Well said!!

"Your anger at my being allowed to possess them is also irrational. Not only have they NOT been involved in illegal activities or activities harmful to humans, they will NEVER be."

What is your guarantee that your guns will never be used to harm another human? Are homes never broken into and things stolen? I don't care where you store your weapons, they could be stolen and used against other people.

There are myriad scenarios that could have your guns getting into the possession of a criminal. To think otherwise is irrational.

And he was a law abiding gun owner right up until the moment he wasn't.

If it did, DC wouldn't have been a leader in gun related crimes for years.

I have no doubt that a federal initiative to make guns and ammo scarcer from sea to shining sea will be quite successful.

Because that's the only way it's going to happen.

If accomplished within the limits expressed in Heller and McDonald.

Is to prevent people from legally buying and keeping them, which isn't permitted under Heller. You can't take them away from people that legally possess them, unless they committed a crime, you can't put overly onerous restrictions on obtaining them, and you can't make them useless by not allowing people to buy ammunition for them.

Congress can certainly act in a manner consistent with Heller which makes it clear that arms presenting a certain level of lethality must not be allowed to come into "common usage."

That is the standard the majority hung its hat on.

Which makes political action to prevent that downward death spiral not only Constitutional, but an imperative for survival of the society.

Thanks for the reasoned discussion - it's a rare occurence these past couple of days.

FYI, I'm glad to see that someone else capitalizes "Constitutional". On another thread, my motives were called into question for doing so.

are willing to yield to the "well regulated" part, I'll be backing them up - even tho I think the "militia" angle is an outdated and irrelevant facet to try and stand on. Right now, the NRA is the 800 ton gorilla in the room of reason.

In the Heller decision.

Now the term "People" is not collective as so many had claimed prior to Heller. Gun grabber claimed that the term 'people' was in indivisible right in every amendment except the 2nd where it was a collective right.

No more.

modern constitutional democracy on the face of the earth which has one!

Boy, are we special...

Law-abiding until they aren't.

Then it becomes OUR problem.


The OP cannot say what might happen tomorrow, to anyone, including himself.

Like the USA PATRIOT Act, too? My gods, someone out there might someday do something bad. Watch everyone! Snoop their communications! Ball all weapons!

of regulation for deadly weapons.

Same type of response could be found on Free Republic or CC.

I, too, can play the game.

If we aren't going to tar everyone with the same brush in your case, why do we have to tar them all with that brush in the other case?

Weapons of mass destruction are HEAVILY regulated world-wide. A gun with more than 1 bullet is a potential weapon of mass destruction and I want it and the people that possess them regulated just like the 2nd amendment calls for.

Pre Crime Division? Really?

None? Some? What?

It's obvious the laws on the books aren't working, or this conversation wouldn't be happening.

How many more innocent people must be slaughtered before reasonable citizens agree that something other than hand-wringing must be done to make it stop?

robber might very well take possession and go on a crime spree.

.

That is, until she ran over her husband three times and left her car parked on top of his lifeless body. This has happened countless times. What would you do about it?

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/06/1028157922214.html

This woman also had never harmed a person with a car, until she did. In fact, she murdered her husband with it.

If it gets as bad as guns and ammo, we'll revisit.

Hello?

Hello?

Have you been shot?

most of the discussion is around the issues you say you are concerned about. And even that discussion has mostly been dropped at the higher levels.

.. they have crossed the line from trying to change minds to just becoming downright insulting. I am sure this will have the exact opposite of the effect that would like to have.

I do fear guns, and respect what they can do. They are designed to kill,
and that is all.

While you might think that I am safe from you and your gun, I do not
think so. If I were to find you carrying a gun, I would be very afraid;
and that is the only rational response.

However, I would allow you your right to carry a gun. My issue is with
gun laws and what is available for sale. These laws and what is available
need to be much more restrictive.

That really is very sad you feel that way, as well as being

He also has a startle response if he wakes up suddenly. No dx of PTSD, though he does have many symptoms.
I'm not sure of the details of the features of his gun, but one that is made to kill more than one person would kill all 4 of the grandkids if they woke him from a deep sleep as I did when I was kid.

Where most fear comes from. You are not unique in that way.

be much more restrictive.

