Please also remember our friend Kaizer Albino who passed away two weeks ago. Kaiser was in the Oakland PD and walked a patrol on Telegraph Ave in Oakland.

Kaiser's obituary should be required reading for every child in Oakland who has to grow up with the likes of Lovelle Mixon.
Web Link

I think it's time to have the nation--local, state and federal government look at how guns in this country have increased over the years and the kind of weaponry is totally out of control. We need to have strict gun control and many guns no longer produced for people to then go out and kill family members and our police who are taking care of protecting us. I think gun lobbies and the NRA have much too much power. It's possible as in some other European nations to allow hunting and law enforcement to have guns without rampant guns in society at large.

How is it that the gun control nuts can look at the list of horrific crimes that Lovelle Mixon committed then point at an inanimate object and say that it the cause of the problems? Mixon is responsible for Mixon's actions.

That guy had an AK-47, USA. You don't have to be a "gun control nut" to want those off the streets.

To point out that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is true but irrelevant. Like it or not, there will be bad people in the world, doing bad things - to think otherwise is naive. What kind of tools would you like them to have access to?

By the way, I'm sure Kaiser Albino was a nice guy, but what's it got to do with this story, other than he was an OPD officer. I don't get it.

The term "assault rifle" is a broad term loosely meaning any gun with a scope and a clip. It is largely a cosmetic issue. Laws that outlaw these so called assault rifles end up impacting legitimate gun owners while being ineffective at dealing armed criminals. Banning assault rifles would be like banning all blue cars to reduce traffic fatalities.

This case with Mixon is a good example. For what happened, there was no advantage to Mixon in having an AK-47 verses a non-assault rifle. While the AK-47 has a bit of a "bad-ass" reputation among gangbangers, it is not that good in close-quarter street fighting where scopes are not needed and small, more easily concealed weapons are preferred.

There are more effective solutions than banning some class of guns based on some silly criteria. How about simply enforcing existing laws? Instant, computerized background checks with good, current data could weed out criminals, psychos, and people with restraining orders. No that won't stop all criminals, but then you don't even need a knife to rape a 12 year old.

So, like, an Uzi would have served Mixon better? How do you feel about regulating those?

Or how about an AA12? (Web Link These things truly are bad-ass. I bet Mixon could have murdered several more SWAT guys with one of those. They're not on the market yet, but someday, inevitably, they will be, and you "gun nuts" (as opposed to "gun control nuts" like me) will howl at the first hint of banning them.

Enforce existing laws? Sure -- all for it. Although I don't believe any lack of enforcement was the problem here. What laws didn't get enforced that led to this? And don't say existing gun regulation -- there isn't any, thanks to NRA card-carrying-types like you. None that matter, or would have prevented this.

BTW whether "assault rifle" is a broad or unhelpful term legally, the AK-47 definitely is one by any measure. And it's plenty dangerous, as you well know. The reason we see all this "cosmetic" terminology you're pointing to is that lawmakers are trying to figure out how to make laws that are effective without the NRA screwing it up and making it easier, once again, for the Mixons of the world to get their hands on high powered weapons of the sort sitting on folding tables at gun shows.

First some facts here.
The term "assault rifle" is legally defined (since the NFA of 1938) as a fully automatic machinegun which fires smaller caliber bullets.
IF a specific AK-47 were in fact a full-auto version, then it would be illegal to posses or sell or transport unless you have an almost impossible to get class-3 federal firearms license. Most legally owned "assault rifles" or any other style of machingeguns are owned by people like those who make action movies and a fairly small community of very carefully screened owners.

The undefined term that the ignorant news media and politicians throw around is "assault weapon", for which there is no legally defined meaning at all. Alomst all legal AK-47's in the USA are semi-auto rifles, meaning they only fire one shot per trigger-pull, like all guns other than machineguns.

The only thing "special" about the AK-47 is how cheap it is to manufacture. Almost all of them in the world were made in communist countries and then illegally shipped to the rest of the world and sold to illegal gun smugglers to be sold into the underground guns market. Some were legally imported into the USA, but most of them in the USA came in by smuggling.

Gun smuggling has always been highly profitable all around the world, but in the USA the smugglers can't make much profit except by selling machineguns and semi-auto handguns to the criminals.

Trying to stop criminals from getting guns is like trying to stop people from getting illegal drugs. If people want a thing, they will always find a black-market dealer to provide the thing.

