Another Devastating School Shooting: Uvalde, Texas

Assault weapons are not necessary for home defense, and, because of the high powered rounds that they deliver, are detrimental fro that purpose.

A home defender is just as likely to shoot a bystander in the next room or next house with his assault weapon. A shotgun is a much better weapon for home defense than an assault weapon.

As InfraBlue pointed out, assault weapons aren't really suitable weapons for "home defense" or much else.

You guys are really hooked on this scenario, aren't you — what are you imagining, something like you see in the Central American banana republics or Somalia, with paramilitary groups and warlords?

There are many countries where people enjoy the same freedoms as we do – and probably more – where there is no automatic universal right to own firearms.

This creed is sort of the bottom line for these people – doesn't matter how many innocent people are killed, "it's the price we pay for freedom".

But right now, it's armed citizens who represent the biggest threat – vigilantes, paramilitary wannabes, and organized white nationalist groups. Firearms afford them power and what they think is "respect". Assault-style weapons embolden them.

Yeah, in the first few years of our independence within a well regulated militia.

Assault weapons suck for home defense, and their specious worth thereof does not negate their detriment to the general welfare of the country.

Experts in firearms are pretty much in agreement that a weapon that shoots through the target, then through the adjacent wall and into the next room are not appropriate for self defense during a home invasion.

The Problem Is Gun Culture, Not SCOTUS

A win in the Supreme Court for the American right to threaten one another in public

I used to think of myself as a gun-control conservative--I supported both the right to own firearms and the interest of the state to limit that right--but America's gun culture isn't about rights. It's about performative insecurity.

The problem is not the Court's decision. The problem is an adolescent, drama-laden gun culture, a romance with weapons that became extreme only in the past quarter century.

Don't take my word for it that things have changed. Here's Ryan Busse, a former gun-company executive who has now taken on his former industry, talking about the day someone showed up to a hunting party with an AR-15:

• The unwritten rules of decency were enforced by firearm-industry leaders ... I witnessed how this worked many times, including one occasion when a young writer brought his own AR-15 to a hunting event I was hosting in 2004. The senior figures there responded immediately. "That's not the kind of thing we want to be promoting," they said. The newcomer was shamed into locking the gun up for the rest of the event.

This kind of affirmation of cultural norms can be a lot more powerful than any law, and I suspect that the gun-culture extremists know it. They head off expressions of this kind of social disapproval by being aggressive and performative, daring anyone to criticize them for feeling the need to be armed while getting milk and eggs at the supermarket.

You can be angry with the Court for furthering and enabling this weirdness, but it's not the Court's fault. It is, as usual, our fault, as voters and citizens, for tolerating a culture that is endangering our fellow Americans instead of insisting that all of us exercise our constitutional rights like responsible adults.

A shotgun.

A 22 caliber is easy to aim, and it isn't as deafeningly loud as a 45.

Only a baldfaced idiot believes they need an AR-15 to protect their home,

I think the idea of holding one makes them feel more masculine.

Brandon9000 wrote:

You guys just love to greatly outnumber someone, don't you? That's the liberal's standard method of fighting. I salute your great courage in joining a group of people already arguing with me. I guess I'll just have to kick your asses one by one. So, at the moment, I will argue with you and only you. When you're done, maybe I'll move on to someone else.

It's called a swarm tactic. All you need to do is focus on just one. The others can wait.

This is the person who had "Grab them by the pussy," as his avatar

If someone rejoices in the sexual assault of minors they're unlikely to disagree with Oralloy.

You know full well he was referring to under age girls.