Based on what? Your irrational fear of my firearm?

It's pretty doubtful that any of those soft drinks were weapons in the mass murder that occurred.

I don't have a dick at all, and my husband seems to be content with his.

We also are responsible gun owners in this home. That does not mean that all gun owners are, so there is justified outrage at the irresponsible policies that the NRA continues to push.

I wish the NRA would leave us all the fuck alone and disappear from the face of the earth. Now, THAT would be meaningful.

i'm certainly willing to believe that you haven't ever committed any act of violence with your guns, and i'm certainly willing to believe that you can't see any real possibility of it in your future.

however, *i* am not inside your brain, i know little about your life, and i have plenty of completely rational and legitimate reason to have my concerns.

for one thing, people change. completely level-headed and rational people can become mentally ill later in life. or they can have financial and/or family circumstances turn against them. or they can simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time and react poorly in a stressed situation. or you might just miss the bad guy and shoot me instead.


most people, including you, want merely limited, common-sense regulation on guns. the few people who actually want to ban or confiscate guns certainly are in a small minority and are not going to get anywhere anyways.

but please do NOT go about with a chip on your shoulder telling others they have nothing to fear just because you can't see yourself going postal.

i once had to fire an employee and escort him out of the building knowing he had a gun in his truck.
would the thought cross your mind that maybe, just maybe, i should have been a wee bit afraid?

we sure as shit have plenty to fear.

At least not to the point of genuine fear. For fear to be a rational response, there needs to be more than a tiny probability of actual harm occurring. The numbers relating to that point are unequivocal: out of the millions and millions of civilian gun owners in the US, only a tiny fraction will ever commit any criminal act with their weapons. Thus fear of all such armed persons not personally known to you is in fact irrational. That doesn't make such a fear a horrible thing or even contemptible (fear is an emotional response and not always particularly subject to reason), but is is irrational.

People "going postal" are simply not a frequent enough occurarnce that someone not in a situation with extenuating circumstances has any rational reason to be genuinely fearful of them. The same holds for CCW users and the possibility of tehm hitting bystanders. It's something that could happen...but it woudl seem that it almost never actually does. Being truly afraid of anything other than something which is 100% certain not to happen is simply not rational, not mentally healthy.

Now your example of having to escort the fired employee is another matter. There were additional circumstances that changed the equation considerably. Knowing that a person is both armed and in a position where they could be expected to be very angry creates a situation in which there is nothing irrational about fearing that things might become violent. The probability of violence is massively increased. Not, perhaps, even to a likelihood (obviously exact numbers wouldn't be available!), but by several orders of magnitude over some random armed stranger.

"Being truly afraid of anything other than something which is 100% certain not to happen is simply not rational, not mentally healthy."



in any event, i'm a bit puzzled. i shouldn't fear the unlikely events but i should have feared the employee firing case even though in neither case is there 100% certainty of anything.


in fact, rational fear is appropriate ONLY where the outcome is uncertain. personally, i don't fear death itself as it is 100% certain. but i do fear any of a number of situations where my life is in peril.


in any event, this simply reduces it all to a semantic game. fine, i shouldn't "fear" it, i should simply be "wary" or "concerned". in the same way, perhaps i shouldn't "fear" air travel, as my chance of dying in a crash are quite small, but i should be wary and concerned enough to want to make sure that airliners and government oversight work diligently to keep it that way.

Or rather, a poorly constructed sentence. What I was trying to say that for fear of a situation that isn't 100% safe to be rational, the possible bad outcomes have to have a reasonable chance of occurring. Fear of astronomically unlikely eventualities is irrational. That's the difference between fear of a random armed stranger and fear of that person you had to escort: in the latter situation, the probability of a bad outcome would be enormously higher.

I don't think the difference between a sort of awareness and concern and actual fear is a semantic one. Both are reactions to something, both occur, and there is a very real difference in degree (and probably in kind, as well).

Apologies for the clumsy writing earlier...

Thank you.

And we are EXPECTED to sit back, do nothing and just trust that any random legal gun owner - like James Holmes - won't commit a murderous rampage?

This is the very reason rational people insist on background checks & licenses. It prevents crazies from buying guns just so they can kill people.

