My gun will kill less people than Ted Kennedy's car

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7th ID

Despite the fact that I generally agree with your point, I've a question: why is a good thing when people fear what is supposed to be the ultimate representation of love?

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"Violence isn't always evil. What's evil is the infatuation with violence."
Jim Morrison

Yeah... Because the NFA works...

prior to that, full auto crime was commonplace... Bonnie and Clyde anyone??

And yes they were legally owned...

I fully support the repeal of the 86 reciever ban...

Guns don't kill people...Americans do.

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

And we should arrest schoolchildren for bringing squirt guns to school.

"Guns don't kill. People do."

I don't know who said it, but they put it quite bluntly. Of course I think there should be restrictions, letting people buy grenades (real ones) or rocket launchers has no point to it but otherwise I'm fine with it.

Among the gang sets in LA and elsewhere, full auto crime is still relatively commonplace. The NFA meant no more to Rafel Edmonds than it did to Bonnie & Clyde. The same holds true with other class weapon crimes: sawed off shotguns and suppressed weapons.

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"Tweeter was a Boyscout before she went to Vietnam and found out the hard way... nobody gives a d@mn."

This is what KILLS me about people that want to put controls on guns. They have very little actual knowledge about them, but they think they have all the answers for how to regulate them.

Let's say I was born and raised Amish and had never driven or even ridden in a car. How much credibility would I have if I were to say, "I have all the answers for how to rid our country of the thousands of people that die each year in automobile accidents. We'll just make sure no car has more than 10 horsepower and that it's limited to 30 MPH and that it will be a felony if you are not strapped in with your seatbelt and wearing a helmet. We'll go out and take away all the cars that are bigger than the law allows regardless of whether or not you've ever actually been convicted of speeding. It's just the possibility that you MIGHT speed one day and kill someone."

That is roughly equivilent to what gun control advocates sound like to someone that's knowledgeable about guns and enjoys collecting and shooting them. Admittedly, many people that own guns don't come across any better simply because they get fired up when someone that's so ignorant of our sport tries taking it away from us.

I do own numerous "evil" guns, including semi-automatic pistols and rifles. Yes..even a couple of "assault weapons"!! Do I hunt with them...no. Do I expect that I'll need to use them to defend myself...probably not. Do I carry one on my person every day...yes. Do I go to the shooting range weekly...yes. So how does that make sense?

People are fascinated with guns for the same reason that some people are fascinated with high powered sports cars or sport bikes. We find them interesting. We find it challenging to learn about how to work on them, how to build them, we find beauty in their design, we like to learn how to fire them with different types of ammunition, discuss the pros and cons of different models and calibers, understand how to tweak ammunition to get better performance, and in general how to develop our skills with them and knowledge about them. It is our passtime the same as golfing is to some and bowling is to others. Do either of those things have a practical purpose? Is there potentially a practical purpose to owning a gun...maybe. Self defense is a possible by-product of owning a gun, but along with that by-product is the responsibility of understanding what conditions you might be able to use them in. I don't own a gun for self-defense. Self-defense is a by-product and another dimension of guns...that's all.

So why do I carry a gun every day? Because it confounds the criminal mind. In my home state, 1 in every 40 people will be legally carrying a gun. 1 in every three houses will have at least one legally owned gun. The criminal must decide which of his targets are "safe" and hopefully that will paralyze him from doing anything. In other words, it protects me and everyone else without even having to fire a shot! If you don't think criminals are aware of these facts you need to see some of the responses of prison inmates when they are asked about right to carry laws.

Mainly, we gun owners are irritated by the fact that people with either limited or no knowledge about a subject would try to regulate us when we have done nothing wrong. I could not own the guns I have nor could I have a carry permit if there was ANYTHING I had done anything that was criminal in my entire life. That certainly doesn't apply to someone owning a machine that takes MANY more lives every year than do guns...a car.

We legitimate gun owners have done NOTHING to deserve having our pastime regulated. We, like you, don't want guns in the hands of criminals, but that is already regulated..it's just not enforced very well. We, like you, want guns to be handled safely and that's why we put our money and time into programs to do just that such as Eddie Eagle. How much time and money have those of you that want gun control invested in gun safety training for the masses?

In my opinion, those that want gun control are simply lazy. They want something that they don't have to work for. Put a new law on the books, that will help. Just like all the old laws on the books that outlaw drinking and driving have helped.

Laws don't change things. Actions change things. The biggest single impact on DUI's was mandatory sentencing, NOT more laws. If you are concerned about criminals having guns and gun safety well welcome to the club of gun owners....whether you own one or not.

Hopefully you saw the 60 Minutes episode where Leslie Stahl and Diane Feinstein were discussing the dangrous & evil SKS. Neither of those geniuses could figure out how to attach the "clip" (it was a modded SKS with an AK mag).

This is the funny memory I was referring to. A friend of mine had a gun shop just outside of Richmond, VA in the early 90's. On his door he had a sign that read, Owner Guards This Shop With A 12 Gauge Shotgun 6 Nights Out of 7 - You Pick The "Lucky" Night.

I'm not sure why, but that sign used to crack me up everytime I went to see him.

Look at the Hollyweird crowd. They make their money by day, glorifying gun violence, and they give it away at night, championing meaningless gun control efforts. No different than Streisand (she's one of them) yacking on about fuel conservation and emissions standards in CA, while her fat behind was caught sitting in a house sized motorhome before one of their pinko events.

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"Tweeter was a Boyscout before she went to Vietnam and found out the hard way... nobody gives a d@mn."

Obviously, you've never shot a gun. I"m assuming that you believe that "hunting" with an "Assault rifle" means using full automatic. As a firearms instructor, I can tell you that shooting full auto, or even three-round burst, would be as useless in hunting as throwing a rock at a deer. What kills in hunting, and in combat, are properly aimed shots to vital parts of the animal being shot. An AK-47 uses a 7.62mm round that is very accurate. IT's comparable to the .308 Winchester round that I've used to engage targets at 1150 yards with. Just because a gun looks a certain way, the image that you've been given of an "Assault weapon", doesn't mean that it's not a hunting rifle. I've used my .308 Winchester AR-15 to hunt deer, I do it pretty frequently actually. What makes that less skillful than taking out a Marlin .308 Lever action rifle that looks like a "hunting rifle"? Obviously, you've never shot a gun.

Also, not everyone hunts for "Sport". I hunt because I like meat and I like not having to pay for it. Their are a few herds of antelope and mule deer that live mostly on my property. I manage them better than most state governments manage their deer. I feed them nutritious foods, I keep them in check so that none of them starve and I don't kill the largest bucks, preferring to let them spread those genes around. I've shot NUMEROUS animals from my front porch before, some even while I was sitting down drinking a beer and they happened to meander into sight. Would you say that a man with a tractor is missing the point of gardening because the tractor doesn't require "skill"? If you think that people only hunt for the alleged thrill of the hunt or the feeling of primal man inside when you kill an animal, again, you are wrong. I don't feel bad that a lot of my hunting doesn't involve me swinging from a vine and using my bare hands to take down a herd of deer, it's not about sport for me a lot of the time, it's about wanting a freezer full of good meat.

That said, I do shoot for sport sometimes at animals. Groundhogs, for example, I'd never eat, but I do shoot them with a high-powered rifle (Yes, even my ASSAULT WEAPONS! *GASP*) at very long ranges. IF you can shoot a groundhog at 850 yards with a 3.5x scope, then I'll consider you qualified to judge what is and what isn't sport shooting. Until then, run along to the grocery store, Oh Master of Skills and Man among Men!, use your debit card to catch supper.