Where i was going with that was that this largely boils down to the politics of "who do we trust?" He's trying to make the claim that Americans are trustworthy with use of force, but he really means "certain," Americans, which is what i'm trying to draw out here.

That isn't what I'm trying to say though. What I'm trying to say is that NOBODY should be entrusted with the use of force. But, if somebody utilizes force, one must meet it with force. Hence, all should have an equal ability to self-defence, but also defence of one's property. That's the entire principle of the non-aggression axiom. Force is forbidden, but if somebody does it anyway then you are entitled to force as it's a natural right to ensure life and liberty. This is the basis for self-defence. This also includes a group or state taking your property, albeit our constitution doesn't go that far, and only secures the "taking of property without proper reward" but it does secure a particular variety of property in the form of the second amendment. 

Isn't it just the same logic as a nuclear deterrent though?

If gun ownership from people you can trust prevents actions by the people you can't, the you want to spread gun ownership.  (Hence for example, how the US has extremely low rates of home invasions in which the person is home.)

As it is, i think the state is... 2% of all crimes committed are commited by concealed carry gun owners.  Really any sort of gun legislation should be more along those lines.  Not trying to actually ban anything related to guns.. but trying to increase concealed carry owners and replicating what makes them safe gun owners.

Restricting legitamite gun ownership via gun bans and prohibition is likely going to have little to no effect on violence and an increase in home invasions, violent crimes etc.

You know what would lower shootings a lot?   Alchohol Prohibition.  It would' lower a lot of other violent crimes too... and unlike guns... beer doesn't really have ANY useful applications outside poisoning yourself.  Even when used recreationally it causes harm.

Then again, i guess not.  Since the blackmarket for beer would boom and then so would violence.

Additionally i'd point out that a lot of people don't trust, and really can't trust "legitamite" users of guns in the form of the Police and such.  

In lots of areas police are more antagonistic then helpful, have an unfortunite tendency to shoot first and often will intentionally avoid entering private residences until AFTER the crime has finished.

That and well, the old statement that's oddly true... that the police have no obligation to actually help people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html?_r=0

I once had a domestic violence dispute happen in my store... where the phone call ended with the phone cutting off because the caller got attacked, and the phone got thrown across the room.

An hour and a half later the police called my store to ask if they were still there. 

This is a neighborhood that cops patrol routinley... usually their tends to be a police car parked right across the street in the 7-11 parking lot.

Most people there own their own guns because they don't trust the police to actually help, and don't even trust them to not shoot them if they do show up.

This tends to be an Obama stronghold area too for those who seem to think only republicans are pro gun ownership.  

Poorer areas with more crime have more Police Presense but oddly actually can't trust the police to actually go and help these people when they need it.

In general completely ignoring all other arguements, it would be extremely inadvisiable to inact any gun control until you fix law enforcement in poorer urban areas.  As legal gun ownership is practically all the saftey net a lot of people have in areas.

This is why a lot of people see Newton as a reason to buy a gun.   Assuming you are lucky enough to have a police department that protects you, it still takes them time to get there... while you are already there.

As a good illustration of how extremism on the right is amplified and extremism on the left is ignored, compare all the noise over Jones' appearance to the defeaning silence that greeted this:

Of course, Infowars is silly to believe that this represents an actual threat. But while all these sensible "moderates" seem to be greatly amused by the thought of shooting Alex Jones, Jones wasn't openly fantasizing about violence beyond wanting to punch Piers Morgan in the face (nothing that St. Jeremy Clarkson didn't already do, and he didn't even wear a boxing glove).  It takes a lot of fucking crazy to out-crazy Infowars.

Did some research on it. They're not banned, but they're difficult and expensive to get hold of, so I'll give you that.

It doesn't matter if there are 20,000 laws and regulations if they're not any good. They're obviously not as regulated as cars if you need a licence to drive a car but don't need one to own a gun.

Funny, I could have sworn I needed to send 10 dollars into the state of illinois sheriffs department so they could do a background check and send me back an ID card so that I can show people tat I can in fact own a gun.... just like a car... but hey i mus be a delusional gun nut

youre kinda right. they were banned in 1986. meaning the registry closed. any full-auto not registered with the ATF by then was made illegal, it was also illegal to own, import, or make a full-auto weapon made after that date. so all legal full autos in civilian hands are from before 1986. which they then had to be registered with the ATF, the owner had to submit to a full back ground check, finger prints included, have their name and photo on file, be subject to random inspections, and pay a $200 tax stamp to the ATF for the gun. and if you are looking to buy one after all of that stuff, it will cost you over $10,0000 minimum.

as for cars, like i said before owning guns is a right, driving a car is not. furthermore. you dont need a license or anything to own a car. i can go right now to a car dealership, and buy a car no questions asked. what you need a license for is to drive on state roads. and i think requiring a license to drive on a state road is a state level law, not a federal one (dont hold me to that claim, i might be wrong) states dont have require a lisence, but all of them have. Now for firearm, all but 3 states require you to take a class, and get a permit to carry a gun in public. even further than that, several states require you to have a license even to own a gun (just look at connecticut). firearms are one of the most regulated things there are in the US.

man, you need to get out of that state, move to one of the free states. im sure glad i live in a free state, and especially glad i dont live in illinois or the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia.

Missouri is right accross the river.

We should ban magazines over X number of shots!

I’ve seen this one pop up a lot. It sounds good to the ear and really satisfies that we’ve got to do something need. It sounds simple. Bad guys shoot a lot of people in a mass shooting. So if he has magazines that hold fewer rounds, ergo then he’ll not be able to shoot as many people.