If you're not part of the solution THEN YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM!

Although this appears to be a 'vanity thread,' which I don't care for generally, but there was more to it than that. Still, I don't feel this thread fits the SOP for General Discussion:

Discuss politics, issues, and current events. No posts about Israel/Palestine, religion, guns, showbiz, or sports unless there is really big news. No conspiracy theories. No whining about DU.

After the rush of emotion from the Aurora killings, threads not specifically about that story, and this being solely about gun ownership and the conflict between the anti/pro groups, is not and should go home to the Gungeon.

I don't alert threads or posters. Trash This Thread and Ignore work fine for me. Thanks for the nice comment, Kaleva.

The only blemish on his record was a traffic citation. He passed every single background check when he purchased his guns.

The minute you decide you're going to live your life expecting the worst of those around you, you've become part of the problem. Bad things are always going to happen. Trying to legislate away your fear is horrible politics and horrible judgment.

Trust me.

Anything smaller than a 50MT fusion device is laughed at by any self-respecting feline.

There is no indication that licensing would have mattered either.

What law would have prevented this? I suspect before the incident granting the money, time, and inclination the guy would have been able to license for automatics.

You have the advantage of hindsight and the power to close the barn door after the horse got out and find him safe in the stall, what law would be required to prevent the incident?
You may put the ample black market to the side. You are expected only to deal with the legal market to acquire firearms, how would you have prevented or even reduce the likelihood of this event or about any similar one?

I bet you realize that virtually any background or licensing system would tend to fail and that you have take a much more extreme stance (how extreme, I don't know since there is probably no reason he couldn't pass the FBI check, so more extreme than that) or admit that there is a lot of shadow chasing going on pretty much hoping for magic to take hold in response to painful frustration with people being fucked up.

So, he would also pass a mental health screen.

To be able to be a gun owner. So, yes, you need to sit back, because we do not live in the USA of Minority Report and try to guess who may or may not commit a crime.

Someone gets a driver's license because they passed all the tests. How do we know they won't reckless drive, hit or run, DUI, or whatever? We don't. To an extent, we have to trust the process and we have to trust strangers, every single day. Peeple posting they are afraid of every gin owner is, quite frankly, rather ridiculous.

The news has reported that this cowardly sicko gave little or no indication that he was even considering such a heinous act, let alone that he was capable of carrying it out.

The only way he could have been stopped was by barring him from buying firearms and ammunition. Extrapolate that out, and the only way to do that would be to bar everybody else also. That is not only unconstitutional on its face, but an act that will have a marginal effect on criminals.

Until you come up with a magic test to determine intent to carry out these acts (a la "Minority Report&quot , you will see acts of insanity from time to time. These are not unique to our country, or even to this particular time in history, as evidenced by historical reports. Identifying and changing the conditions that induced this behavior is a much better answer than subjugating an entire populace.

Go ahead gun nuts.. go count your ammo. You probably don't have enough, get in your car and go buy some more...

You have have become a tool for weapons manufacturers... their profit is at your expense. Go buy another 1000 rounds now!

Have you ever had a headache caused by stress? Heartburn? I bet you have.

I haven't. Not once. Ever.

If you feel you are somehow validated by calling people names in some kind of attempt to offend, go for it. Chris has a little dick because he owns guns. Or maybe he owns guns because he has a little dick. There... feel better? I bet you do.

I think you are the Number 1 Gun Nut on DU.... you can't stop yourself.

Either you are out buying ammo or you are typing in a Gun Thread... You have a lonely life. Go hug your gun.

Folks that trot out NRA talking points on DU tend to be conservative on other issues as well.

I don' think very many people are fooled.

tons of NRA enthusiasts coming out of the woodworks.. don't fool anyone.

Never met a Progressive who was a gun nut as well.

People here are asking for sane, responsible legislation, and since ONE person has not harmed anyone, that does not mean that far too many have harmed people...unrec...unrec...unrec...