"Gun control" laws are even less effective than "drug control" laws because drugs are consumed in volumn constantly and are perishable, but guns are durable goods which are not used-up when used.

Gun control laws are only obeyed by the people who are no danger to society because they obey the laws already, the criminals wont obey the gun control laws, just as they don't obey other laws, they never have and they never will.

Gun control laws ONLY dis-arm the people who obey laws already.

Get it?

I forgot to mention the the famous "UZI" is mostly a child of media hysteria since it is a full-auto and severly restricted for decades. In fact any firearm made by the "UZI" company of Isreal is a highly restricted firearm, most are owned by claas-3 licensed owners or the security guards of foreign dignataries.

I also forgot to mention that 100% of the legally owned full-autos are registered to the federal government (since the NFA of 1938) and all the owners have passed an extensive FBI check and all the full-autos must be tracked to a specific address and accounted for on demand by the feds.

Of course, at most about 5% of the full-autos, ie machineguns, in the USA today were imported legally, the rest were smuggled in and sold into the black market, just like illegal drugs are.

Get it?

Rmt,

Thanks for all your "facts." The heart of your argument seems to be this:

"Trying to stop criminals from getting guns is like trying to stop people from getting illegal drugs. If people want a thing, they will always find a black-market dealer to provide the thing."

Let's assume for a moment that this is true. The statement does not constitute a solution - only a restatement of the problem. Your solution, such as it is, seems to be (by implication) the classic gun-nut argument: full arming of all citizenry. Every man for himself. Wild West. Mutual assured destruction. The bad guys won't dare attack people (or do anything else violent) as they never know who will reach into a coat pocket and blow their head off.

Sorry, but most sane people don't go for it. It's a childish scenario, based on violent fantasies we men have as we wait in line at the bank. When's the last time you even heard of a violent criminal stopped by a random law abiding gun toting citizen? It happens, sure -- I'm positive you can find a Web link to such a story -- but occasionally too a meteorite crashes through somebody's roof and lands in the living room. It's very, very rare.

Get it?

You almost got it right, but in fact since there are always orders of magnitude more good guys than bag guys, there is no need for "arming all the citizenry", just those few who actually take self-defense and community defense seriously enough to make the huge effort to lawfully carry a concealed handgun, as millions of good law-abiding Americans already do in at least 40 states already.

See, crminals don't just attack one person and then never again, they attack a long series of people over many years until the day they meet up with the one person who will stop them.

And in fact MORE ordinary private citizens with guns stop crimes in progress and kill or wound criminals in the act than all the police in the USA do.

Just because the main-stream media refuses to tell people about the cases of self-defense with a gun, does not mean it does not happen every day all across the nation.

Look up "armed citizen" on the web and you can find many thousands of such cases.

In those few states, like California which only allows people like Diane Feinstein and Don Perata to lawfully carry consealed handguns, most of the cases of self-defense by gun happen in people's homes or workplaces. People on the street are helpless because only the criminals can carry guns.

By the way, every one of the states wich now allow ordinary citizens to carry guns for defense saw violent street attacks and armed robberies and other types of violent attacks in public places drop and not one state has had any cases of "wild west shoot-outs" in the streets involving ordinary law-abiding citizens.

85 million households now have at least one gun and each year the percentage goes higher as the criminals go running for cover in states where people are discouraged from self-defense with a gun.

Self-defense with a gun by a law-abiding citizen is very common, it's the reporting of such events by the media which is rare.

Look up the facts, your beliefs have been spoon-fed to you by the politicians and popular media and have little to do with reality.

Try to get some true facts for a change, not just gun-hater propaganda.

"Clear", I neglected to address your desire for a "solution" to the problem of the criminal mis-use of firearms.

In fact, there is indeed a highly effective solution which has already been part of state and federal laws since 1968 GCA was passed. That federal law (and others at the state level) requires that any person with a conviction for any felony is banned for life from possession of any type of firearms and if caught with a firearm or even caught trying to obtain a firearm the law provides a sentance of 5-15 years (depending on details) in federal prison with no parol possible.

The fact is that the vast majority of cases of the criminal mis-use of a firearm are committed by people who already have a felony conviction (or a proven history of serious mental illness and such people are also banned from guns) and as such, when the law is actualy enforced it has proven to be highly effective in reducing such crimes.

The problem is that in most states most police departments never bother to enforce their state laws NOR do most federal district prosecutors bother to enforce the federal law either.

