Bill Moyers: "NRA turned 2nd amendment into a cruel and deadly hoax"

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

24. It's not a canard, it's a major reason why gun nuts collect guns.

Private citizens have no, zip, zilch, nada use for automatic weapons.

I don't have a problem with the restrictions on fully automatic weapons, as I believe the people can fulfill the intent of the second amendment with semi-automatic weapons.

They can fulfill the intent of the amendment with bolt action rifles.

Handguns have exactly two uses: Killing people and acting as penis substitutes for those who want to be macho but aren't well endowed. Police and the military have legitimate uses for them, no one else does.

See, I'm more for freedom. I don't have to define a "need" for something, as long as I'm a law-abiding citizen, if I want it and can pay for it, I can have it.

So you just buy things you have no use for? I don't, especially something as costly as a firearm.

Your thing about sex toys is merely evidence of Bible-Belt squeamishness about sex. BTW, don't you feel that someone's priorities are wrong when it is more trouble to get sex toys than something whose primary use is killing people?

What kind of "needs" are going to be valid for owning a firearm? Home defense? Concealed Carry? Hunting? Target shooting?

And here you demonstrate the vacuity of your argument. Hunting is a legitimate use. If there were no handguns out there, "home defense" would be meaningless -- and far more people get shot accidentally or with murderous intent than for "home defense". Target shooting can be best done with .22s, which are as non-lethal as firearms get. "Concealed Carry" is gun-nut speak for "penis substitute", and don't try to pretend it's not.

And "I want to have a penis substitute" is not an actual need.

{I want to have a penis substitute} is offensive to millions of women who engage in shooting sports, including our US Olympic team.

I suspect that the poor dears will survive. That does not change the fact that "having a penis substitute" is the reason many -- if not most -- male gun nuts have guns.

Did you know that in spite of the AR-15 being the most popular center-fire target rifle in America, only about 300 people are murdered every year with rifles of all kinds, let alone assault rifles?

I find "only" 300 murders per year something odd to feel good about. Anyway, that is really irrelevant. Go to http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_20.html -- part of the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports for 2009 (the latest year they have published data for) -- which is about types of weapons used in murders. Handguns lead the list of weapons by far. For example, in your home state of Alabama, there were 318 total murders, of which 196 were by handgun (and 1 with a rifle).

Incidentally, I want to trot out one of my favorite examples of lying with statistics. In 1996, a nut in Australia ran amok with an AR-15 in Port Arthur, Tasmania, killing 35 and wounding 23. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australia) for the details.) In reaction to this, the Australian Parliament passed some draconian gun control laws. Either the NRA or some other gun-nut group pointed out that in 1997, in the Australian state of Victoria, murder by firearms increased to nearly 300% over the number of murders in 1996; thus demonstrating the uselessness of gun control laws. I did some digging, and found that the statement about the increase was correct, as far as it went. In 1996, there were seven murders by firearms in Victoria; while in 1997 there were 19.

I stand by my contention that there are too many firearms in the US, and some reasonable controls should be put on firearm possession. Mandatory registration of all firearms would be a good place to start.