"I do not believe civilian ownership of 100 round magazines should be allowed. In fact, I don't see the need for rifles to carry more rounds than semi-automatic handguns.
I believe everyone purchasing a handgun should endure a background check, no matter where the purchase takes place.
I believe purchasing a handgun from a private party should require the seller to be responsible for its registration. Should the seller NOT register the sale, the seller should be held equally responsible for whatever illegal act the purchaser might commit with it....
I don't believe concealed carry would be a problem if there were a standardized set of requirements nationwide, including psychological tests, safety training, and requiring a person to prove they can shoot accurately. "

Edit: I don't see a signal thing wrong with what he proposed.

What's wrong with it is that before being "sensible", he/she launched into a tirade I've seen a thousand times before, the whole "don't tread on me, I gotsa right to mah gunz."

No so-called responsible gun owner should be averse to some form of reasonable regulation, nor should they feel obligated to "defend" their gun ownership from those non-existent gummint or librul gun grabbers.

Protesting a bit too much about something which really didn't need protesting in the first place, or something like that.

I would say such an attitude isn't sensible or practical considering that there are millions of gun owners who have such weapons.

However, not my point at all.

The point is that, as "absolute" as the OP thinks the 2nd Amendment is (it isn't, just so we're clear), as a "responsible gun owner" he/she has a vested positive interest in the control of access to guns. Why? Because moderate, sensible control now prevents more restrictive measures later. I support responsible gun ownership, and part of that responsibility is acknowledging that some gun owners are NOT responsible. There is a vested interest of the responsible in keeping guns out of the hands of the irresponsible.

Continuing tragedies like the one we had with Gabrielle Giffords and in Aurora, Columbine, etc. are going to raise the question with more and more urgency. Unless gun owners and their advocates start acknowledging that the country is as a whole tired as fuck dealing with crazies with guns spraying innocents periodically just to support the rights of the responsible owners, we may just see a turnaround in some of the "gains" in rights (concealed carry, stand your ground, etc.).

It certainly wobbles my faith that the OP is as responsible a gun owner as he/she thinks he/she is when the "mah gunz" tirade precedes the "sensibility" part. Why protest what isn't in question?

to some of the extremist comments being made here at DU. Those that wish to ban all guns or all semi-automatics.

...still, a very shitty way to make the case.

or reworded it and still have a very effective OP.

Is there a way to weed out drivers, at the licensing point, who might commit vehicular manslaughter? Drive recklessly? Drive DUI? Or, is the process strict enough as it stands?

Next you'll be saying bombs are comparable to those little sparklers used on the 4th of July.

I get the attachment you have with guns passed on to you. Hell I got pissed off at a family member for borrowing a baseball glove and using a sharpie to write my name on the glove. (DON'T DEFILE MY EQUIPMENT!)

What most of us don't get is the need for certain types of weapons and magazines, the ability for someone to buy 50 calibar weapons in Glendale, AZ, walk out the store and turn them over to someone who runs them down to Mexico, and the lack of regulation and training required.

Again, most agree, and maybe it is a failure to communicate, because a lot of the "gun lovers" are coming across as people who say there is nothing that can be done, so just deal with it.

Hell if Easton made a softball bat that killed a dozen and injured over seventy, that bat would be regulated out of the marketplace by next summer.

To make all of these smug people whine about it when new laws are passed.

New laws would probably make them foam at the mouth mad.

OR ELSE....

...even if I'm a fucking ticking time bomb.

That's what makes a lot of us crazy; me at least.

Carry on.

Liberal gun owners are not fans of the NRA. So, why should the OP care wtf the NRA thinks?

Since you've ignored the main point, why should I care wtf you think of it?

is stupid. Nor does regulation entail taking away your weapons. It simply is a measure to keep an inventory of what weapons are out there, who owns them, and is it possible for unstable people to obtain these weapons.

You're being unreasonable.

When he purchased his guns, that is. Nobody can tell the difference between you on paper or just by looking at you across the gun counter.

THAT is the WHOLE of the point.

each year. How can any gun owner be sure none of THEIR guns will fall into the hands of criminals and be used for murders that will be traced back to THEM?

What if someone decides they want your guns and takes them from you? Then they may be used to kill people. But if they didn't exist, that potential wouldn't either. You can't say that your guns will never harm a human being. You can't control everything and you won't live forever to keep them from doing harm.

I sure many here will gladly "leave you the fuck alone"

Like "ignore" alone.

