Quote Originally Posted by h2s View Post
An armed individual enters a school where your child attends. Would you rather the individual have a 6-bullet capacity handgun, or a 60-bullet capacity Ar-15? That is the difference between an assuault rifle and a standard "gun." If you state that you don't see a difference, then I refuse to believe you have any intelligence behind your view, and are so-stuck in your argument that logic has been toppled.

A semi-automatic rifle provides an extremely fast range of fire. That 60 bullet clip can be emptied in 60 seconds. This is a rifle designed to provide an assualt-like attack. It can be fired into a crowd of people and hit with great accuracy. It also provides a much larger range of fire than a standard semi-automatic pistol. A combination that can be, and has proven to be deadly.

The logic side of me says do away with guns compeltely. Do not feed me the bullshit about how citizens would become enslaved, etc.. The fact of the matter is this country has more guns, and in turn, more gun-related violence. We are the number one country for homicides involving guns. Countries with stringent laws against guns also happen to see the least gun violence. This is fact, not opinion.

Unfortunately, the constitutional supporting side of me states that guns should stay, albiet I see the need for regulation (including registry). I also realize that there are so many guns in this country that a complete removal wouldn't work, and would leave the weapon balance in the hands of the criminal.
Sure, the assault rifle eases the rate at which people are killed. However, don't kid yourself with the idea that a this would have been less tragic had he only had nine round clips. Any amount of children killed is too much of a loss. He killed at close range, so did the wacko in Colorado. The weapon is irrelevant. Without guns, people could use bombs. You might laugh, but that happened here in Oklahoma.

Your logic side must see the long history of tyranny against the powerless. The presence of guns in society balances power and enables people to defend themselves. Also, Switzerland defeats the more guns equals more violence mantra professed by progressively minded folks. They're more educated about guns, all males own fully automatic rifles and they enjoy a low crime rate. America has less violent crimes per capita than some other countries with stricter gun laws such as Britain just more gun violence. Violent crimes on the whole are down to historic lows in the US. Plus, less politically correct, most gun violence is probably gang violence. When a gang member kills another gang member, society wins. There's a confusion that guns cause violence, when, actually, violence is caused by a plurality of reasons whereas the gun is only a means to an end. More over, gun laws don't work in the places in this country where they are in place.

Again, if this wack-job would have, say, killed one child, would it have been less tragic? No. He should have been in an asylum years ago, and shame on his dead mother for not properly securing her weapons. Fix our real problems and gun violence will go down, but remove guns, and like it or, we endanger the very freedom we are based upon.