My thoughts on gun control are hitting what you aim at using either hand and in a variety of lighting conditions and in a variety of positions (standing, sitting, lying, around things etc.) and being able to rapidly load, unload and reload in the dark.

Gun control is very important! You must hit what you aim at.

true. Also, if possible, check to see what's behind the target should the round miss..(most likely unless you're at the range)

The 2nd Amendment states that I have the right to keep and bear arms and that this right shall not be infringed. Seems clear enough to me.

I believe that a firearms safety course (similar to the NRA courses available practically everywhere) should be required in high school. Let students learn how a gun works, how to handle one safely, and the basics of shooting. And beyond that, let each decide individually whether they wish to own a firearm or firearms, take up hunting, or what have you.

I grew up in the country, in a family of hunters. We all learned as soon as we could walk that we were not to touch anyone's guns. As we got older we learned the basics of firearms safety and we all had air guns. When I was 14 I took the basic firearms training course so I could get a hunting license. I grew tired of hunting after a few years, but if I cared to take it up again or needed food, I know how to get it.

A gun is a tool, like any other. In the hands of someone who respects its power, it puts food on the table, protects the owner from attack, and a number of other uses. In the hands of someone who sees a firearm as a fashion accessory or who got their "firearms training" from TV and movies.....the possibilities are horrible indeed. As we see in far too many headlines.

How do I feel about gun control? I'm all for it. It requires regular practice and good physical control of the gun if one is to shoot accurately. Seriously, gun control is un-American. I have the natural right, guaranteed by the Second Amendment, to keep and bear (own and carry) arms (weapons) sufficient to defend myself, my loved ones, my property, and my community. That means military-grade weapons as well as personal defense weapons. No government on earth has the right to abrogate that right, because no government on earth has any rights whatsoever. Only individuals have rights. Goverments only have permissions given them by individuals acting as a group. Any attempt at gun control ultimately will fail, because there are about 100 times as many armed civilians as there are armed military in this country. In any battle between the two, the military will lose. I will not relinquish my guns. I'll shoot anyone who tries to take them from me.

You don't have to use a weapon in a criminal action to lose your right to own arms. If you're accused of a felony, however minor; poof, your weapons are gone. You lose your spouse and get some help coping with it, again, you can't own a gun due to a mental disorder (depression). I've read that 80% of citizens break 3-4 laws per day without knowing it. Where does that leave us?

You were polite. And you make a lot of sense.
I believe though the whole militia argument will fall way side sooner or later; technology will make projectile defense obsolete and primitive. Buck Rodgers, anyone? We are just spinning our wheels in the mean time.

What I mean by saying that it challenging to be an American is that there are those in society that fear too much freedom, and we aren’t pointing out often enough that that fear is the root of all their arguments. Sandy Hook was a horrible tragedy, but it was a failure of existing laws not a call to create new ones. The kid was mentally-ill. Under current laws he shouldn’t have had a gun in his possession. Everybody can agree that mentally-ill people should not have access to guns. Had his mother lived--we could have made an example of her, preventing, hopefully, other mothers and fathers from taking their gun responsibility and the law lightly. Instead, we have fearful people exploiting this tragedy to make a grab for guns. Anti-gun supporters don’t want to accept our gun culture. They are afraid of aspects of being American and all that implies. They want to live like Europeans so they seek out the UN gun ban to hide behind.
I saw a vid around here somewhere of Eric Holder saying that we have to brainwash children about guns --that he was going to work with the Department of Education to make sure the subject of guns was discussed daily. He even used the term brainwash a couple times.
I didn’t realize that schools were teaching our children to use guns inappropriately in the first place. Wouldn’t that be the only justifiable reason for him being allowed to pursue this course of action? Have schools caused the cultural love of guns? Of course not! That would be absurd. We have always had a gun culture. You could blame Hollywood for making it look cool, I guess. Holder isn’t addressing the problem. He is trying to raise a generation of americans that will look on gun ownership as something to be feared and unwanted. He is teaching our children to hate a part of our culture that makes us uniquely american. An overwhelming majority of Americans supported the National Firearms Act of 1934. But if we really think about it, did they do so because of the type of weapon or because they abhorred being victims of mob-rule? It was about a loss of freedom. Americans should have the final say on whether or not they should have guns. When guns really take too much away from us, we will know and respond in kind. Nobody should be talking to our kids.This method may backfire. How has the thirty years of the DARE program worked in keeping our children away from drugs and alcohol? It hasn’t. If anything, it has introduced the culture of drinking to a younger age, exposing them to imagery they would have been sheltered from for a few years more anyway.

Hope you enjoyed your...ice cream. :)

Thanks! I knew it was down there someplace. Good people in that neck of the woods.

I'm a person who likes facts too Mimi, so here's a few tables to help you and others have some solid evidence as we argue with the other side.

Lets look at violent crime since the anti gunners all claim that they want guns gone so that crime will drop. Look at the graph at the bottom of this page - http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/cri...

That's quite a drop in just five years and it's very odd that this happened AFTER the 2004 expiration of the 1994 assault weapons ban which the anti gunners promised us was going to lead to open war in the streets.

To get a better understanding of just what weapons are used to commit violent crime - sine the anti gunners tell us it's the tool not the person - we need to see just how that breaks down. It's not surprising to see that most violent crime is committed with firearms. Nobody says that people who are going to harm another person won't use a gun if they have one, but the anti gunners tell us all the time that they don't really want to ban guns, just those evil black guns. This page shows us just how violent crime breaks down by the weapon chosen. http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/cri...