How would regulating the sales of guns take any one of yours away?

How does a "reasonable, responsible gun owner" start getting defensive any time someone even suggests the idea that we have to be more careful in how we permit guns to enter peoples hands? Why is this suggestion, by rote, met with some chest-banging tirade?

They skip right over any suggestions of regulation and go straight to attacking everyone for wanting to BAN all weapons. It's a willful choice to ignore the middle ground.

They've been conditioned by the NRA to believe that any attempt at compromise is a slippery slope, the bottom of which is the outright banning of firearms.

Of course this is nonsense.

I am not anti-gun by any stretch of the imagination, but irrational hand-wringing accompanies EVERY suggestion of moderation. Seems to me a "responsible gun owner" would be CHAMPIONING the need for more rigid requirements for legal possession.

If the first one isn't, the second certainly isn't.

But that's what they were made to do, isn't it?

Very nice.

Now seek some help.

If I want to mine and refine the materials and form them into a physics package that's none of your business. I'm a law abiding citizen and I have no intention of actually using them. It's just a hobby and shouldn't be outlawed.

The fact that others may misuse their weapons does not give you the right to put limits on me.

I'm not dangerous or paranoid, nor am I ashamed to admit I have a little dick. My weapons are not an attempt to make it bigger.

I am a responsible atom bomb owner. Leave me the fuck alone. Go regulate soft-drink size or something else equally as meaningful.

My sister was in a shopping mall before Christmas and just missed being shot by a guy who was upset that his girlfriend dumped him. Others were killed and one is now a quadriplegic (he was once an actor).

My neighbor/friend who was recovering from a broken knee and likely on pain meds woke up, got her husband's gun and blew her head off at 6am.

My neighbor, who has a drinking problem, has threatened other neighbors that he will shoot them (for reasons unknown). Police know about this.

Another neighbor uses a 357 to kill racoons in his yard (he is a FOX, Limbaugh junkie who is angry most of the time).

Another neighbor who had dementia kept buying guns and rifles and piling them up on his washer/dryer. Police knew about this. It was a relief when he died.

Irrational people are allowed to have guns. It has changed the way I live my life. I try not to have interactions with people and choose not to be neighborly - I don't know who is armed, what they will take offense at or blame me for.
For me, this is what the great america has become - angry and armed to the teeth.

...is your continuing residence in that crazy-ass neighborhood.

and not much different than any other neighborhood.
My sister was shopping in a "nice" mall.
The 357 guy is a retired school superintendent with a perfect yard.
The dementia guy was a retired aerospace engineer.
The suicide woman's husband is retired Bell Telephone employee/world traveler with a gun collection.
The guy who threatens people cannot be held until someone gets hurt, according to police.

Your comment is flippant and fails to address the real concerns about the proliferation of guns and how that is shaping the american psyche. I would bet that every neighborhood has its gun collectors and people who want to solve their problems with the threat of being shot. I would bet that all police departments are restricted from removing guns from people who are demonstrably deranged - until they hurt someone.
I didn't mention the little children who shoot themselves or their siblings with easily available guns - there have been several in WA state - some in the homes of law enforcement officers.

Guns are in the hands of older people who may be losing cognitive funtion, people who are amped up by the RW anger machine, people who are on serious legal drugs like Ambien and various mixtures of Vicodin and anti-depressants etc.. That is the reality.

The live of americans are increasingly being affected by the use of guns. To recognize that fact is not irrational.

The juxtaposition of your "nice" neighborhood with the awfulness of your neighbors struck me as amusing.

My comments did not attempt to address any real concerns, yours or otherwise, so to say they failed in such an attempt is ludicrous.

Of course all of this was done in humor, so clearly a person who chooses Stephen Colbert as his/her avatar should in no way be expected to appreciate or even see the humor in that statement or the juxtaposition of sentences which inspired it.

My mistake. Won't happen again.

You support gun registration.

I would add that an idea that someone mentioned here today sounds good to me. That would be to require gun owners to buy an insurance policy for their guns.

One thing that had been overlooked about the Aurora tragedy is that many of the victims who survived will face large medical bills as well as perhaps life-long suffering from their injuries.

