Many people feel the AR-15 is the ideal gun for hunting feral hogs. Whether you need one or not is perhaps arguable. I would agree you don’t need high capacity magazines, but who gets to determine how many is enough to defend yourself (in a different setting) when the home intruder has a 30 round mag?
Outside of SWAT raids, how many home invasions are happening with high capacity assault rifles? Or are we just concocting absurd situations to justify the perpetuation of absurd deregulation of gun ownership?
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I disagree with the premise of your comment. I am not suggesting the invaders have AR-15’s, I am saying some people prefer to defend their house with one against one or more invaders with smaller weapons. There are well documented circumstances where people invaded a house and the homeowner emptied a small handgun and they still didn’t stop the perp(s) or barely did so. (One such story: https://www.cnn.com/2013/01/10/us/home-invasion-gun-rights/index.html) For some people, more rounds makes more sense. For others, they may find an AR-15 more stable and easier to use than a hand gun (personally, I don’t. I keep my M9 in my bedside safe because my long rifles are in a larger safe in another room—but just because I prefer the handgun, having read the stories, I won’t prevent someone else from making their own decision.
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It also sets a huge precedent. These kids have shown that the NRA is neither a core element of American society or as omnipotent as they seem.
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In a modern democracy, your fellow citizens get to determine how many are too many.
Same as we do for how many people can safely fit in a car that goes out in the road or how many roaches can safely be seen in a restaurant kitchen.
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That is to a large extent that is true. But it will only apply to the law-abiding citizens. And I am sure many law-abiding citizens will become law-breakers when those laws are passed if no grandfather clauses because people don’t like to be told things they invested their money can’t be kept. Of course, even in democracies, it gets complicated by things like what a given constitution allows for and how it all gets sorted out. All I can say is that I don’t feel I can tell someone else how they can defend themselves. Some people feel they will only be safe with an AR-15 ban, some will only feel safe with an AR-15 by their bedside.
Voluntary or not, even if only 5% of teachers decide to participate, the existence of ANY armed teachers in schools is sure to affect the learning environment, lead to abusive and violent incidents, and set a terrible precedent. What’s more, while most teachers (and people) may rightly see the idea as insane now, with the state’s sanction it will now become an everyday reality and begin to seem normal, leading to less resistance and still more guns in schools.
You say steps for change are still steps forward - seems like about 2 steps forward and 25 steps back, in this case.
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The JAMA medical study looked at gun deterrence in home intrusions and concluded that if we lived in a mad max world guns would be a useful deterrent but otherwise there is far more chance (locked up or no) they will end up getting used on you or your family. The plain fact that two thirds of the 30,000 plus gun deaths in the US are suicides attests to that, from time to time you may have a sad day. (The typical response here is that people would find another way to kill themselves and that is not necessarily so - consider that suicides decreased when the UK changed over from coal gas coal gas suicides story )
I don’t know what kind of world you live in where you need to worry about home intrusions, most of the time people are just after your stuff, but then again if you keep your gun accessible it is quite possible your kids will find it and shoot themselves or their siblings. It happens pretty much daily. In fact last year toddlers with guns killed more people in the US than any terrorists, mostly themselves. Otherwise if you keep it locked up, its not any good for protection -hey just you wait at the door, you picked the wrong place to rob, while I go over to gun locker.
Yes there is a vocal minority that has been setting the agenda since the 60s which is going to make change difficult but not impossible.
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My handgun is in a fingerprint locked safe mounted on the wall beside my bed. Safe. Accessible.
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Of course! Almost anything can be over come with enough work. It is all relative. An outsider would have to work or have lots of access to do this (it takes a plan), and my kids could do this with planning and work. But I have taught them to respect firearms, so it hasn’t been a problem. Perhaps this is really more a society issue. How is it that in Switzerland, where so many in the population have true military weapons in their homes (and I presume since they are actually military weapons they are automatic rifles rather than semi-automatic rifles), the gun homicide rate per capita is so much lower? Mass shootings are almost unheard of? While there are more controls on who can get them, there is still a very high percent of the population has them and they are full- or semi-autos. There is better control of keeping them out of the hands of the mental ill. But there is something just more dysfunctional about our society over here I think that leads to a tool being more widely misused than other places. It isn’t the tool per se (eg, the AR-15) it is way more than that.
Like the notion that the only way to be safe in one’s own home is to own an AR-15.
To be clear, I don’t think people need one, but I just don’t feel qualified to tell someone else whether a handgun, a rifle or shotgun is they best way for them to defend their house. Likewise, I don’t think I should tell someone whether the 6 shots of a revolver or 10 in a magazine or 30 is what is required. Some people live very rural places—police are very far away. Some people live in very dangerous areas where then might face multiple people entering their house. I just don’t think I have the right to tell someone how to defend themselves within their own home.
Except it seems like the ability of millennials to be able to get a job as historians are slowly coming to an end with the corportization of the academy.
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Just don’t have a sad day.
Regarding Switzerland, the Swiss militia is allowed to keep their military service weapons at home but not the ammo, (since 2007) that is kept in armories. Also the automatic / rapid-fire function is removed so they can only fire in semi-auto. There are probably other factors to consider, such as economic - Switzerland being high gdp and wealthy country, and they actually do have gun laws that the NRA would consider tyrannical, ie. a registry, no private sales, stringent background checks (criminal and mental healh) In contrast one of Trump’s first legislative acts was to do away with the mental health background checks. And similar restrictions to ammo and transporting or carrying guns.
regarding your last comment, there probably is something more dysfunctional about US society that leads to the misuse of guns - probably the history of the south, the wild west etc, the question is what would you propose to do about it?
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