ORIGINAL: kmunny19
My point is not about the sale of military or bigger style arms, it is about the production of them. Many of the most advanced products humans make are designed for the purpose of killing other humans. Pathetic.
I am not saying that if assault and huge caliber weapons aren't legal, that criminals won't get them. I'm saying that if they aren't made available to anyone other than military defense, and are highly scrutinized and inventoried, then criminals won't have them in the future as the ones they have now are slowly taken from them and otherwise rendered unusable. Yes its a long slow process to weed out these weapons, but the alternative is to make more of them to defend ourselves with, which criminals will get, so then we have to make more to defend ourselves with, which criminals will get and so on. Yeah, it sucks, but I feel it needs to start somewhere.
DannyD said it well, Is there a rash of crimes being committed with military style guns? The answer is, of course, no.
Most military type weapons are already illegal, full auto, canons, mortars, rockets, and bombs. What remain legal are semi-auto. They look mean though so I suppose they should be banned. How many 50BMG rifles have been used in crime anyway? To my knowlege, none. There are thousands of legally owned full auto guns in this country, to my knowlege only one has been used in a homocide since 1934 when the law was passed banning them.
Patric Purdy killed 5 small children in California with an "assault" rifle. 29 people were wounded in the same attack. An entire class of guns was banned because of this crime. Did these laws make Californians any safer?? I believe not. Had Purdy been using a pump shotgun I think the carnage would have been much worse. All guns are designed to kill; how are civilian guns different except in looks?
The people (some of them) of California feel better though and that is what is important to them. It is a liberal mantra, "If it feels good, do it." It feels good to let criminals have second and third and fourth ............ and twentieth and etc, chance to be moral and law abiding. How well does that liberal idea work? Patric Purdy had an extensive criminal record of being arrested for felonies which were plead to misdemeanors. How well did that work for the people of California?
A coworker of mine was right when he said that criminals should be stopped long before they have "a long criminal record". Keeping violent ctiminals in jail works but it does not FEEL good to bleeding heart liberals. Banning guns feels good to these people even though crime and violence tends to rise when such laws are passed. That does not matter to them because "if it feels good, do it".
A weapon of choice for coyote hunters here in Iowa is the AR15. It has range, accuracy, and low recoil. It looks ugly to a liberal though so it had better be banned, even though it is used is a minscule number of crimes. It feels good to ban it.
I feel that it is pathetic to ban guns without regard to the effect on honest citizens and the effect on crime. Passing laws that punish the good citizen and cause crime to rise does not feel good to me. Don't fall into the liberal feel good trap.
Bob