So already I’ve seen comments and even got an email from a friend about a particular comment that was left, below is what the comment said (emphasis mine, spelling his).

We all here want to feel safe and do what we can to protect our families & loved ones: we are parents to our children, wives to our husbands, true friends to our friends. More than this we are neighbors and members of our community, in church, club, workplace and park.

I honor the Bill Of Rights and welcome the freedom the Second Ammendment gives me. I also recognize that this was written 221 years ago against the backdrop of our emerging nation. At this sad time and remembering past atrocities I will now seek a complete ban on assault rifles – I will continue to proudly keep and carry my little Ruger.
While I dont know many of you here I know that you are no different to my own neighbors; good people living in difficult times. We all need to do the right thing and show leadership.

Here’s the thing folks, you either have a right to arms or you don’t.  There is no negotiating on this, we did that in 1994 and look what happened.  Further the current atrocity pulling at everyone’s heart strings happened within a state with an assault weapons ban!

If the ban didn’t stop him there what makes you think it would somehow work in the future?  Please inform me how “just one more law” would have altered the course of events given the litany of laws he broke before he even started shooting children.  Explain to me how the law-abiding gun owners are at fault and the sacrifice of their rights will somehow make the world a safer place.  Even law-makers admit that an assault weapons ban wouldn’t have changed anything, you must know something the rest of us don’t.

But lets destroy your BS regarding 221 years ago shall we?  At the time people owned cannon, artillery, and during the American Revolution the Kentucky Long Rifle was the AR-15 of the era.  Read that again, the Kentucky Long Rifle was the AR-15 of the era.  It was a military arm that was quite excellent at striking targets at long distances.  By todays standard our bolt-action rifles could be compared with muskets.  Muskets, lacking rifling, were less accurate but quicker to reload.  So there’s a trade-off yes, overall the technology was quite similar, however there was a considerable difference between the two.

Lets move forward not even 100 years to the civil war and the advent of the henry repeating rifle as well as the percussion-cap revolver.  Both of which greatly increased the available firepower of a single individual, yet by your argument we should have nothing more than what we had 221 years ago when it was written.  So no revolvers, no repeating rifles, this destroys cartridge firearms, thus kiss your bolt-action rifles and shotguns good-bye seeing as they couldn’t have conceived of this 221 years ago.

Because they couldn’t conceive of the advances in technology 221 years ago, because they didn’t see the immediate benefit of the printing press, you argue for a complete ban on an inanimate object, that you don’t use, thinking that will somehow stop evil. You are however more than happy to continue carrying your “little Ruger” which, by your argument, should be outlawed since we should only take into account what they had at the time.

So if you want to carry a defensive pistol and you want to carry on this argument, you will carry nothing more than a single shot flint-lock pistol.  For you see, you should only ever need one round!  If you need more than one, obviously you need to practice your aim more!  No one needs a 10 shot magazine, the size of the Ruger LCP, or even a six shot revolver, for our fore-fathers survived on 1 shot flint locks and that is what they had in mind when they wrote the 2nd Amendment, at least that’s what you claim.  You cannot have it both ways, you cannot just embrace technology you like and throw away that you dislike.

Our opponents would be happy to take away every semi-automatic pistol, who needs them right?  You can carry a revolver, it has six rounds, more than enough for anything you might encounter!  Then one day someone goes on a spree, reloading while the response takes 20 minutes and you hear cries that we need blanket revolver ban.  It’s a slippery slope my friend and the first assault weapons ban proved that along with another important fact.

The federal assault-weapons ban, scheduled to expire in September, is not responsible for the nation’s steady decline in gun-related violence and its renewal likely will achieve little, according to an independent study commissioned by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).

“We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence,” said the unreleased NIJ report, written by Christopher Koper, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Now you could say I’m over stepping and taking this too far to which I would reply, how do you set the bar then?  George Washington didn’t cross the Delaware to get to his duck blind and by god the Second Amendment was not written with the aspect of hunting in mind.  No, at the time the American public maintained it’s own supply of military arms and while some would say that is no longer necessary, I would point out that to this day the United States has an unorganized militia that can be called upon to defend her.  As well as the fact that our government has committed atrocities against her own people and you wish to give that same government a sole monopoly on force.  Merely ensuring that her own citizens cannot resist if they feel it necessary to do so.

Lastly your argument for an assault weapons ban also completely ignores the fact that the majority of the features banned are purely cosmetic and safety related.  Tell me, what good does it do to ban a collapsible stock?  You know that thing that allows you to adjust the length of pull for different sized shooters.  That thing you adjust to make sure the shooter doesn’t get scoped, or otherwise suffer injury.  The pistol grip, which is quite beneficial for disabled shooters allowing for a more natural grip angle and thus preventing further damage to the wrist because of recoil.  Also my personal favorite, banning a barrel shroud.  Really!? Banning an object who’s sole purpose is to prevent the user from burning themselves.  That’s like banning suppressors, because we all like hearing damage!

Your statement above is nothing but pure hypocrisy no matter how you cut it. You either support the individual right of self-defense, including their right to choose what they think is the best arm for them, or you don’t.  You cannot just say, well I don’t like evil black rifles so their bad but leave my pistols alone.  What happens to the disabled woman who cannot easily deploy a pistol but can a rifle?  Must she be stuck with a bolt-action rifle that she cannot effectively operate the bolt on?  Ok, so you’ve left semi-auto rifles now with the necessary features to aid in ease of use.  Now are you going to limit her to 10 rounds?  That operator as I said lacks normal dexterity so while you can quickly and easily reload a magazine you’ve still limited the disabled shooter.  And for what?  It’s not like the magazine bans really matter to a determined individual:

Remember it was 20 minutes for the police to respond, so short of banning metallic cartridges, people can reload guns, again and again, using them for evil.  The answer is to step up and stop evil when it appears, that is best done by allowing people to retain the best tools for doing so.  That is not done by banning the otherwise law-abiding and turning them into felons overnight.  I find it ironic though that you claim we should do the right thing and show leadership and you do so by blindly following the talking heads.  The right thing is stepping up and doing what needs to be done, even if it seems difficult.  The right thing is protecting the rights of others despite the actions of a lone mad man.  By the way sir, you lead from the front, not from the rear as you kiss the boots of your future masters begging forgiveness for something that wasn’t your fault.

In the words of Samuel Adams:

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace.

We ask not your counsels or your arms.

Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.

May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.