban civilians from owning the types of rifles the police took from a gunshop to stop the gunmen.

The problem I think, is that most of these legislators are more concerned with hype and votes than understanding the issue- so they put a lot of stuff together that sounds big and bad- and try to ban it. Alls that ends up doing is punishing law abiding citizens. Even if i don't agree with a law, I still obey it.

we are paying the price for their lack of diligence, and we pay it with our rights and our tax dollars.

The other problem is, much of the reasonable measures you talk about, get unreasonable things tacked on to them. Sure background checks are legal, but what was the fat stuck on that bill? what else were we forced to sacrifice to get one good thing?

thats more of a line veto question, but think of some of the laws that aren't gun related, that have passed regarding your hobbies. how much of it could have been better for citizens if the legislators really understood the subject, instead of focusing on what sounded big? what sounded good?

I think you make good points, but I think the price for some of the reasonable things comes with a higher price tag than many expect.

for instance- the brady campaign has a big push to oppose a bill right now- saying it would make it legal for children to walk the streets of DC with assault rifles.

if you read the bill, it basically undoes the unconstitutional ban, as ruled by the Supreme Court, in washington DC.

Don't forget also that DC, or Phili- these are cities with the tightest and most restrictive gun laws. yet they have the most violence. if that doesn't prove that much of this legislation is wasted, I don't know what does.