Most of the time when a felon is caught with a gun or trying to obtain a gun the police just take that gun away from them and do nothing more about it. The state and federal prosecutors generally ignore the crime of a felon with a gun unless they also have other "bigger" crimes to go along with it.

However, in some states and for some federal prosecutors they have chosen to actually fully enforce that law and the results are dramatic and consistant. Criminal mis-use of guns and even criminal possession of guns drastically drops and stays lower as long as the criminals know that this law will be prosecuted.

The solution to drastically reducing the criminal mis-use of guns is to ENFORCE the existing laws which target those people already known to be untrustworthy and prone to committing crimes.

Any objection to that?

Reply to Monique Kane, a resident of the Old Mountain View

Monique, you wrote:
"...look at how guns in this country have increased over the years..."

Two important points to take ntice of:

First, I totally agree, YOU SHOULD look at how the percentage of gun ownership and the total number of guns has drastically increased over the years and decades.

What you should also look at is how the violent crime rates have DROPPED drastically over those same years! Especially for the criminal mis-use of firearms.

Second, is the fact that the mpost effective way to get more people to buy more new guns is to impose new gun-control laws! It's ALWAYS the case that most first-time gun owners bought their first guns in direct reaction to a new gun-control law. Also, even just the discussion of a potential new gun control law gets millions of people to go out and buy more guns.

And the biggest ever in history day for lawful gun purchases was right after Barack Obama was elected! And the day after that was even bigger and the day after that was even bigger for gun sales! Basically, Barack Obama has sold more guns in a shorter period of time than any other person or event in human history!

Today about 60% of households have at least one gun. We have about 80 million handguns and somewhere between 225 and 300 million total guns in the USA.

And today we are SAFER from violent crimes than we have been at any time in the past 40+ years!

Also, today all but a few states allow millions of law-abiding Americans to carry concealed handguns for defensive purposes!

More guns AND more safety! The FBI Uniform Crime reports prove it!

RMT,

Again with the series of unverifiable and contradictory "facts."

You've written a lot, and I appreciate that you're engaged on this and straightforward in your beliefs. But to me, your arguments are full of holes. For example, those laws allowing citizens "to lawfully carry a concealed handgun, as millions of good law-abiding Americans already do in at least 40 states already" his led to ... 40 safe states? I hadn't realized that four fifths of the Union was safe from gun violence!

In fact though, by any measure compared to any other first-world nation, there is no urban or suburban part of any state in the Union that is safe from gun violence. SAFER? Safer than what? Than the street warfare of the 1970s? This proves nothing, except that we've been in a bad way for along time. Besides, crime rates going down can be attributable to a number of things, most obviously increased prosperity (watch the crime rates go back up in the wake of the recent economic problems - even in those 40 states you're so proud of).

(And if I were you, I'd avoid mentioning that the free and open election of a new president prompted a fraction of the country to run out and buy guns like a bunch of paranoid psychotics. That bit of trivia helps your argument not at all. I'd also avoid talk of the main stream media conspiracy -- no one believes in MSM conspiracies, except right wing fringe types, who are themselves indoctrinated by limiting all of their information input to Fox and Limbaugh).

In the end, there are important distinctions you're missing here. One is urban vs. rural. Cities are dense with people, most of them strangers to one another, and if municipalities want to regulate firearms within their borders, they ought to be allowed to. But the country, where I grew up (with guns in the house) is totally different and requires a different set of laws (or lack of laws). There are also useful distinctions to be made between types of guns -- but as far as I can tell, the NRA despises such distinctions, as all guns are sacred to them. Often the pro-gun crowd brings up the "cosmetic" qualities of, for example, the assault weapon ban (see earlier posts on this thread), but this ignores the well understood fact that they (and you, I'm guessing) don't want ANY gun regulated, for any reason, ever, for the much-vaunted "law-abiding citizen."

"clear", if that is your real name... ;-)

For starters, I always find it amusing that it's only the left-wing types and gun-haters in general who talk about "conspiracies". Certainly, I don't personally know any gun-owners who believe in such non-sense. Conspiracies belong to the fevered imaginations of fiction writers, not to rational people. I ever made any claims of "conspiracy", nor do I believe in such garbage.

Secondly, I am about as Liberal as one can get on almost all social issues, like gay marriage for example, so don't even start to assume you know me or to claim I am "right-wing", nor do I ever listen to Rush Limbaugh-ha-ha-ha.

I specifically avoid trusting sources I know to be biased pro or anti and I go for original data, like FBI Uniform crime reports.

