Gun Control, FOR or AGAINST? Thoughts?

<p>Gun control is a bad idea in every sense of the word. The 2nd Amendment is intended to protect us from&nbsp;government abuses. We fought a war to liberate ourselves from an oppressive regime with the weapons we had at hand. A man with a gun is a citizen. A man without a gun is a subject. A cursory review of history proves that every time. Control the media, and eliminate any method by which the citizen might defend themselves, and you then control the world.</p><p><br></p><p>Gun control is an idea advanced by people who do not recognize or acknowledge personal responsibility. It places the focus on a physical object as opposed to the individual person using the object. There are quite literally thousands of laws passed by local, county, state and federal governments regulating firearms. If we enforced those, the need for more laws becomes moot. Historically (a review of DOJ records over the last couple of generations will show) more lawfully owned guns prevent or halt unlawful acts than do active police intervention. Eliminate those legal guns, and then criminals will be the only people with guns leaving the "law abiding" at their mercy.</p><p><br></p><p>Additionally, statistically people die in&nbsp;car crashes at least as often as gunshot wounds yet there is no lobby to outlaw cars (think DUI/DWI, states without helmet requirements for motorcycles, people who don't wear seatbelts, texting &amp; driving, etc.), or limited the number of cars a citizen can own. Likewise, some recent studies indicate that medical mistakes kill an unacceptably significant number of people but despite the debacle that is Obama Care, nobody wants doctors/healthcare outlawed. There are any number of other examples available to anybody willing to look beyond the emotion attached to the idea of gun control.</p><p><br></p><p>Controlling guns is not the problem. Controlling criminals or those with mental health issues is.</p>

I am FOR STRICT GUN CONTROL, let me provide an example:

A mother of 9 year-old twins shot a man in the head and neck while he was attempting to rob her home. That (to me) is gun control!

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k7EfiSsQW2Y

<p>Grrr, ok fine you win, I'll bite.&nbsp; So here's my take on gun control.&nbsp; If people were running around randomly punching people in the face (sound familiar) would we say we need fist control?&nbsp; Some of these people have died too.</p><p>We have to learn to accept that in our society there are bad people and they are going to do bad things.&nbsp; The hardest thing to accept is unless you have them in prison you cant control anything that they do.</p><p>We just have to learn and prepare to defend ourselves when these things happen.&nbsp; Weep for those who we lost, learn from what happened, and try to prevent it again.&nbsp; A new peice of paper (law) will not change anyone from doing bad.&nbsp; They are already breaking the law to begin with.&nbsp; </p><p>Its like saying Im going to lower the speed limit because people keep speeding.&nbsp; People will still speed.&nbsp; You just have to deal with it.</p>

In all honesty, this is not about GUN control as much as it is about CONTROL. We in the military are educated and trained with guns as a tool in our profession. America was founded on the pretext that we could take care of ourselves. Americans have always used arms to protect themselves. &nbsp;We do not ask for others to protect us, we protect ourselves. The notion that we need protection is foreign. The new breed is the ones that say we need a cop on every corner. We know that police officers are an expense we cannot absorb. Massive cutbacks are causing fewer and fewer policeman. We are on our own. We are responsible for our own safety and the safety of our loved ones. We must make our streets safe. If we give in to the control freaks that say you do not have the right to protect yourself, call the police, we have lost. We must be able to protect ourselves. We must keep control!.

To keep things clear, I oppose all gun control laws.

It's not so much gun control we need but gun education. I am not talking about how we use them as much as how they are stored.  Gun control lobbyists insist that the more guns out there the more they will end up in the wrong hands.  If you have them just lying around  your house or in a glass case and not in a gun safe then what happens when someone breaks in.  Instant criminal with a gun now.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Laws dont prevent things, they punish things.

I have all the gun control I need right between my thumb and middle finger.

Against. Why? I'm glad you asked.

Mostly, because the very institution of pretty much every gun legislation ever written has been a run around on our constitution, and erosion of our liberties. How? Well because the constitution says, very very very clearly (unless you want to debate the definition of "Shall Not", which I guess we might need to since at some point we had to debate the definition of "is") that congress CAN NOT regulate the right of citizens to arm themselves. Yet they did, and do, anyway. Why? Because enough people think that they should to get away with it, BUT, and here is the key important and overwhelming reason I do not support gun control, not enough people do to have a chance of CHANGING THE CONSTITUTION. So what do we do? We ignore it, a little at a time. I hate this more than anything. There is a system in place to make changes to the powers of the government and the freedoms of the people, but this process is often ignored because it was made intentionally difficult.

So frankly, I don't care who thinks automatic weapons should be outlawed (I don't), or that magazines should be limited to 30, 10, or 7 (Stupid NY) rounds (again seems silly to me). But to make these laws, STEP 1 should have been giving Congress (or the States for that matter) the power to institute such regulations. But they don't, legally, have that power. That fact has just been conveniently ignored for the past lifetime.

Also, I liked my SAW and I want another one.