The young man who did the shooting probably has no assets to pay the damages to his victims. So who pays for the medical care for the uninsured? To say nothing to the adjustments in lifestyle that some of these injuries will cause. And if you look at the photos of the people who were killed and then think that those who survived with injuries are just as young, that is a lot of suffering, some serious injuries.

Think of Gabby Giffords and how much she has suffered to say nothing of the medical care, the physical therapy, etc. that she has already had and will need for a long time.

I do think it is reasonable to ask gun-owners to pay for insurance -- into a fund that helps cover the costs of innocent victims of gun abuse.

Excellent drivers still have to pay for car insurance. It's only fair. If you ride the bus -- you don't pay for that. If you don't own a gun, you shouldn't be required to pay for the damages that guns impose on their victims.

Certainly the amendment was written with a concern about things being "well regulated" such as with the militias, who would certainly have the greater amount of combined firepower. I don't think the Founding Fathers intended us to be intimidated by people in the community who are stockpiling military grade weapons for no practical purpose.

I just want to live a peaceful life. I don't want to worry when I go to see a movie if some law abiding sicko will walk in with an automatic weapon that can shoot 90 rounds. We have to have some control.

You want to make a better, more peaceful, world by controlling access to dangerous weapons. The problem is that your solution doesn't work. Dangerous materials are all around you. The Batman killer took months to plan his attack. With determination and ingenuity any obstacle that you may erect can be overcome, and fairly easily. Anybody with the tools of a 1940's era bicycle shop can produce, from scratch, a sub-machine gun. The WWII Sten gun was designed in Britian to be produced that way.

You can buy the ingredients to make explosives at home in any supermarket.

You can buy the ingredients to make poison gas at home in any supermarket.

Completely legally, no questions asked, except for, "How will you pay for this, Sir?" at the checkout counter.

Go to a hardware store and you can buy the tools and materials to make a gun. Guns are not cutting edge technology. The basic design of a revolver goes back to 1835, of semi-autos to the late 1890s.

A few years ago a mass murderer killed 87 people in a nightclub. His weapon? Gasoline and a match. Suppose the Batman killer had decided to use gasoline and a lighter, would you be calling for greater regulation on gasoline?

then why are you expressing irrational anger and fear about things that noone is trying to do,such as take away your WWII era heirloom firearms?

You get your NRA talking points through your gun nut friends at the shooting range, or here in the gungeon.

I'm glad to see that you disagree with the NRA when it comes to oversize magazines or closing the private seller loophole.

I'm sad to see that you are a paranoid gun nut who will probably go along with any NRA opposition to these things, as long as they pander to your irrational paranoia about your own guns.

Where did you get that from?

Then let's deal with the other obvious falsehood here, that the OP author is ignorant of NRA talking points. That's absurd. He references the grand-daddy of all of them, namely that gun control legislation is about confiscation of legally owned firearms. The author references this NRA talking point in the final lines of his post.

In fact, the 1994 AWB, for example, didn't criminalize possession of those weapons defined as assault weapons, nor did it criminalize possession of oversized magazines. It merely banned the manufacture of new AW's for sale to the general public, and banned the private sale of these items. Based on that, you'd think that the OP would support the AWB. But, having spoken to many gun people here on DU, I find that they almost always OPPOSE legislation that would do exactly the things that they claim they support.
Now the AWB was far from perfect, but on the other hand we are better off with such a ban in place. Yet where is the groundswell of support from gun owners for a law whose fundamentals these gun owners supposedly agree with? I will tell you what happens. They get to grousing with their gun nut friends with NRA talking points and pretty soon they end up strongly opposing the very same things that they claim to support.

It is unconstitutional to criminalize the simple possession of items that were purchased legally, for reasons that have nothing to do with the 2a. Now I will certainly admit that there are people here on DU that would like to confiscate, but they are just as ignorant as the gungeon crowd, if not more so. This paranoid gun nut fear (driven by the NRA) is simply never going to happen, ever.

Now when gun control advocates are referred to as gun grabbers or our efforts are compared to sugary soda banners, that is downright insulting and extremely wrong. So I feel perfectly comfortable pointing out the VERY real NRA driven gun nut paranoia evident in posts like the OP.

