But no, I don't think they'd be willing to give up their so-called right for anything.

I don't own one, I only own handguns.

Conversations about AR-15s after a shooting go something like:

... AR-15's are no more lethal than any other non-AR-15 semi-automatic in the same caliber
... If a homicidal maniac used a Toyota to mow down people, would be ban Toyotas?
... There are millions of AR-15s that didn't kill anyone this week, month, year
... Rifles, of all types, are used in a very small percentage of gun deaths

These are honest, decent, hard-working people with a list of hobbies that includes putting holes in paper targets.

Most don't have strong political views but over-the-top anti-gun rhetoric probably motivates them to vote R.

.... is anybody surprised that nearly every mass shooter in recent US history has used an AR-15 to commit their crime? And why wouldn’t they? High capacity magazine, ease of loading and unloading, almost no recoil, really accurate even without a scope, but numerous scopes available for high precision, great from a distance or up close, easy to carry, and readily available. You can buy one at Wal-Mart, or just about any sports store, and since they’re long guns, I don’t believe you have to be any more than 18 years old with a valid ID. This rifle was made for the modern mass shooter, especially the young one. If he could custom design a weapon to suit his sinister purposes, he couldn’t do a better job than Armalite did with this one already.

This rifle is so deadly and so easy to use that no civilian should be able to get their hands on one. We simply don’t need these things in society at large. I always find it interesting that when I was in the Army, and part of my job was to be incredibly proficient with this exact weapon, I never carried one at any point in garrison other than at the range.

guns that aren't built for the sole purpose of killing people in mass. They should be outlawed and any sensible person knows it, if only for the reason that idiots can and will own them.

"other non-AR-15 semi-automatic in the same caliber ..."

A rose by any other name would be just as deadly - and just as illegal. Any high capacity magazine semi-auto in any caliber should be considered an assault rifle, and should be illegal. People (including children) have a Constitutional right to remain unshot and alive.

then add that they vote R because someone points that out shows that we should ignore their issues. The fact that the guns exist and are easily available is the problem.

At some point guns become a voting issues for the majority of those who want regulation than your good buddies are out of luck...no respect for any that own a AR 15.

Your allegations certainly seem familiar, routine, and... well, rote. Consistent in all but whose turn it is to tell them this time.

But I get it-- fictional tales about imaginary friends are often necessary to advance particular narratives.

When I was four, my best friend was a talking chimpanzee named Herman. Imagination is great for four year old children. As adults however, we learn to call disingenuous allegations something else entirely.



I'm not surprised you failed to mention the young victims even once, though-- doing so doesn't really color those narratives as cheerfully and brightly as our narratives require.

proudly displayed on their cars (frequently built to look like trucks) showing everyone what badasses they are.

A lot of money is paid for contraband guns

Having one of their own children murdered?

Nope, not even then.....

Revolvers and pump action, break action and lever action long guns are fine for me.

In the same way car owners don't feel collective guilt for DWI homicides.
And no I don't own any modern semi-auto rifles.

Only a quarter of Americans own guns.

Although it's hard to know how accurate those figures are since it is pretty difficult to track because in some states you don't even need any kind of permit of license to buy one.

Many gun owners aren't going to tell strangers they own guns.

Why is that sites's findings "questionable" beside you don't like the answer?
They have a survey results from 1972 to 2017.

Would you prefer a PEW survey?
About four-in-ten adults (42%) report that there is a gun in their household, with three-in-ten saying they personally own a gun and 11% saying they don’t own a gun but someone else in their household does.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/

He said the same thing a about not blaming gun owners...

FUCKING COWARDS

That alone is reason to go after them.

They make me sick. Their stupid toys are more important than people's lives. Nobody NEEDS a gun. They just want them for their own fucked up, selfish reasons.

stories about AR15 owners giving them up after Wednesdays horror.

Drivers say they will give up cars because car deaths are so bad? But cars kill far more.

Or say they are willing to have all cars restricted to 25mph to make things safer, and it’s worth it if it saves lives.

I guess everyone with a car is a heartless bastard who doesn’t care about dead kids.

After all, cars kids hundreds more kids a year than AR-15 type rifles or all semi-auto rifles together.

I guess all those drivers who won’t budge on all using public transportation or being restricted to 25mph are just heartless bastards who don’t care aboyt dead kids. Because your average driver is far more likely to kill a kid with their car- often their own- than the average rifle owner is.

Or does your emotionally driven attack Taft totally lacks any logical basis only apply to guns and nothing else that kills kids?

And yes, I own an AR-15. I have had the same one about 22 years now. And it’s used safely and stored securely when not in use, and I don’t feel one bit guilty or accountable or any other nonsense about owning it because I’m no more responsible for what someone else does with their than for what some reckless driver does with his car because I own one too.

Cars are integral to our way of life- AR-15s and the like are not. We do already impose speed limits, including more restricted speeds in school zones etc., and these limits do already save many lives per year. Statistics don't lie when we see the minuscule number of gun deaths per year in countries that have imposed common sense laws regarding guns, laws which we fail to legislate. I believe that the first step in this increasing problem of school shootings is better mental health screening. Sounds like agencies really dropped the ball on Cruz.

Full disclosure- I enjoyed time in my youth target practicing with 22s and learning about gun safety at the camp I attended each summer. I am not a gun owner, but I have fired my brother's pistols and his AR plenty of times. I am a wicked shot with the AR, but each time I fired it I was a bit intimidated by what a beast it is, and so accurate, so many rounds in that large capacity magazine.

Should it be banned?

There are lots of things that lead to far more deaths of children than firearms.

Do you tell owners or users of them they have blood on their hands or are accountable for someone else’s negligence or criminal acts?