Wrong. And I’ll break it down, first why my side wants more rounds in our gun, second why tactically it doesn’t really stop the problem, and third, why stopping them is a logistical impossibility.

First off, why do gun owners want magazines that hold more rounds? Because sometimes you miss. Because usually—contrary to the movies—you have to hit an opponent multiple times in order to make them stop. Because sometimes you may have multiple assailants. We don’t have more rounds in the magazine so we can shoot more, we have more rounds in the magazine so we are forced to manipulate our gun less if we have to shoot more.

The last assault weapons ban capped capacities at ten rounds. You quickly realize ten rounds sucks when you take a wound ballistics class like I have and go over case after case after case after case of enraged, drug addled, prison hardened, perpetrators who soaked up five, seven, nine, even fifteen bullets and still walked under their own power to the ambulance. That isn’t uncommon at all. Legally, you can shoot them until they cease to be a threat, and keep in mind that what normally causes a person to stop is loss of blood pressure, so I used to tell my students that anybody worth shooting once was worth shooting five or seven times. You shoot them until they leave you alone.

Also, you’re going to miss. It is going to happen. If you can shoot pretty little groups at the range, those groups are going to expand dramatically under the stress and adrenalin. The more you train, the better you will do, but you can still may miss, or the bad guy may end up hiding behind something which your bullets don’t penetrate. Nobody has ever survived a gunfight and then said afterwards, “Darn, I wish I hadn’t brought all that extra ammo.”

So having more rounds in the gun is a good thing for self-defense use.

Now tactically, let’s say a mass shooter is on a rampage in a school. Unless his brain has turned to mush and he’s a complete idiot, he’s not going to walk up right next to you while he reloads anyway. Unlike the CCW holder who gets attacked and has to defend himself in whatever crappy situation he finds himself in, the mass shooter is the aggressor. He’s picked the engagement range. They are cowards who are murdering running and hiding children, but don’t for a second make the mistake of thinking they are dumb. Many of these scumbags are actually very intelligent. They’re just broken and evil.

In the cases that I’m aware of where the shooter had guns that held fewer rounds they just positioned themselves back a bit while firing or they brought more guns, and simply switched guns and kept on shooting, and then reloaded before they moved to the next planned firing position. Unless you are a fumble fingered idiot, anybody who practices in front of a mirror a few dozen times can get to where they can insert a new magazine into a gun in a few seconds.

A good friend of mine (who happens to be a very reasonable democrat) was very hung up on this, sure that he would be able to take advantage of the time in which it took for the bad guy to reload his gun. That’s a bad assumption, and here’s yet another article that addresses that sort of misconception that I wrote several years ago which has sort of made the rounds on firearm’s forums. My Gunfight – “Thinking Outside Your Box” So that’s awesome if it happens, but good luck with that.

Finally, let’s look at the logistical ramifications of another magazine ban. The AWB banned the production of all magazines over ten rounds except those marked for military or law enforcement use, and it was a felony to possess those.

Over the ten years of the ban, we never ran out. Not even close. Magazines are cheap and basic. Most of them are pieces of sheet metal with some wire. That’s it. Magazines are considered disposable so most gun people accumulate a ton of them. All it did was make magazines more expensive, ticked off law abiding citizens, and didn’t so much as inconvenience a single criminal.

Meanwhile, bad guys didn’t run out either. And if they did, like I said, they are cheap and basic, so you just get or make more. If you can cook meth, you can make a functioning magazine. My old company designed a rifle magazine once, and I’m no engineer. I paid a CAD guy, spent $20,000 and churned out several thousand 20 round Saiga .308 mags. This could’ve been done out of my garage.

Ten years. No difference. Meanwhile, we had bad guys turning up all the time committing crimes, and guess what was marked on the mags found in their guns? MILITARY AND LAW ENFORCEMENT USE ONLY. Because once again, if you’re already breaking a bunch of laws, they can only hang you once. Criminals simply don’t care.

Once the AWB timed out, because every politician involved looked at the mess which had been passed in the heat of the moment, the fact it did nothing, and the fact that every single one of them from a red state would lose their job if they voted for a new one, it expired and went away. Immediately every single gun person in America went out and bought a couple guns which had been banned and a bucket of new magazines, because nothing makes an American want to do something more than telling them they can’t. We’ve been stocking up ever since. If the last ban did literally nothing at all over a decade, and since then we’ve purchased another hundred million magazines since then, another ban will do even less. (except just make the law abiding that much angrier, and I’ll get to that below).

I bought $600 worth of magazines for my competition pistol this morning. I’ve already got a shelf full for my rifles. Gun and magazine sales skyrocket every time a democrat politician starts to vulture in on a tragedy. I don’t know if many of you realize this, but Barack Obama is personally responsible for more gun sales, and especially first time gun purchases, than anyone in history. When I owned my gun store, we had a picture of him on the wall and a caption beneath it which said SALESMAN OF THE YEAR.

So you can ban this stuff, but it won’t actually do anything to the crimes you want to stop. Unless you think you can confiscate them all, but I’ll talk about confiscation later.

One last thing to share about the magazine ban from the AWB, and this is something all gun people know, but most anti-gunners do not. When you put an artificial cap on a weapon, and tell us that we can only have a limited number of rounds in that weapon, we’re going to make sure they are the most potent rounds possible. Before the ban, everybody bought 9mms which held an average of 15 rounds. After the ban, if I can only have ten rounds, they’re going to be bigger, so we all started buying 10 shot .45s instead.