Clearly, most of you fail reading comprehension.
We live in a dynamic society where public opinion can and does shift, to the point where laws and the Constitution can change. Guns, rightly or wrongly, are perceived as a problem. They are already regulated across the nation, and to a further extent in several states. In some places, they are nigh-unattainable by law-abiding citizens. This is not a good thing.
There are extremists on both sides of this issue. We have lunatics who feel that we somehow compromised in 1934 by allowing the government to regulate fully-automatic weapons, and again in 1968 and 1986 by not rebelling when those weapons were further regulated. Guess what? Every major gun control act has followed a long series of criminal acts committed with legal firearms. The Kennedy Assassinations and MLK's death fueled GCA '68. The drug war of the 1980s and the attempted assassination of President Reagan fueled the 1986 and 1994 bans. Were they effective? Probably not, on a global scale. But they looked effective to law-abiding, voting citizens.
We have people on this board who seem to believe that Americans as a whole are out to destroy their lifestyles due to ignorance, and that any compromise will lead to wholesale confiscations. They have precedents here- NYC's liberals lied and stole a city's weapons, and across our nation, cities and entire states restrict legitimate self-defense. However, we need to realize something.
Our common opponent is a leftist anti-gun lobby who will lie, cheat and misrepresent themselves to win the trust of those who are not extremists. They may be the wealthy, the social elite, the 'ruling class', or simply those who feel passionately that a kindergartner's life is worth every gun in America. They are just as set in their ways as our extremists, and will always view us as threats, precisely because they can point to massacres like Sandy Hook, VT, Aurora, Columbine, etc...and the lack of similar sprees since the draconian gun bans in Australia and Britain. Perhaps they have a point, even at the expense of personal protection. Yes, their goal is unreachable, but just like our zealots who want M2s legally mounted on every pickup, they're going to keep trying.
Most of the people who matter are neutral. Many are people like me, Americans who live in reality and own guns. Many others don't own guns. We don't define ourselves by our firearms, nor do we equate our lives to our firearms. Most of us keep guns and carry them for self-defense, recreation, and for cultural/historical value- enjoyment. Not everyone is preparing for Doomsday or a rebellion. We all have opinions, and most of us are absolutely appalled by the massacre at Sandy Hook. What's worse, we're sickened by the use of common, legal firearms and the devastation that they wrought. Twenty-six people, a platoon-sized element, were wiped out by a single animal with minimal preparation, no explosives or other aids, and a few minutes unhindered.
These people are police officers, teachers, paramedics, accountants, secretaries, and members of every other profession on the planet. They're men, women, straights and gays, of all ethnicities. They're veterans and non-veterans alike. We're sickened by both sides of this argument. One side (right-wing), howls and screams at any question that weapons I carried in Iraq may not be appropriate for home defense, that any limitations on ammunition capacity or anything else are infringements on the will of God himself, and refuse to make any concessions to reality. (And yet, oddly, they advocate mental-health restrictions that would predicate a police state -or- suggest that "a few school shootings, a few dead kindergartners a year, is the price of freedom". I would like to know if any of you are willing to put that to the test- would you trade your child for Deanimator's AR-15? Quite frankly, am I, as an American, as a paramedic in Oklahoma, supposed to trust my life and the life of my family to the rationality and discipline and self-restraint of a man who wants to carry a MAC-10 or 33-round Glock with no mandatory training or education and a broad right to self-defense (or worse, to maintain order?) Am I supposed to sleep comfortably knowing that my right-wing neighbor wants to set up a 5.56mm rifle with 30-round magazines for home defense, with the most lethal ammunition available, and a few hours of range practice to tie it all together?
We measure groups by their outstanding actions. Sadly for gun owners, those actions are primarily negative. A rape stopped or a mass shooting prevented is still overshadowed by twenty dead children. A murder gathers more attention than a thwarted robbery. A massacre is far more jarring than a bad collision, because it was deliberate and calculated and cruel, and you can't ban physics or cars (that being said, you also don't see drivers screaming that the laws and regulations of the 1930s should never be infringed upon- and the roads are safer for it).
