Freedom is fine, yeah, but I cannot say I got the freedom to kill everyone who pisses me off.
We don't, either.
That's not what gun control is about, though. It's about what you can and can't own. People get pissed and run each other over with cars all the time across the world. We even have drivers' licensing programs enforced... still, people drive while inebriated or decide to text and drive... or simply get outraged and run anther person off the road.
We need better car control before we implement gun control. There are more firearms in this nation than registered (meaning driving) motor vehicles - and the automobiles are responsible for 3x the number of deaths as firearm homicide is.
So I agree, it is needed. Didn't know things are that bad there.
They aren't.
The only reason things "are bad" is because we have yet to enact a campaign to exterminate the meth rings (operate like insurgents - no centralized structure) nor have we enacted any strong measures to route organized drug trades/gangs and reinforce the borders. The problem isn't that people are buying firearms.
The problem is that too many bad people have been allowed to exist in this country and nobody has had the stones to kill off the cancer as it arises. Now, we pretty much need to bring our military back home and run counter insurgency operations at the maximum supportable op-tempo for about two years to really start to make an impact on the meth rings and to get our borders back under control.
I sound harsh. I really do.
But these 'things' that look like people are not salvageable. Many people have tried - and many people have become victims of theft, home invasion, and in some of the 'harder' regions - violence (most of it around here is still fairly subdued - but there are enough paranoid tweakers who seem to think they are in Grand Theft Auto for them to start acting stupid). You open your heart and your generosity to these people... and they take that opportunity to invite their circle into your home (or anything they can find of value) and liberate it from your custody.
And it's not a romantic "Robinhood" story of stealing from the well-off. They steal from the easy prey - the single mothers/fathers, the people who have to improvise their home construction, people working two or three jobs to try and earn enough to save and get ahead in life...
The solution is simple and very related to the counter-insurgency operations we have been conducting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Using arts of the trade, one locates houses and facilities these rings operate out of. Get 3 5-man teams on any given house, breach the thing, and kill anything in the house bigger than a cat. Under no circumstance should an adult individual be sent to prison where they will simply get free room and board only to be released to do it all over again in a few years.
Sure - it goes against many of the concepts of due process of law... but these people will steal the blanket from a homeless paraplegic in a wheelchair. You simply cannot allow them to exist in any society.
Forgive my rant - I simply grow weary of the trends in this town and every place I go to across the U.S. I just grow tired of seeing such blatant problems in society, then see the media go ape-**** over someone using an AR-15 like it was some kind of China Lake Special Weapons project reverse-engineered from a flying saucer... and act like it's inconceivable that people would buy such a thing.
Kind of makes me wonder ... if someone were to go on a vigilante shooting rampage against meth rings and other such blights... would the media portray him/her as a hero... or a villain?
My husband is American and he always told me how it would have been impossible to simply get anything except for air rifles there (I was surprised what you can buy at Wallmart though, in Germany that would be unthinkable).
Depends upon where you live, really. My state is pretty easy going in terms of regulations on what you can purchase. I can purchase better rifles than what our military is issued (though, to be fair, our military goes for some abstract idea of cost effectiveness) and get several after-market additions that will give me better optics and some other gear-oriented options (again, compared to standard issue... most of our guys in the military end up purchasing some of these things on their own - almost all of our tactical belts, load bearing vests, and some of our magazine pouches were all purchased on our own dime).
But, basically, a Marine can come out of the military and get himself a better setup (as a rifleman) than he would have had in the Marines. He won't have anything along the lines of explosives - but those are not nearly as available as Call of Duty would lead one to believe (for the Marine in a warzone, that is).
Most of the firearm violence in the U.S. is with handguns. Not with "assault weapons" (there really is no such classification - unless you go by the Clinton administration's ban... which was completely arbitrary... a model of one firearm using a composite butt-stock... the same firearm with a wood stock, however, was perfectly fine... same weapon - same mechanics... but the composite stock made it "an assault weapon" that needed to be banned). In most cases, the victim and the shooter know each other, and it involves some kind of an argument.
Much of the rest can be attributed to gang violence - and the small portion of deaths each year from rifles can be attributed to hunting accidents and your occasional odd-ball who prefers a rifle to a handgun.
There are millions of gun owners in this country who go each day without harming anyone. There are millions of car owners who go each day without harming anyone.
The right of each to do so is paid by the victims of those who chose to abuse the freedoms granted under that right. Over 30,000 people - the population of the town I live in - die each and every year in the U.S. due almost exclusively to irresponsible drivers (there are a few fatalities that might have been caused by mechanical failure that was not due to negligence of the operator). Roughly 10,000 people die each year die at the hands of irresponsible firearm owners (though the FBI reported statistics include cases deemed to be self-defense and those killed by officers in the line of duty - though the number is small).
We readily accept the cost of our freedom to have our own motor vehicle as being affordable.
I, at least personally, accept the cost of the right to own firearms as being worth it. By all means - reduce the cost of each. But don't reduce the right. If someone out there wants a firearm to commit a crime - there are more than enough out there for him/her to use. Don't make me a criminal for wanting to own a particular type of firearm that I am comfortable with.
