Posted at Oleg's request (slightly editted for space considerations) ... <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>... You start off your message with how many guns are actually used for self defense. Well, it depends on how you define "used". Do you mean actually fired in self defense or merely having one to discourage a criminal from even trying something? In either case I do not know the answer but I do know that the 80% of the states which allow their citizens to carry a concealed firearm have a lower rate of violent crime than states that do not allow their citizens to carry a concealed firearm.
Don't believe me? Log on to the United States Department of Justice web site and do the math yourself!
Compare Washington, D.C. -- the city with the toughest gun laws in the nation and look at Vermont which has almost not gun laws. Gun crime in Vermont (as a state) is the lowest in the nation! Compare any town or city in Vermont with Washington, DC. Our nation's capital has one of the highest rates of gun crime in the country.
Why is that?
Because criminals do not obey the law -- including gun laws! The only people who obey gun laws are law-abiding citizens but they are not the problem in the first place. The only thing that gun laws do is further restrict the ability of a law-abiding citizen to defend himself or herself from violence.
You might be one of the people who thinks that the police will protect you from violent crime. Well, think again. It's the middle of the night when you are awaken by a loud noise. As your brain starts to function, you realize that somebody has broken into your home and is making his way toward your room or that of another family member. What are you going to do?
You could dial "911" but hearing your voice in the house might bring the intruder to you even sooner. Additionally, consider this: the best response time is around 3-5 minutes with 20-30 minutes being more typical unless you live in some parts of the country where you're likely to hear a busy signal when you dial "911". You think I'm kidding. Go to New York, Washington, D.C., etc. and check it out for yourself.
Chances are the intruder will get to you before the police arrive. What are you going to do them? Chances are that he will be younger, stronger, bigger and faster than you are. How are you going to protect yourself and defend your family when he grabs a knife from your kitchen and comes at you?
If you engage him in physical combat, chances are you will lose and your family will also be defenseless. I don't know about you, but I would feel a lot better if I had a gun to rely on. Even if the other guy had a gun, we would at least be on equal footing. Because, ultimately, our safety and that of our family is our own responsibility.
If you want to rely on the police as your sole means of protection against violent crime, then that's your choice but do not restrict my ability to protect myself and my family. If something happens to me (which could have been prevented if I had ready access to a firearm), will you care for my family? Will anyone take care of my family so that my wife does not have to go to work and stay home with the kids? Will someone come out to walk the dog, cut the grass, do the food shopping, fix the car, etc. -- do everything that I would have done if I was around?
If not, then do not restrict my ability to protect myself and my family because incredible as it may seem, the courts have ruled that the police are not obligated to even respond to your calls for help, even in life threatening situations -- Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 [D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981].
35 years ago there were 20,000 LESS gun laws than there are today but you know what: I felt safer back then than I do now. And do you know why? Because criminals do not obey gun laws. Criminals do not obey any laws if they do not want to.
Do you think these "Gun Safe School Zones" are protecting our children? Think again! Thirty years ago you could bring a gun to school without any problems and there were no school shootings. Since these "Gun Safe School Zones" were enacted, the number of school shootings has drastically increased.
Take the school shooting in Colorado. There were laws in place that made it illegal for anyone to be on school grounds with a loaded firearm. Why wasn't that law enforced? Instead, laws are passed which disarm law-abiding citizens because they are the ones who obey the laws but they are not the problem -- it's the criminals that we need to worry about and these gun laws do nothing to stop violent crime (again, the Colorado school shooting as an example).
As far as who needs full capacity magazines? Consider this: trained police officers hit their intended target only about 50% of the time. If a police officer, who does this for a living, misses half of the time it is reasonable to assume that a private citizen will not be able to do any better.
With a ten round magazine, you can expect only 5 bullets to hit their mark. Recall the Miami shooting from ten years ago with the FBI. One of the drug dealers took multiple bullets in the center of mass and continued to fire for several minutes thereby killing two of the agents.
Being shot is not what you see on TV or the movies. One person might go down with a single bullet while another person may need several hits before he is stopped. If only half of your bullets are going to hit their mark, then the 10-round limit on magazines becomes a serious problem especially if you are dealing with more than one individual.
Consider this: this law was passed with the intention of reducing the random acts of violence where some lunatic goes on a shooting rampage. But remember that someone who is going to go on a shooting spree is going to think things out ahead of time and bring spare magazines along so that he can quickly reload.
The only person who is going to be hurt by this law is the law-abiding citizen who is trying to protect his family in the middle of the night because chances are that he will not be able to grab multiple magazines and if he should encounter more than one person, he'll be at a serious disadvantage due to this 10-round limit.
... With regard to your statement about who needs an assault rifle. Let's get something straight. A true "Assault Rifle" is capable of full-automatic firing and those have been outlawed in this country for over half a century. Nobody legally owns any "Assault Rifles". People may own rifles which LOOK like "Assault Rifles" but do not have full-auto firing and therefore are NOT "Assault Rifles". ...[/quote]