Assault rifles are lumped into the list called "Rifle", which accounts for a total of 323 murders in 2011. Nobody says that this should be ignored, but the weapon chosen is germane to this discussion. Slightly more murders (356) happen with shotguns - but anti gunners tell us that they don't want to ban shotguns and hunting, they only want to get rid of those "weapons of war". Humm. If that's the case, let's ban weapons that accounted for 728 deaths - hands and feet. Silly? Sure but so is wanting to ban a tool that was used in half as many crimes. Or how about a weapons used in 1694 crimes? Knives.

Since we don't know how many of the 323 rifle deaths were caused by assault weapons, it's a bit harder to say that getting rid of them will affect these numbers, but since assault rifles are outnumbered by traditional hunting rifles 8 to one, I think it's safe to assume that they are not used in very many violent crimes.

The crime stats for 2012 have just been released and I have not listed those because they are still being reviewed. However, in case somebody might think I'm hiding something or not wanting to show how Sandy Hook affected things, here is the link - http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/cri... As you can see, even WITH the horrific crime by that insane person, deaths by rifles DROPPED even further to 322 in 2012.

So how do these numbers relate to causes of death by ALL causes, not just crime? The CDC published this PDF and page 13 lists some enlightening numbers. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/misc/atlasr...

According to that table 44,056 people were killed in automobile accidents per year 1988-1992. While just 15,769 were killed by all firearms per year (not including suicide - 18,184) in the same period. I'm certain there are more up to date numbers someplace, I just didn't find them in the time I wanted to spend looking. (I've got a life too) However the FBI crime numbers list total murders by firearm in 2011 at 12,664 so I think we can assume the DROP in deaths was somewhat consistent.

The point is that the very guns that DiFi and the Bloomberg gun grabbers and the poor MOMS want to ban simply are a token. There is no clear data that indicates that these weapons CAUSE crime by their existence or that they drive people to mass murder. Subtracting the emotion and hype from the gun argument seems to totally deflate the issue.

.

England disarmed the dutch farmers in Africa. And then suddenly, the dutch farmers were unable to fight back and were put into concentration camps. Hundreds of thousands of them died, all because the British didn't want them to fight back.

"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life."
Robert Heinlein

I'll politely disagree.

To me, a profound hubris is exhibited by government officials who believe they can choose for others how life should be lived. Gun control is merely one aspect of this hubris/arrogance and is particularly dangerous in two respects.

The first is in presuming that they have the reach and control to be able to control crime. This can only be achieved through complete and utter control - not through freedom. It takes profound humility for a government official to recognize that they are not all-powerful.

The second is the presumption that only the lives they deem to protect are worthy of such - that no right of self-defense exists! This underlies even the right of the citizen to respond to government tyranny, for a government official is nothing more than another citizen with a fancy title.

I can not condone any infringement on the rights to self-defense or self-determination, and the gun control debate at its heart consists of an abrogation of those two fundamental principles.

Two towns near Atlanta, GA passed such ordinances:
Kennesaw in 1982 and Nelson in 2013.
Kennesaw Historical Society president Robert Jones said following the law's passage, the crime rate dropped 89 percent in the city, compared to the modest 10 percent drop statewide.

Communists and fascists have murdered more people than every world war, and the first step was to take away the ability of the populace to resist tyranny.

We love it.

Sincerely,
Pol Pot and Adolph Hitler

Georgia or n Carolina as I recall.

Gun control means hitting your target. In that case we all need to practice more.

Will that make the "Wicked witch of the west" happy? I don't think so.

:) whew

Where is that town [probably Colorado] that passed a law that said everybody had to own a gun, and carry it at all times? Unless he didn't want to, of course!

you forgot lung and cardiac control! As long as you can shoot between heartbeats, and hit what you aim at with your eyes closed [dad-ratted muzzle flash!] you'll be fine!

Many, many years ago. I made sure I was never in a room alone with him again and divorced asap. It's a memory, not a wound. please add appropriate smiley here.

hmmm. I always, as Rand said, think that we should take our discussions back to first principles. I think we SHOULD [doncha hate no italics?] be arguing, discussing, considering, debating.....whether the right of a country's citizens to freely own firearms is protected, de jure and de facto. It is not a right "given" by our Constitution, it is a natural right protected by our Constitution. You're correct, that is not our primary subject - but keep in mind that dictators who limit, repress and eventually destroy their own citizens can not do that unless those citizens are defenseless.
I agree that arguments are won by facts and figures - but those facts and figures should be used correctly. The simplest statistics, supposedly designed to help people see that having a gun in the home is dangerous, are skewed before using. When discussing firearms being kept in the home, the anti-gun side says that people are more likely to be killed with that firearm by someone they know than by a stranger. Unsettling - but that number of people killed with firearms kept in the home include both suicides and self-defense killings [battered women or men who have had enough]. Thus, a true statistic, but with a skewed purpose.
At the end, I'm not sure what you mean - "they" are saying it's too challenging to be an American? I don't see the connection with guns - what would the argument be, and just what would you be trying to achieve with it?
I'd really like to continue this discussion, if we may. As my honey points out, it's my bedtime. [Oh, he also points out the requirement for ice cream beforehand!]
g'night

Pol Potts and Hitler did confiscate guns and disarm their citizens before they brutally killed them. but I think England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand would laugh to be compared to those regimes simply because they chose to disarm their citizens. I think a reasoned argument is a simple argument won by facts and figures. The argument should be one of respect. It’s okay those countries chose to disarm. They did what they thought was best to protect their citizens. We shouldn’t be arguing the right and wrong of owning a gun. We should be arguing the value of being an american and the challenge that implies in protecting our people in spite of the fact they have guns. As americans, we have the right to bear arms, period. We should be painting the naysayers as cowards and quitters not villains and conspirators. What they are really saying it is too difficult and challenging to be an American. Make that argument.