The right is known to advocate policies that enable the easy, relatively cheap acquisition of firepower that would be acceptable for a Ranger in Afghanistan, to furiously fight any effort to regulate that firepower, and to callously suggest that a few murder victims a year are somehow a fair price to pay for "freedom", and that they "need" those guns to "keep the government in line".
The left, on the other hand, is mostly known for overreaching that leaves people like my wife defenseless, guns in the hands of criminals and cronies alone, and that substitutes political correctness and empty promises for effective self-defense. (See British crime rates, homicides, etc). Once again, they're letting the extremists drive their agenda, and they're just as insatiable as our own fanatics.
The shame of it is that both sides are forcing us to an all-or-nothing question as to the future of gun rights. The left is proposing a reasonable initial restriction, but their history and leadership both indicate that they want more, eventually leading to a total ban. The right refuses any compromise whatsoever and demands machine guns be made available, that restrictions of any type don't work, and that bombs would only replace guns (hint, they haven't). Some of you all even argue that the Aurora shooting would have been equally deadly if James Holmes had used a Ruger Security-Six instead of an AR-platform rifle (and thus demonstrate your complete lack of intelligence and failure to understand time/reloading/shooting fundamentals). Do any of you even comprehend the utter stupidity of taking this position before your friends, coworkers and the American public? "Yeah, it's the fault of all those games/movies/media/airheaded liberal parents, not the cheap, legal availability of rifles designed for infantrymen and military-grade magazines we can totally use for hunting 30 deer at once and target matches and 'self-defense'"? Do you even understand the scorn and ridicule that most Americans will feel for you? Trying to educate people is pointless when the poster child for your movement is James Holmes, key parts of your position involve maintaining a lack of accountability for instruments designed to project violence hundreds of meters via a lack of registration and continued F2F deals, and your first imperative is a return of machine guns to the local gun store's economy rack, all played out against the backdrop of Sandy Hills Elementary.
The left wants to ban guns. Y'all need to give the vast majority of gunowners (right, left and center) something to work with, because we understand that our rights are going to be challenged and changed as a result of theseshootings. I'd far rather keep our collective right to weapons with reasonable (say, 10-round) maximum capacities as designed, semi-, revolving or manually-operated actions, and expand functional, effective rights such as the right to self-defense with national CCW and Constitutional firearms protections for our rights, our guns and our ammunition than I would lose every firearm, knife and pepper-spray. That, High Roaders, is what will happen if we are not willing to shed our liabilities- we will all have change rammed down our throats, and be far worse off for it.
Before you start your personal attacks, you should know something. I was born and raised in California, and surprisingly, we had guns. Lots of them, too. Loaded, unsecured, and ready for use- and none of my family misused them, took them to school, or had them stolen. My friends had guns, and enough ammo to shred an old Chevy. Our parents carried or didn't, depending on their jobs and their level of caring (mine didn't). We shook our heads and thanked Kern County that we weren't in LA, and that crime wasn't as big an issue in Ridgecrest. I've served in the Army, overseas, and I've killed a man. I'm familiar with most common firearms and I deeply respect them. I've got a Taurus M82 within arms reach, loaded, on the offchance someone in Yukon, OK tries to invade my home tonight. My sister in NW OKC has the shotgun I left her, on the chance that someone might want to rob, rape or kill her. When my wife goes shopping, she usually has a 1911 concealed in her clothing, and when we travel across Texas, there's a loaded gun in my map pocket. I strongly support the right to keep and bear arms. I also know that sometimes, to win a fight, you have to give ground. Most of you simply trumpet talking points that were already nonsensical in 1994, toss money at lobbyists, and refuse to compromise (just like your Tea Party/fiscal cliff representatives), and put your heads in the sand. I guarantee our gun-banning adversaries are not wasting their time and effort on sand and bickering. They're letting you make mockeries of yourselves for the public.
My original proposal stands.
This country can't even stop the in flow of illegal drugs what makes you think that they could stop the flow of illegal firearms if we all were unarmed.