If that craft beer enthusiast responsible when a 15 year old gets access to alcohol and drinks, passes out, vomits and chokes to death on their vomit?

Or does that only work for guns?

So does unintentional poisoning.

Unintentional fall deaths (per year)
Number of deaths: 31,959

Unintentional poisoning deaths
Number of deaths: 42,032

And those are CDC stats:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm

“What a beast it is” is a giveaway. In reality it’s anything but. It’s a small caliber gun with very low recoil. It’s no more or less accurate than any other typical firearm. And I don’t know how a magazine can intimidate anyone. All new shooters who I let shoot one don’t make comments about “what a beats it is”, but the exact opposite about how much a beast it wasn’t compared to the hype they have seen and heard in the media- I find just letting people shoot one is the best way to let them see how out of touch with reality comments like “what a beast it is” really are.

That paragraph sounds like someone with no experience trying to repeat nonsense they heard to seem more credible on the issue.

I don't have much of an interest in nor an affiliation with gun ownership outside of my brothers and my niece's husband, former sniper in Afghanistan whose AR I first fired. Hadn't shot any other rifle before besides said 22 from my youth. So, bear in mind that, compared to the 22, the AR is a beast to a novice. Have a good one.
on edit: I will agree, not much of a recoil to it, just the overall presentation to one not steeped in gun culture.

100 rounds through that and my shoulder is done for the day. And that's with a recoil pad over the butt.

Nonsense, anybody could get by with out a car: buses, taxis, bikes, motorcycles, Uber, walking, jogging, etc.

And you know it.

Look at your first post. There are MILLIONS of people without access to public transportation. MILLIONS for who Uber or cabs is not an option. There are MILLIONS of people for whom riding a motorcycle in the dead of winter is not an option.
There are MILLIONS of rural people for whom walking or jogging (ridiculous, by the way) is not an option. One need not be in the middle of nowhere to be 15 miles from work or 5 miles from the nearest store. And, once again, DEAD OF WINTER.
Walk in the blizzard to work, 15 miles away. Ok, you win. It's a death sentence.
You've got nothing, and once again, you know it.

You changed your premise twice now, because ALL of them have been illogical.
And for my last time, you've got nothing
I win. You lose. As anticipated! When one's argument has zero merit, one will ALWAYS lose whatever argument being made, no matter how pathetically, intellectually vacuous.

...I'm 100% with you.

I think it has been discussed to death exactly why.

Far too often, they bring out their weapons late in the evening after heavy drinking. We leave before that happens but from our house we can hear them shooting uphill.

Guns and booze: what could go wrong?

an AR 15 or children.

seems to be the position. I can't understand why anyone would oppose the most cumbersome process possible for acquisition if it might only reduce the likelihood that innocent civilians (children!) will be killed unjustly. Especially when they know their hobbies and fears are what drives the production of these killing machines.

I've already sold all of my 30-round magazines that came with the gun after Sandy Hook, and replaced them with a few 5 and 10 round magazines like the ones sold during the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban. I have no need for more than 5-10 rounds at a time; when I shoot targets I like to take my time and be accurate, and I've never had to fire more than 2 rounds when I'm hunting.

If the 1994 AWB were re-enacted, I would remove all the parts needed to make it compliant, just like in the 1990's. The flash hider screws off the barrel, and I can JB Weld the collapsing stock into place.

If a new, stricter AWB required me to turn it in, I would, and use the cash paid out to purchase a legal hunting gun that suited my needs (hunting deer and killing the occasional coyote, raccoon and skunk that try to get into my barn after my goats and chickens).

Frankly, I kind of regret purchasing my AR. I was young and stupid, and traded in a nice European-made bolt-action rifle for it. Going back to that wouldn't be much of a heartache for me.

A coworker of mine talked about guns, hunting, General redneck-y shit from time to time. I knew he was a “gun but” but I lived in East Texas when I was a child, and go back there or to Arkansas several times a year, so while I don’t like guns and never approved assault rifles for civilians (granted, a nebulous term), someone owning a gun is a far from foreign concept.

We were in the same room when the Sandy Hook news broke. Ironically, we were co-teaching the same class. That news came across the computer and we were kind of done “actively” teaching for the day.

He didn’t see the need to give up his AR-15. It was his favorite plinking-in-the-desert rifle. Not one of his hunting rifles, of home defense guns, or self defense guns, or bird guns, but it was his favorite. Rather, they were his favorite.

I worked at him for years about sensible gun control — it would be surprising to many of you how much a gun nut and a radical leftist like me can agree when it comes to firearms. There is tons of middle ground.

So, eventually (and darkly coincidentally), the Friday before October 1 I asked him what was up, still shooting, etc. He told me that he’d remembered what I’d said a million times about the direct correlation between gun ownership and suicide. His adult son has gotten divorced and temporarily moved back home; his dad, my friend, had sold off several of his guns and used the proceeds to buy a nice gun safe. He’d also stopped leaving them around the house (“for defense,” as if Mescalero Apaches were coming at any moment, instead of living in one of the safest communities in America).

A week later we found ourselves making arrangements to attend the funeral of a mutual friend murdered on October 1. He volunteered the information that he’d remembered how is thrown my handguns in the trash after Newtown, and had used his power tools to render his AR-15 unusable by anyone ever again. Apparently it still looks cool, though.

So yes: I know ONE person who actually got rid of their AR-15.

He wouldn’t have surrendered his, but he would have happily never bought one if they weren’t available.

It took years of conversations — YEARS — and watching a dozen mass shooting tragedies on TV, and a child with suicidal ideations, and he had to personally know someone killed in or affected by a mass shooting.