The true facts are out there for anyone to find on their own, a good starting point is to really read and understand the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Not an easy read, I admit, but the data is all there for anyone to see, IF they are willing to risk learning their beliefs are wrong. Unlike most people, I was willing to take the risk and learn the facts instead of just blindly accepting the claims in the media.

At one time I was perfectly happy to support pretty much any sort of restrictions on gun ownership anyone suggested, that was before I had bothered to go look up the facts being spoon-fed to the public by the media and politicians. Every time I tried to verify a media claim by original sources, I kept finding out that they were lying.

"safer" means "safer", just like the meaning of the word "is" is is.

As usual, the gun-haters alter those words they don't wish to hear.

Gun-rights advocates NEVER claim anything will make anyone perfectly "safe", NOR do any gun-rights advocates EVER claim that everyone should carry a concealed handgun. But the gun-haters change the words and then make ridiculous claims about things that were never actually said.

The gun-hater propaganda claimed that alowing ordinary citizens to carry concealed handguns in public would result in rivers of blood in the streets in all the cities of all those states. Of course, no such dire events ever happened. No wild-west shoot-outs, no innocent by-standers caught in "crossfires", etc... not one of the "sky is falling" predictions of the guun-haters ever came true.

"safer" means that UNLIKE the claims of the gun-haters, those states which have allowed concealed carry have seen improvement in all types of criminal attacks against people since the concealed carry laws were enacted. (arson not part of the issue and rape stats are virtually impossible to track due to wide variations in reporting)

And "safer" meaning that we Americans are SAFER TODAY from violent attacks than at any year since about 1960!

And as far as comparisons to other nations, the only scientifically valid way to compare to different locations is to compare the slope of the trends before versus after a specific change in the gun laws.

Every nation on earth found that violent crimes in general and even gun crimes INCREASED when gun ownership was more heavily restricted. There is not one single case in the history of the world where any nation has gotten safer from violent crimes by making it harder for law-abiding citizens to lawfully obtain firearms. Never happened, never could!

Obama is not the only president or politician who has caused a massive increase in gun ownership, but he has certainly been the most effective at selling more guns. The percentage of USA homes which now own guns is higher than ever in the history of the USA! Bill Clinton helped sell his share of so-called "assault weapons" and magazines with more than 10 rounds each as well.

As far as where people live, city or country, makes no difference. Crimials go where they know they can find the most helpless victims and they avoid places where they fear they might run into someone able to protect themselves. Criminals are like other animal preditors. They know they can't afford to take risks because they can't afford to get hurt because they can't get help if they do get hurt. That's why criminals seek out the most helpless victims they can find. Like the helpless people in gun-ban central, Washington DC.

The right to self-defense by gun (or other personal weapons) is a basic human right above and beyond any laws, even above the Constitution itself. The right to firearms existed BEFORE the Constitution was written and will exist even if that document is ever forgotten.

Once again, the standard gun-haters ignorance shows through!
In fact, the NRA has SUPPORTED many of the federal and state gun-control laws passed since it was founded shortly after the Civil War. The NRA supported 1968 GCA, 1938 NFA, NICS background checks system, just to name a few, and countless state gun-control laws! The NRA SUPPORTED the total federal registration for all types of machineguns for example.

You want to see a group who really supports the right to guns? Check out the JPFO Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, or Citizens of America, or Pink Pistols (a gay pro-gun group), or Gun Owners of America, or ...

The NRA may be the oldest civil-rights group in the USA, far older than the NAACP, and certainly the biggest gun-rights group, but the NRA is FAR from the "extreme" group that the gun-haters all claim! Most gun-rights groups are far more protective of our gun-rights than the NRA ever has been!

As far as different laws for different "types" of guns goes, the criminals are not restricted in any manner by laws targeting any specific types of guns, they can always get any sort of guns they want from the black market exactly like people do with illegal drugs.

As far as restrictions by "type" for ownership by law-abiding citizens goes, there has never been any evidence which shows that any such restrictions by type have ever reduced the criminal mis-use of guns or been effective at preventing criminals from getting any types they want.

Personally, I accept the 1938 NFA total registration and heavy-handed restrictions on lawful ownership of full-autos, ie machineguns, ie assault rifles,... I know it's utterly irrelevant to criminals and crime, but I am neutral about keeping it.

As far as any "regulations" goes, I have no problem with the part of 1968 GCA which makes it a serious crime for persons with a felony conviction history to posses or try to posses any type of firearms.

