Again, can this debate be handled without strawman arguments?
The fact that some people are going to break the law is not a reason to not have the law. Why make rape and murder illegal since thousands of them happen every year, going by that logic?
This argument is somewhat disingenuous because we already have laws making illegal crimes with guns, selling guns illegally, possessing guns illegally, etc so it is not as if this is the wild west and anything goes...we have plenty of laws on the books..and with regard to new restrictions, the 270 million guns already on the market will be exempt. The result will be higher prices for those magazines and weapons that are pre-ban, but for those selling guns illegally, the now banned weapons will still be available. .
Gun laws don't handicap the average, law abiding citizen anymore than any other regulation on our other rights handicap us. If the sale and manufacture of high powered firearms and ammo is the law, then not only do the "good guys" not get them but the "bad guys" not get them either since the "bad guys" usually get their guns from someone who considers themselves a "good guy".
In this case you are correct, a ban on manufacture and import will not handicap the average citizen. The only reason you're correct however, is because we have millions of weapons in circulation already, so anything you want to buy will still be available for sale. There will still be robust sales of the millions of preban guns , just with prices significantly higher...which , as you find in any bullish commodity market, will motivate more people to part with an assault rifle or two because now theyre going to earn 5 to 10 times as much as the darned thing is worth. Would I legally sell one of my rifles today. No way, but when the thing is now worth 10X as much overnight because of some new regulation, well now I might actually consider it.
I, as an adult citizen with no criminal record or history of mental illness or connections to terrorists networks, should be able to buy most firearms within limits. That's the stance of the vast majority of people.
I dont know that you are accurately relating the stance of a vast majority, but even if you are...what are the limits that this vast majority agrees on?
Another person thinking that if someone had a gun things might have been different with no, zero, evidence to back that up. Here's a real situation: when Jared Loughner shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, there was someone there with a gun and training and when he went to shoot his gun, the person he was going to shoot turned out to not be Jared Loughner.
You admit that adrenaline would negatively affect you, now add the darkness of a movie theater, hundreds of running, screaming people, and tear gas. It's more likely people would have considered you a partner of James Holmes instead of a wannabe hero.
No need to debate this point, neither of us really knows what impact armed movie goers would've made on that well planned tragedy
No one is trying to take your guns but there is no reason to not do common sense things to try to prevent this type of foolishness from happening. It's not rational to believe if the authorities had not been notified that Holmes was buying that much ammo in such a short period of time, someone wouldn't have at least checked on him. Not stopped him from buying, just talked to him and got a feel for him. If the dude had bought 2 gallons of cough syrup, the Feds would have been knocking on his door. Why should cough syrup be more heavily regulated than guns and ammo?
