Quote:
Originally Posted by SeeBass
I am actually ripping off Jon Stewart's comparison here.
But my silly point was that we limit bottle size on a plane for safety with 0 deaths I believe. But we wont limit a gun size/ability with countless deaths.
You can still own a gun/shampoo bottle just not one that could be a threat to large groups of people.
I dont see how this cant be a reasonable starting point for a conversation.
|
Well semi-autos like the .223 caliber Holmes used are an important weapon for livestock protection in rural areas. Again they serve to protect children and pets as well in those areas.
Now I live in a small town and would never consider buying such a weapon for protection. I would be too afraid of missing my target and killing someone 2 blocks away. I wouldn't mind owning one for target practice. You might not understand that but, it is fun to fill a tin can with holes as fast as you can pull the trigger. My friend owns one and that is how he dispatches all his old computers.
So I suppose if you limited my access to semi-auto .223s it would be a small limit to my freedom. To another guy it would be taking away a tool he needs to protect his property and family.
Another thing that has been mentioned is magazine size. Canada limits magazine sizes but, I've seen plenty of illegal magazines brought across the border and added to Canadian purchased guns. Why? Because people who plink with a semi-auto hate to stop to reload all the time. In practicality If America limited magazine sizes then the millions of oversized magazines would go underground.
According to reports the semi-auto's magazine jammed which caused him to discard it. This is not uncommon with larger magazines. If he was more familiar with the weapon he might of chosen banana clips with something like 30 rounds a piece in them. You tape the one clip upside down to the other and when the first empties or jams you flip it upside down and slot in the other clip. His tactical vest would have held more clips handy when those 2 were done.
I guess the question really boils down to how much freedom do you restrict and for what benefit. I think it is very safe to assume that this guys ability to make bombs and his attraction to Joker suggest that lives would have been lost even if he didn't have access to guns.
We can look at other occurances of semi-auto violence if you want. There is gang and drug violence which generally use illegally obtained weapons in the hands of people who can't legally own them. There is domestic violence where usually a man takes out his family because relationships have been broken. A waiting period might help there if he doesn't already own weapons. Or perhaps in a domestic abuse situations the court could take away his weapons for a time.
Of the thousands of gun related deaths in the USA I imagine most are hand gun related. There is also machine gun deaths usually associated with gangs and drugs. Those are already prohibited. Have you seen a statistic that shows murders useing semi-autos alone. It would also be helpful to know how many of these murderers had the rifle legally.