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Reds45ACP wrote:I agree with what has been posted. I often use the car example. The response I always get is: "Yeah, but a car wasn't designed to kill people." What response do you give to that?

OK, so the Assault Weapon were designed for only one thing to shoot large number of people with those " large capacity" magazines. I guess that the police don't need them either. So the police, most of which have "assault weapons" with "large capacity" magazines in their patrol cars, only have them so they can go and mow down a lot of people, right? The police are not military, so why do they need military weapons, to wage war on the citizens? A lot of police not only have these department issued weapons, but also buy them for themselves. Because they enjoy shooting them, not because they are ready to kill everyone in sight.

There are millions of gun owners that own one or more of these so called "assault, military style" weapons that had never and will never use them to murder people. If what the libs say is true, that those weapons have only one purpose only, to shoot and kill a lot of people, then there would be no one left alive today, because the millions of law abiding gun owners are NOT walking into school or malls and killing everyone in sight. Just because one deranged individual used on to commit a heinous crime does not make the rest of us criminals.

But having said all that and everything everyone here and elsewhere has said, it really won't change the minds of the hardcore liberals. No matter how many stats, data and rational thought you can provide them, they are governed by emotion and not logic. Nothing we can say will change what they "feel".

RHenriksen wrote:Throwing the burden of proof back on the people wanting to restrict your rights is a very good step. I use the same technique.

If you haven't read John Lott's book, 'More Guns Less Crime' I strongly encourage to do so.

Memorizing salient statistics from the FBI crime data is very valuable. If you begin asking your friends questions calmly, that they have to continually respond with 'I don't know', and then you provide them the answers, they may begin to realize they're not as informed as they should be. I do this without putting out the attitude that I'm 'winning', or trying to embarrass them with my questions - I just want to further the discussion. And every time they don't know the answer (eg, 'How many people were killed with blunt instruments in 2011?', I provide the information.

Instead of telling them 'more children drowned in 5 gal buckets last year than were killed by "assault rifles"', ask:

how many children drowned in swimming pools last year?
How many children drowned in 5 gallon buckets?
how many people died of smoking complications?
how many people died in car accidents?
how many people died from drunk drivers?
How many people were killed by ALL rifles (not just "assault" rifles)?

When they have to keep responding, 'I don't know', 'I don't know', 'I don't know' they may begin to realize they're spouting media talking points instead of making up their own mind based on data.

Excellent.

Great first post. Lots of good arguments there. But here is my take.

Ask them why would anyone need a sports car (Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porshe, etc). Those are high performance cars designed to travel at high rates of speed, well above speed limits in the US. Would they approve to have those automobiles be declared illegal and force people to turn them in or go to jail?

Ask them why anyone needs a 10-20 bedroom mansion costing millions of dollars. A large amount of energy (heating, cooling, water for the large lawns) is used to maintain those houses. Energy created by burning fossil fuels that cause global warming. (Not the I believe on man-made global warming theories, but usually the antis do). Should the government force people that own those mansions to house homeless people in their spare bedrooms? Or to put minimum limits of say 2 people per bedroom so than when your kids move out of your 2-3-4 bedroom house, you are forced to sell your house and you and your wife be forced to live in a one bedroom condo, or be forced to take in guests to fill up the empty rooms. As a further benefit that would help solve the housing crisis. There would be housing for everyone. No more homeless people. Common sense approach.

If Lansa had used his mother's automobile to run down those kids as they were exiting the school, would they be calling for the confiscation of that particular make and model of automobile or automobiles altogether. After all, why do you need a car. There are buses, trains, taxis you can use. There is no right for you to own an automobile. Not to mention the supposed environmental benefits discussed above.

You see the point. But the most important thing you can say is that the 2nd Amendment is part of the Bill of Right not part of the Bill of Needs. There are million of owners of these "assault weapons" in the US who legally bought their weapons because they legally could, whether they felt a need or a want, who have no intention of ever going into a school and murdering kids with their "assault weapons".