The people who have already proven they can't be trusted to behave themselves in a free society have forfieted their right to be trusted with a firearm. Not everyone's opinion.

Clearly, "clear" everything you've said is standard off the propaganda list of talking points I've heard my whole life without any new claims at all nor any supporting facts at all.

They also were the propaganda points I used to believe before I tool the time to RESEARCH THE FACTS, which few people ever bother to do.

What the media spoon-feeds us is the tired old big-lie propaganda told endlessly so most people wont bother to check those claims because they have just heard them so many times that most people simply assume they must be true and are too lazy to check.

No, it's NOT a "conspiracy", it's just lots of ignorant people repeating the same lies they have been told and never checked out for themselves either.

RMT

Hey RMT,

Sheesh, this is a long post to respond to. I'm glad you don't believe in conspiracies, and that you don't hate gays. I never thought the latter, but as to the former, certain things you wrote made me think otherwise:

"Just because the main-stream media refuses to tell people about the cases of self-defense with a gun ..."

Ah, the main stream media, that tired old bogeyman.

"your beliefs have been spoon-fed to you by the politicians and popular media..."

I dunno, this looks like conspiracy-talk to me. I'm glad I misinterpreted it.

For the record, I'm not a gun-hater. I would myself unreservedly own a gun IF I thought there was a threat to me and if I didn't have kids. So maybe we're not so far apart as you think.

To be honest I'll have to get to the 2nd half of your post later, but addressing the first half, in which you again cite the FBI data "proving" that gun ownership has made us safer: Again I say, there is no obvious cause-effect here. The period of time you cite also corresponds to increased prosperity, which itself will always lead to less crime. Nor did I ever say we should be "perfectly safe" -- my point was only that saying we're "safer" is not much of a standard. I asked, "safer than what?" Safer than the even-less-safe population we were a couple decades ago? It's like saying I now have $5, so I'm richer than when I had $2.50. Big deal.

A final note on all my "propaganda": if you keep accusing me of adhering to a list of talking points, I might start thinking you're a conspiracist again. I'm part of no anti-gun group, receive no newsletter, and basically am nothing more than an average guy with eyes and ears. Let's give each other the benefit of the doubt here.

Hey "clear"

You know what they say about "assume", right?

You assume many things, don't feel too bad, I used to make the same mistakes myself. I used to believe the claims of the popular media, I used to trust what they told us unless I knew for a fact that a specific thing they claimed was not true.

Believe me, I understand the mind-set of people who blindly accept what they get told on the TV news and the beliefs being pushed by fictional story writers as well. I used to be one of those who just accepted the popular "facts" and never bothered to do the work to check any of them.

I use the terms people understand, like main-stream media for example. It's a term used by the media itself, thus I see no problem with the term since it's understood.

So, no, NOTHING I've said requires or even suggests any sort of "conspiracy".

It's always the left-wingers who go around talking about conspiracies, like a certain major politician talking about the "vast right-wing conspiracy". It's a standard tactic by those who wish to deflect and ignore and to avoid dealing directly with the facts they feel wont fit into their own belief system.

Just go and claim the other guy is a "conspiracy-nut" and you can convince yourself that it's ok to dismiss everything they have said which endangers your own chosen beliefs.

And why would you say "I would myself unreservedly own a gun IF..."???

There are multiple legitimate purposes for owning a firearm, there is no need for you to wait until you feel your life is in danger to go shopping for a gun. And with the waiting periods issue... IF it ever happens that you feel your life is in danger, it's probably going to take way too long to legally obtain a gun in time to protect yourself.

As far as kids goes, have you never heard of a gun safe? These days there are great safes which can safely store a handgun and only be opened by yourself and will open quickly in an emergency.

By the way, kids and guns is an issue much like kids and sex, ignorance kills! IF you fail to teach your kids about guns or sex they will certainly learn about them from the media.

But that's a seperate post.

As for the FBI UCR, you missed the point!

The gun-haters (ie gun-control types and those opposed to concealed carry) have always claimed that "more guns => causes more crime" and that "lawful concealed carry => causes wild-west shoot-outs where innocent by-standers will get killed and creat rivers of blood in the streets".

Those people opposed to gun ownership and lawful concealed-carry have always made the same outrageous claims of disaster if law-abiding citizens are allowed to own guns or worse carry concealed handguns in public, but NEVER has any of their dire predictions come true!

