"This Is What a Gun Control March on Washington Looks Like"

[BainsBane]

26. what I want hypothetically is irrelevant

What matters is what the law provides, and existing law does not permit banning all guns. So imagining that the government is going to take away your guns is indeed creating a straw man argument because it is entirely hypothetical. You are arguing against something that does not exist. I'm not interested in your lectures on the English language.

Here is your post: "You will also have destroyed any possibility of armed self-defense (I know, I know, you don't believe it actually exists anyway), completely alienated the rural population, shredded the Constitution, and further infantilized the American public, who eventually will not even be trusted with pointy scissors. The only people who will have a working familiarity with firearms will be the military and the police, which will take on the character of separate and distinct warrior classes."

This is bizarre on so many levels. Prohibiting you from buying additional assault weapons with detachable magazines does not take away your right to self defense. And it hardly shreds the constitution. Extensive legal precedent establishes the government's right to carry out gun control. (While the gun lobby has itself undermined the First Amendment in a myriad of ways). "Infantalize the American public"? So I take it you subscribe to Bushmaster's notion that you can't be a man without an assault rifle? Well, I'm sorry you feel so insecure. Being a man or a woman does not rest on the capacity to kill dozens of people within sixty seconds. it is about behaving responsibly in society. The rest of that paragraph is right-wing conspiracy nonsense. Again, I direct you to recent news coverage of the President's ACTUAL proposals.

If you want to change the nature of military service in this country, lobby congress. If you indeed were in the national guard or a state militia, they would provide you with guns. You don't get to reform the military by creating your own backyard militia. Each excuse you create for owning assault rifles is more dangerous than the last.

Guns are killing machines. They kill. That is what they are designed for and they do it very efficiently. When you say defense, you imagine killing someone. That is what your idea of defense depends on. It may be legally justifiable, but it is killing. Murder requires intent, which perpetrators like those in the recent mass shootings demonstrated. There is no legal purpose for an AW of the sort banned in the legislation. You can't hunt with them and you don't need them for self defense. They are designed for war and are extremely handy in slaughtering large numbers of people in movie theaters and children in schools.

Here's what it comes down to. You and guys like you who stockpile WMD are not the only people in this country who count. The rest of us have rights too. I realize you take this very suggestion as "hate-filled rhetoric" because society has catered to you and the gun lobby for so long, but we hope to change that now so our children have the chance to reach age 7. Yes, an AWB isn't going to change the fact that more preschool age children in this country die from gunshot wounds than police die in active duty. But it may save 50-100 lives a year, which may not matter to you but it does to most people, including a majority of gun owners who support an AWB. (See the Daily Kos SEIU poll on gun control). Instituting universal background checks and allowing law enforcement to maintain a database of guns will also help. Those are measures the gun lobby opposes because of their relentless determination to protect criminals, some of their best customers.