Where does it end though? Ok...some people want AR's...fine. What if I want a hand grenade? Artillery gun? Tank? Cruise missile? Where do you draw the line?
We have pretty much drawn the line at crew served weapons, but here is the rub. You CAN own a tank, a hand grenade, an artillery piece. It can be fully functional, Ammunition for the tank and artillery piece, individually is classified as a destructive device, as is the hand grenade, and subject to the transfer tax on a per round basis. That transfer tax, the price of the round, and the costs incurred to properly store and move the round of ammunition to where it is to be fired all go up in smoke the moment it is fired. Not to mention much of it has to be custom made, so it is darned expensive.
https://www.drivetanks.com/big-guns/ Most tanks have demilitarized (non functional) main guns, but they can be fully functional if you are willing to undergo the permitting process, and if your pocket is deep enough, although local laws may apply, and road weight restrictions count in that. There are a
lot of hoops to jump through, and some considerable expense, but it can be done.
I guess the question is one of whether you think your neighbor with the M4 Sherman tank is going to shoot up your lawn gnomes late at night, or even you. Really, the sort of folks who can afford such things (tanks, not lawn gnomes) aren't likely to endanger their Liberty by misusing them. Not only that, they'd lose their neat gadget, too, if they did. They usually either own or have access to land suitable for such a hobby, and chances are they'd lose that, too. They 'have skin in the game', so to speak.
When you get right down to it, that is a big reason that those devices aren't used in such a fashion as to create an outcry, aside from basic moral constraints (that the same people who decry our Right to Keep and Beak Arms consider outmoded, archaic, and even "racist", because anything which might shed light on, and provide a counter to, their libertine tendencies is considered thus).
Keep in mind that 99.99996+% (assuming only 5 million AR-15s are in the US, the number may well be double that) of AR-15s were NOT used to commit crimes on the day the two shooters decided to make their mark on our culture. Likely more AR-15s were used to
stop crimes in the same day than to commit them, and not by police or the military, but by ordinary citizens, but that seldom makes headlines, and certainly NOT on the MSM channels.
So, the question comes of whether it is fair, in any sense, to deprive millions of people of the ability to defend themselves because 2 people out of 330,000,000, or, as a more limited sample, the 5,000,000 (minimum) who possess such arms decided to go on a killing spree, an event unusual in itself, because these nutcases seem to want all the limelight for themselves.
Keep in mind that the sort of armour (tanks, armored cars) we were talking about ordinary citizens owning is relatively primitive compared with the current US MBTs, and even the MRAPs that police departments are getting across the country, and wouldn't last a New York Second in a drawdown with an Abrams. It's also vulnerable to virtually any hand launched RPG or antitank weapon.
What, you don't have one of those? Well, maybe that's why you're feeling a mite intimidated by the idea of your neighbor having a tank. But the rifles we are talking about Government taking away are not a new design for military use, they are degraded knock offs of a design over 50 years old. What other constraints would such a Government unleash once that threshold is crossed?
Considering that some of our representatives in Government have proclaimed they want a monopoly on even a downgraded knock-off of a basic infantry arm, something wholly inadequate to take on the equipment fielded daily by that same Government in warfare, which pales in capability compared to the new fully automatic models available only to Government, by decree (law), that means the balance of power between those who are supposedly there to safeguard our rights and those of us who have those rights (us) is already seriously skewed. So, why the paranoia?
It isn't about OUR safety. The same people who are suddenly so interested in protecting us from ourselves have made certain the border remains open to infiltration by people who have such weapons and better ones, who are organized at least in tribal type units, who have no compunction about using those weapons, and who wield the WMDs of illicit drugs as part of their stock in trade. Now, they are suddenly so worried about us all they want to take away OUR RIGHTS to "keep us safe"?
Bullshit. They just want to stack the odds in their own favor, as they ever have, only with a new incident and an old excuse to do so.
To permit this infringement of a fundamental Civil Right denigrates and devalues the sacrifices of millions of American troops over centuries to safeguard those same Rights.
The Government also has significant air superiority, and the ability to put steel on target with a minimum of collateral damage--even using concrete filled JDAMs as a kinetic energy weapon to take out specific houses without doing serious structural damage to adjacent buildings in Iraq.
Nothing I, nor you, as an individual, could afford would pose a serious threat. Only millions of these rifles in the hands of a populace determined to remain free pose any threat to the Globalist/Communist machinations which we daily decry here.
Now, I really don't know what the government would have to say about private ownership of a cruise missile, likely, they'd be seriously afraid of that. But the tech is out there, and sooner or later someone will build one in their garage. Then what? It would have to be registered as a destructive device, same hoops as
In the meantime, we have the WMDs of fentanyl and other drugs brought in, from the more commonly known to designer drugs of unknown effect, coming across a poorly secured border along with any world class individual weapons that can be smuggled in as well. The weight of this material is measured in tons.
Maybe the government should do that job, the one it is Constitutionally tasked with of securing the border, and leave the Rights of American Citizens alone.
Bottom line, though, the question isn't one of what people have, it is one of what they do with it.
The discussion that isn't being had, the thing simply not being condemned is murder, by whatever means, although the one-sided discussion of the sort of mindset that contributes to incidents like these has begun in earnest, the honesty needed to reach a solution is a distant and perhaps unattainable goal, especially with the sort of politicians involved we have today, hired by the very people they and the media manipulate. Would you remand the safety and security of your Rights to a mob? Especially one which has partisan goals which, as stated, include looting the fruits of your labors to enrich themselves?
In the face of such an onslaught, I an especially recalcitrant when it comes to any infringements of my Rights.
I have done no wrong, harmed no one, and will not yield my liberty or property on account of someone else's misdeeds. Such flies in the face of our Constitution, our Rights, and the very foundations of this Republic.
It's time to dial back the shrill rhetoric, the hate speech that is given a pass daily while yet another group is being assaulted, verbally, culturally, and even physically, day in and day out, nonstop, in the media, and on the streets. Fomenting such an environment of hatred toward
any people will have repercussions, so let's really level the playing field and take a step toward civility and honesty.
The hardware doesn't harm anyone without a human either acting out of malice or ignorance, and I have done neither.
I own no class III weapons, no destructive devices, legal or otherwise, but I refuse to surrender what I legally possess today tomorrow because someone, anyone, unconstitutionally declares that property illegal.
As Ben Franklin said,
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safetyâ€Those who are bent on mayhem will continue to devise means of reaching their goals. The only way to reduce that is to reduce the reasons they cite for accomplishing their crimes, and to catch the people who abuse their Rights to perpetrate them, preferably before they accomplish those ends. Making one tool or another unavailable to the general population to defend against such mayhem has already been done, with disastrous results. The Texas shooting was done in an area where those who might have been able to do something were disarmed by their compliance with the rules of the store. We see what effect that had. It cost lives by making an area effectively a free-fire zone where effective resistance to the evil machinations of a nutcase was prohibited.
Only in Dayton, we see the nutcase stopped, but that was done with guns, all of which I'd wager were semiautomatic firearms. Denying that capability to people will only predictably increase the body count and further the agenda of those who would disarm the American People, and thus make sheep of us all.
