great news. San Francisco finally shuts down is last remaining gun store

The fact of the matter is that if you think the "end game" for the democrats and the gun banning crowd is simple background checks, mental health screening, etc. you're delusional. if that was only the case I'd likely be in agreement. The end game has, and always will be the repeal of the second amendment, and/or state and local legislation designed to make it next to impossible to obtain weapons, IE as in MA, RI, CT NY, NJ etc. I own semi auto's, shotguns, bolt actions, pistols, revolvers, all in various calibers and a muzzleloader. I'm also an archer, own a recurve, several compounds and a crossbow. I shoot them all and hunt as well. Personally, for home protection I prefer my 1979 vintage Dan Wesson .357 revolver (bought new), however given an intruder in my house, out of 6 shots, likely shots 5 will likely miss my intended target. Adrenaline does strange things to people. I have a .40 Sig P250 as my primary weapon. 15 shots, green laser with a tactical flashlight attachment. And the professional training to use it. I'm also a former Marine. Now that being said...........even though I have the training to use the weapons, anyone can get lucky. One lucky shot could end my life or my loved ones life in an instant. And believe me, once the good guys have no firearms, the bad guys will run rampant.

A couple of observations:

1. The anti-gun crowd in this thread obviously knows less than nothing about firearms. They keep going on about "machine guns," when machine guns have never been a factor in mass shootings. Six shots is all you need? Again, people uneducated about the subject loooove to weigh in on it.

2. These same people know very little about life outside of their own bubble. They suppose that small town 'Murica is gun-toting rednecks with mullets waving weapons around and recklessly shooting at everything that moves. I suppose this is the fault of media partly.

3. Why is it always that the gov't should "do something"? When has the government solved anything? It's this attitude that makes people victims in the first place. Don't rely on Daddy Gov't. Take responsibility for yourself and your family. Don't be caught waiting for the police to come "do something." The police can be there in minutes, but often something needs to be done in seconds.

Being proactive means being prepared, and being prepared means taking steps to minimize risk. Do you leave home without a spare tire? Do you have insurance? Do you exercise regularly? These are all means of minimizing risk. So is training and arming yourself and your family. An armed society is a polite society.

These are valid and great points. But something needs to be said about the fact that a certain percentage of the population should not possess a gun. Maybe you do not mean 100% of the populace should be armed, but "an armed society" can be interpreted to mean just that. Every week it seems an average Joe with a good family and good job snaps and slaughters his family with a knife/fire or whatever they have around. If everyone owned a gun the damage could be worse. These people that have obvious psychological problems should not possess firearms. Sure a knife can accomplish the same goal, but a gun makes it a whole lot easier. And a few misses through the wall of a cheaply built cardboard house can take out the neighbors.

Obviously, everyone shouldn't be armed to the teeth and people with mental illness shouldn't possess firearms. This begs the question: why are so many more of these people exhibiting mental illnesses? Instead of emotionally jumping on the "guns bad" bandwagon like an overzealous checkers player that sees a double jump, perhaps we need to be calm and rational chess players.

What factors could be at play here? For one, the uptick in SSRIs could be a factor. What about the constant deployment of troops in the endless War on Terror for the last umpteen years? Certainly correlation is not causation, but there are many factors that need to be explored. Perhaps we never hear about the link between SSRIs and mass shootings because Big Pharma buys lotttts of advertising on Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, etc?

Why are mass shootings given constant media attention, but the black on black crime in places like Chicago, Baltimore, and Detroit never gets the same resounding coverage? Don't these numbers greatly eclipse the numbers of people killed by Billy Bob in his double-wide? Again, it's about the knee-jerk reaction; that's what they're selling, not that fact that the majority of gun owners are responsible, rational people.

So, let's suppose there is an outright ban on assault rifles. What happens, a few months later, when there is a mass shooting involving, say, a Glock 17. Do we then ban all hand guns? Where does it stop? For some, this is a Fabian strategy to get rid of private gun ownership. We've had it very good here in the West for a long time, and forget what happens when there is no buffer between the people and those in power. Democide (death by gov't) was the number one cause of non-natural death in the 20th century...Mao, Stalin, you name it. They had to disarm their civilian populations before they could autocratically control their societies. One thing I will say about the Fabians: they are patient and can wait this thing out a loooong time.

In short, we need to weigh what we are giving up. Private gun ownership was a hard-won battle, and to just erode that way....well, I think there needs to be a long conversation before that happens.

Phenomenal post!