Like the tobacco companies claiming that tobacco does not cause cancer and for a long time medical science couldn't "prove" that tobacco was even dangerous, let alone caused cancer, and yet the known facts were obvious. You smoke, you have a vastly greater chance of all sorts of bad health effects.

The point is that every state who passed "shall-issue" concealed carry laws saw a REDUCTION in violent crimes, including gun crimes AFTER ordinary people were allowed to carry. NO state ever saw lawfully carrying people become a public safety problem. In fact, those who carry lawfully are vastly LESS likely to ever be arrested for anything than those who don't carry.

We are "safer" than we have been since about 1960.
We have more than doubled the percentage of homes with guns AND have become SAFER from violent crimes NOT less safe as the gun-haters all predicted.

The "propaganda list" is not a "conspircacy". It's a term to describe the general set of anti-gun claims which the media have used for decades without most of them bothering to to the research to find out if any of it is true or not.

Basically, the media just parrotts a short list of anti-gun claims over and over and over without ever stopping to think that they might not be true because they have all heard the claims themselves since they werre kids, so they never take the time to examine their beliefs.

The result is that everyone gets the exact same indoctrination from the entire media and very few people take the time to to the research to learn if any of it is true.

No conspiracy, just lazy ignorance.

It's easier for people to blindly accept and re-tell a popular lie than to make the effort to learn the unpopular truth.

I do give the benefit of the doubt exactly because I used to be that person myself!

Kids & guns comming soon...

You can pass on the "Kids & guns" essay, RMT. I surrender!

I have to say your utter certainty makes me extremely nervous. In my experience, a lack of any doubt -- and you clearly lack any doubt about this very complicated issue -- usually is a red flag that something is amiss. But you've read the FBI thingamabob, so you've done the RESEARCH of THE FACTS that none of us lazy ignoramuses have, and I guess we'll all just have to believe you.

One thing I don't need to do any research on is this statement: "The right to self-defense by gun (or other personal weapons) is a basic human right above and beyond any laws, even above the Constitution itself. The right to firearms existed BEFORE the Constitution was written and will exist even if that document is ever forgotten."

This is preposterous, and one of the strangest things you've written. Rights are a human invention, RMT, they are not handed down by God. There is no such thing as a right extant of any laws. A right IS a law. It's oxymoronic and illogical to say otherwise, and makes me wonder what other important terms you're shaky on.

But never mind that -- overall I appreciate your arguments. And I agree perhaps more than you think. But not all the way.

"Clear"

To begin with, I'm atheist, always have been. "god" is a human imagination construct to help people answer questions they can't answer in other ways. Our rights don't come from a "god", but rather from our ability to make a choice to do something in a manner which does NOT harm the rights of others.

Rights are above and beyond any laws.

If you require a law to establish something, then it's got a different name, it's called a "privilege". A privilege is a special entitlement or immunity granted by a government or other group for the benefit of another individual or group.

Governemnt recognised marriage is a privilege, NOT a right. What gays want is the enforcement of the 14th Amendment which promisses equal privileges to all.

Privileges are distinctly different from rights.

"Rights" are the line drawn between peers which says each individual may exercise freedom of choice up untill they reach that line where if they go any farther they will intrude on the rights of their peer.

Rights is the principal which says a governemnt is wrong when it crosses that line.

It's much easier to be certain when you already lived half your life believing the other side was correct and even parroting the other side's claims for many years and knowing it all by heart memorisation.

And THEN accidentially tripping over the truth in a way which cannot be ignored or denied-away. Once the first gun-hater's arguments falls down, each lie falls like dominoes.

And clearly you have not read the US Supreme Court rulings of past decades. The US Supreme Court itself has stated that the Constitution does NOT create rights, it's purpose is to protect pre-existing rights, like the right to guns. The court specifically said that the right to guns pre-dates the Constitution and does NOT rely on that document for the existance of that right.

I don't care if you agree with me, I care that you do the work yourself to LEARN new factually truthful things you don't currently know!

I have great faith in the fact that the more factual information people learn about almost any issue, especially about guns, the more those more fully informed people will make better choices and all our rights will be better protected.

Willfull ignorance is the only way people retain a belief in gun-hater propaganda or in the countless excuses made to restrict our rights.

Oh screw off, I'm weary of being called lazy or ignorant because I don't agree with you. You're dead wrong about about what "rights" are, but if I go into detail about it I'll get another stern lecture about how I need to LEARN the truth like you have, like you're goddam Yoda or something.

RIP this comment thread.