Less chance that youll be a victim yourself and less chance ALL guns will be banned.

but your ability to possess these weapons makes it easier for people who will harm others to get their hands on them and use them to kill. When do your rights to own these weapons reach a limit and begin to infringe upon my rights to safely go watch a movie, ride a bus, or teach in my own damn classroom? I, for one, have long ago given up my right to feel completely safe in my college classroom. When are you going to give up something?

I challenge anyone to give me one practical purpose of any semi-automatic weapon that you cannot do with another type of weapon or achieve the same goal. There is questionable reason for any civilian in the US to own a semi-automatic weapon. You don't need it for protection, you can do the same with a shotgun or a revolver, which I have both.

I'm not afraid of your guns sir, simply afraid of your ability to purchase them so easily.

Probably when you aren't home. At that point they will be on the black market, which means a nice criminal gets to make some money off them.

Nothing to worry about, right?

Sigh.

I'm not part of the problem.

- Typhoid Mary.

but most of your neighbors wouldn't be comfortable if you had it in your garage or basement, no matter how careful you are.

It's not what you plan on doing, or not doing, it's what couldhappen

It's not what you plan on doing, or not doing, it's what could happen

anyone's "cause".....counterproductive, in fact.



Anyway, I agree with your list of gun control measures you support.

" do not believe civilian ownership of 100 round magazines should be allowed. In fact, I don't see the need for rifles to carry more rounds than semi-automatic handguns.
I believe everyone purchasing a handgun should endure a background check, no matter where the purchase takes place.
I believe purchasing a handgun from a private party should require the seller to be responsible for its registration. Should the seller NOT register the sale, the seller should be held equally responsible for whatever illegal act the purchaser might commit with it.
I don't think all gun owners have little dicks, or even little boobies, nor do I think they are all paranoid.
I don't believe concealed carry would be a problem if there were a standardized set of requirements nationwide, including psychological tests, safety training, and requiring a person to prove they can shoot accurately."

And I've said just as much, too.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1240126311

just concerns over the toll they extract from our society and a desire to lessen that.

Of course there are always the extremes regardless of the issue, but they are almost if not always a minority.

What's confusing, and gives this post a "lashing out" character (as percieved by some perhaps) seeking perhaps to put many unjustifiably under the wrong umbrella so to speak, is your list of things you would disallow contrasted with "Go regulate soft-drink size or something else equally as meaningful.". Without concrete knowledge of the positions they were defending and your reactions to them other than this, the reader has nothing to go on but your reaction here.

It seems to me that the vast majority would agree with your list, and perhaps add a few, but fall well short of the prohibition that you, like most of them, would take exception to.

Objectively speaking, I suppose this is really just a callout to those few who are in the prohibition camp, or appeared to be as a product of your dialogues with them, who likely don't fear anyone or their guns in particular, just being victimized by a gun period, or for anyone else to be for that matter.

Is that an unreasonable or irrational fear to have or to hold? We could ask one of the victims that almost got it a few weeks back, but sadly that's not possible, now is it? Speaking only for myself, I know what the business end of one looks like too, but won't allow that to put me in the prohibition camp. For those who have been a victim, either personally or through the loss of friends or family, I do have great empathy and sympathy for them, and see their reactions for what they are -- born of helplessness and loss like that seen from someone who's suffered a loss from a drunk driver.

Futility is a cold and merciless enemy, and the father of much desperation, irrationality, and unreasonability. It's easy to be it's victim and lash out in an environment like with the gun laws issue, that only increases it. I can understand and relate to the prohibition people much easier and better than I can or will the NRA types in their current form, and as they say, if they are erring, it's with caution, as opposed to with needless and predicable additional deaths. When and if the NRA becomes rationale and reasonable, then and only then will my pov on the matter change. I'm of course not saying that the prohibition people are right on the issue or with their treatment of you that presumably prompted this post, just that their motives are more noble than those they're really combatting, given what underlies their respective goals.

I'm sorry.. but how many of these have we had today that start with "I"m a gun owner... and..."

They remind me of the "I'm a Mormon" ad. We get it. Some people here own guns. It's been discussed ad nauseam for two days. And the endless personal essays about the guns belong in the gun forum.