I'm gonna say it and I don't care what gun nuts think...

[TeamsterDem]

66. I know analogies are sometimes asking a bit much of the listener

in the terms that they need to think of similarities instead of being spoonfed the argument itself, but the point is rather clear in this case: My guns are much like my cars inasmuch as I use neither of them to commit crimes. It's a fairly obvious point, one I suspect it took some doing to feign such obtuseness to ignore.

I'm lucky enough to not use my guns as weapons. I use them for sport. That you don't like the sport doesn't automatically make it an unacceptable or illegal one. It just means you don't like it, much in the same way as I think NASCAR is silly and dangerous but if people like it and want to do it - given that it's not illegal - I say more power to them. You on the other hand want to ban things you don't like because you're too simple to see that sometimes it's not only how you think it is. You seem to think guns can only be used as weapons whereas I have the benefit of knowing that they're not always used to kill. When they are misused like that the user should be prosecuted and jailed accordingly. But telling me that a sport I enjoy - and one which has the side benefit of protecting my house, should that situation arise - is authoritarian and not in keeping with the current laws of this country.

The Supreme Court has recently ruled on the subject, that the 2nd Amendment DOES give individuals the right to possess firearms. If you disagree with that decision that's your right. But it just so happens to be the law of this country. So let's not forget that fact since - living in a nation of laws - it tends to be rather important.

An interesting analogy is a baseball bat. People are beaten with them a lot, and of course a bat is a violent instrument: It's meant to strike another object. Well, my guns are intended to strike another object as well (in my case paper targets), but provided I'm responsible and also not driven by a motivation to want to strike a human target, my hobby hurts literally no one. Much like a baseball bat: Provided the batter doesn't take offense at a pitcher throwing inside to him and carry it out to the mound to beat the pitcher, it's a peaceful object with a violent potential; it only becomes violent when used that way. A gun isn't an inherently violent object: they have peaceful uses for millions of us. I've never been so much as tempted to use it in a violent way. Yet you want to take it away from me because you don't enjoy my hobby, and because some people misuse guns. Then I guess you're also going to be banning baseball bats, knives of any kind, and of course the internet because sometimes unscrupulous individuals use it to scam others.

Yours is a terribly simplistic argument, one teetering on the wrong idea that guns have literally only one purpose. The reality is that millions of us use them for entirely peaceful purposes having as little to do with violent crime as a baseball bat was intended to have (until misused). I have the legal right to my guns, the Supreme Court has just reaffirmed it. So if you don't like it that's your problem, not mine.