A law abiding gun owner was responsible for Newtown.

[patrice]

33. I want to respect gun owners' rights as much as possible. For that to happen, they need to

respect my and other people's rights too. Assault weapons rank high in my concerns about how gun-ownership becomes a privilege instead of a right. Sandy Hook and other incidents are examples of how something that seems to be a reasonable right to some, actually morphs into the privilege of posing an increased level of threat way beyond what would be expected were people, including miscreants like Adam Lanza, to manifest their gun-ownership rights in non-assault-weapons.

There's another level of concern about how assault weapons constitute a privilege instead of a right and that is the assumption that were we collectively through our government to decide to ban assault weapons, some people are claiming and very mistakenly so the "right" to kill in order to retain ownership of assault weapons. The weapons have become an end in and of themselves and people assume that their ownership of them gives them the privilege of deciding if, when, and how our collectively selected government should be deposed WITHOUT ASKING THE REST OF US WHETHER WE AGREE WITH THEIR ACTIONS in that matter or not. That's the very essence of privilege were they to succeed in that effort or not the consequences to the rest of us are stuff we would be given no choice in.

I can quote you chapter and verse everything that is wrong with our politics and hence with our government, but for all of its wrongs, it is much more OURS than is the summary decision by a bunch of assault-weapons owners that the time has come to "water the tree" of their own fascism actually, not liberty at all since they do not consult the rest of us in the matter, with the blood of _____________, preferably not themselves, which means, then, whoever gets in the way of their violent expression of "free speech", whether any of the rest of us agree with their "revolution" or not. THAT's, again, a privilege, not a right.

None of which mentions the effects upon public servants, such as police and safety officers, charged with the responsibility to respond to criminals armed with assault weapons and also soldiers, were there to be a "revolution" of gun owners, soldiers who, once again, would not be consulted in the matter of the consequences of other people's actions, partly just because they are soldiers under the UCMJ and partly also because people would be engaging in behaviors that have effects upon soldiers with no regard to the rights of those soldiers whatsoever.