The issue of gun control is divisive and I feel the need to comment to some degree. I am very open to hearing the opinions of others on this, as I am still working to draw my own conclusions. A major concern is that many gun control laws don't work. Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, but murder rates in Chicago have skyrocketed. Civilians find themselves without a means of defense while criminals (who don't really tend to obey the law) are obtaining firearms illegally and are using them to terrorize the defenseless. Houston (a city with relatively lax gun control with a comparable population to Chicago) has 2/3 the murder rate of Chicago, likely because the citizens can defend themselves. That being said, guns offer an easy and effective way to escalate a simple confrontation into a homicide. The ease of use and availability of guns makes people less safe as a whole. I do believe in background checks and bans on assault weapons, because civilians rarely need military grade weaponry to defend themselves (contrary to what Hollywood would have us believe). I would definitely like to hear other perspectives on this.
The issue of gun control is divisive, the facts of gun control are not. The anti gun folks deal in drama and fear while totally ignoring facts. Worse yet if you examine their arguments you begin to see that saving lives isn't the common goal og the anti's, it's control of those who disagree with them. Chicago and Illinois as a whole like to say that the surrounding states cause their problems because guns are easily accessible however gun crime isn't an issue in the surrounding states, why is that do you suppose? That's a bit of overgeneralization eh? I would ask one simple question, if you had a gun and were in a simple confrontation would you use it to commit a homicide? If not why would any other law abiding citizen. In my state CCH permit holders commit fewer crimes than the average citizen, in spite of the ease of use and availability of guns, what do you make of that? Background checks are fine, but your perception that a ban on assault weapons equals a ban on military grade weaponry is false. First the AR ban being proposed is a ban on common everyday semiautomatic weapons that look like military grade assault weapons (think SCARY LOOKING WEAPONS), Actual military grade assault weapons are fully automatic and they are not commonly owned by John Q Public already. Please do some research into the differences so you can make a decision based on factual evidence. Thanks for listening to my opinion
An AR 15 is a military grade weapon? So the military is running around with lower caliber semi automatic AR15s? Please educate yourself about firearms before you make a statement like that. Please don't get your information from the media, they are very biased and most know nothing about guns. Here are a couple of things you can research to better educate yourself. What is the percent of gun related crimes involving an "assault weapon"? What is the difference between an "assault weapon" and a sporting rifle? What is the difference between an "assault weapon" and an assault rifle? What are the benefits of an "assault weapon" in a home defense situation? Do some research and let me know what you find, I can share with you my extensive knowledge about firearms with you if you wish.
Obama wants to find a way to take away our guns from law abiding, gun owning American citizens. All laws for gun control is not to stop lawless criminals from their lawless shooting and murdering episodes. For these criminals will disobey any and every gun control law to do their evil deeds. Obama and politicians just use these as an excuse to create more gun control laws to take guns away from law abiding citizens and they think that you as an American citizen are too stupid to see what these politicians and Obama's real motive is when they say that they are making more gun control laws to protect us from these random criminal shootings. These laws will never control any and every gun that a criminal will obtain either legally or illegally. And what all these gun control laws are really designed to do is to gradually and eventually take away our right to own a gun as an American citizen and according to the second amendment of our United States Constitution. And these politicians and Obama want to totally disregard our US Constitution but in order to do this they must first find a way to take away our guns first; because if he tries to totally disregard our US Constitution and walk all over it like a door matt;Tyranical Obama and all of these politicans are afraid that these guns will be aimed at them like our founding fathers did to the tyranical British when they fought for our independence and freedom for the first time that formed and started this American Country that we now live in today and is the very reason that "we" as American citizens have that second Amendment right to bear Arms of any kind; for "we" as United States citizens are that minute man malicia that is to be ready in one minute like when Paul Revere ran from town to town yelling "The British are coming-The British are coming", and every man and young boy in these towns would be ready and in their assigned position of defence in one minute to defend themselves and their town from the tyrannical British: But today its not any tyrannical threat from the British; But the tyrannical threat of Obama and his politicians and big government control over all American citizens: For why would it be so important for the politicians to go to great lengths to find ways around and through our second amendment right to take guns away from law abiding American citizens but yet it doesn,t take away guns from lawless criminals that will always find a way,legally and or illegally and without any regard to any gun control laws, to get any and all guns and ammo that they intend to use to commit their murdering rampage.
Guns used in self-defense Based on studies by Gary Kleck, Ph.D. It is estimated that guns are used successfully for self defense between 700,000 and 2,500,000 times a year. Most incidents are not reported because a crime never happened. Guns were shown or drawn to stop attacker. If by chance only 1 half of 1 percent of these were not armed and it was a violent attack, it could have been an additional 3,500 – 12,500 deaths every year due to violent crime. The National Self-Defense Survey indicated that there were 2.5 million incidents of defensive gun use per year in the U.S. during the 1988-1993 period. This is probably a conservative estimate, for two reasons. First, cases of respondents intentionally withholding reports of genuine defensive-gun uses were probably more common than cases of respondents reporting incidents that did not occur or that were not genuinely defensive. Second, the survey covered only adults age 18 and older, thereby excluding all defensive gun uses involving adolescents, the age group most likely to suffer a violent victimization. Full Article http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/kleck2.html
