Guns

I can see citizens owning hunting rifles and shotguns. Their purpose is to kill animals. I’m not a vegan. I like venison as much as the next person. And, when it comes to protecting one’s home, a shotgun is more than adequate and is in fact the preferred weapon because there’s minimal chance of collateral injury and maximum chance of disabling your target.

I can see no point in anyone other than the military or the police possessing handguns or assault weapons. They have no other purpose than to kill people and only the police and military, in our society, have the right to kill people. The cowboy mentality of citizens wishing to own and carry such weapons is only going to add to the possibility of people being killed accidentally. I’m not talking about gun sale control laws, I’m talking about no sale of handguns or assault rifles to citizens and the confiscation of any that are already out there.

That probably will bother some folks, but I’d like them to answer one question: who do you want to kill with weapons designed to kill humans?

For sure, you don’t need that assault rifle to kill a rabbit. You obviously want to be allowed to kill a person.

Who do you intend to kill?

You say you’re going to kill “the bad guys”?

That’s not your job.

The argument of the NRA that it’s not guns that kill people, it’s people that kill people has a grain of truth in it: it is America’s dark fantasy of the wild west, shooting is the solution, might makes right mentality that is responsible for so much mayhem. It is people killing people…with guns. That argument, however, in fact fails because of that grain of truth: Americans can’t resist using the availability of weapons designed to kill humans, to kill humans. Less availability, less killing of humans.

Another argument is that if handguns aren’t available then people will just use knives or even sharp pencils. To equate an assault rifle to a pencil or kitchen knife is profoundly ignorant and insulting.

Despite what the NRA and its political stooges say, the purpose of the 2nd amendment is to allow the individual states to have a militia. I consider state militias–the National Guard–to be part of the military and therefore deserving the right to have whatever weapons issued to them that they need for their activities as is now the case.

Of course, there will always be a black market of handguns and assault rifles. Eventually, however, and I mean after several decades, those weapons will greatly disappear from the streets and will only be in the hands of those who should have them: the police and the military.

So, for citizens, hunting rifles and shotguns–OK, but no handguns or assault rifles.
For military and police, whatever they need.

Most images link to larger images.
click on larger image for closeup