If your premises are true that
then your two sentences quoted above are nonsensical.
It’s not about so-called gun rights. The fundamental issue is the right to self defense. Do you believe there exists such a right?
The government is us acting collectively through democratic systems. That’s how everything in this society works.
No right is absolute, not even self defense.
I will not agree to allow you to have a nuclear weapon just because of your personal perception that it is absolutely necessary for your self defense. I will not agree to let you kill all homeless people just because of your personal perception that it is absolutely necessary for your self defense.
I will not agree to let you ban all Muslims from your community just because of your personal perception that it is absolutely necessary for your self defense. The same way, I will not agree to allow you to own and carry just any manner of deadly weapon based solely on your personal perception that it is absolutely necessary for your self defense.
The very existence of those firearms in your possession statistically affects the public health of everyone. I do not agree that you have an absolute right to own or carry or use them without any limits based on our collective, democratic decision-making.
I don’t believe that there should be “stand your ground laws” or a castle doctrine that maximize self-defense. There should be a duty to retreat.
You should have to prove in court that your use of deadly force was unavoidable for your self-defense. In fact, I don’t believe that self-defense should count as a “not guilty” verdict. If you intentionally caused another human being’s death, you should be found guilty of some form of homicide and then your punishment should be adjusted according to whether the degree of deadly force you used was absolutely necessary for you to preserve your own or someone else’s life.
So your personal perception that you need firearms for self defense must be balanced against everyone else’s needs for a society with overall fewer deaths resulting from the proliferation of firearms.
My having a pistol in the dresser drawer isn’t a threat to you.
Some guy walking around with one might be, and I don’t have a problem with putting a stop to that.
I weigh 110, and am five feet tall. If someone sneaks into my house to rob me, I’ll need more than a baseball bat.
Allowing whoever wants to to have pistols in their dresser drawers creates a statistically higher risk for society that some number of those pistols will cause deaths that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. That’s enough for me to regulate all people having pistols in their dresser drawers, regardless of how safe they personally perceive their pistols-in-dresser-drawers to be.
I would want a study showing how statistically likely it is for you to need a pistol in your dresser drawer to defend your life against a house robber. And it matters to me whether that person merely robs you or robs you and also does physical harm to you. Only living things—not mere property—should be defensible through deadly force. I would prefer that you get robbed and no one get hurt than you not get robbed and the robber get killed.
Are you arguing that the Second Amendment is meaningless and it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s repealed? Because if God created the right to own firearms then it doesn’t matter what the government says on the subject.
And, without recompense. Read this thread* and the law Kamala Harris said was legal in SF. All guns seized with no recompense. Not even like in Australia.
Also think of the thousands of extra police and extra prisons, even if only 5% dont comply.
No Knock searches, doors smashed down. Houses tossed. Owners handcuffed on the floor until search is done. Dogs shot. Cats escaping. Anything else potentially illegal seized. Perhaps computers - they might have a gun inventory.
Jobs lost, lives ruined. Bankruptcy.
A very few will. There are 100 Million gun owners. Somewhere I read about 4% of Americans are sociopaths. So, then, let’s say 4 million gun owners, a tiny %- resist violently. That’s FOUR million Wacos. How many police shot?
I also believe that police carrying and use of deadly weapons should be much more restricted. Cops should have to walk the beat unarmed unless they have a specific indication that a deadly threat is present.
And any police-involved death should go to trial, with no presumption of necessity.
Right. The first big Prohibition- Booze- failed disastrously.
The next big Prohibition- War on drugs- is failing disastrously.
I cant see anything good coming out of a third.
About half. They work quite well in nations with no history of a gun culture, where privately owned guns were never common. And even there, rarely are there a actual BAN- usually, you can buy handguns with a permit and a license.
Nope, in fact the opposite. But there’s always an excuse. “The ban wasnt strong enough or wasnt large enough”. Even here in CA, with the strongest gun control laws in America, several of which are of doubtful constitutionality, violent crime is higher than in states with open carry, etc.
I suspect only a very few would. But with 100 Million gun owners, a very small % comes to a LOT of Wacos.
or how easy it is to reload ammo.
Like being gay wasnt “law abiding” a few decades ago, amiright? 
Actually, no Waco- is held up as a example of the ATF going nutso, they could have quietly arrested the leader at any time.
The example gun nuts use is Ruby Ridge:
Where a otherwise law abiding man was set up by the ATF to saw off a shotgun 1/4 inch too short ended up in the deaths of Deputy US Marshal William Francis Degan, age 42, the Weavers’ son Samuel (Sammy), age 14,the Weaver’s family dog and 43-year-old wife Vicki . and "In June 1990 an ATF agent, Byerly, attempted to use the sawed-off shotgun charge as leverage to get Weaver to act as an informant for his investigation into the Aryan Nations.[20] When Weaver refused to become “a snitch”, the ATF filed the gun charges in June 1990, also claiming Weaver was a bank robber with criminal convictions[27] (those claims were false: at that time Weaver had no criminal record, and the subsequent Senate investigation found: “Weaver was not a suspect in any bank robberies.”[28])… RRTF report to the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) of June 1994 stated unequivocally in its conclusion (in its executive summary) that the rules that allowed the second shot to have taken place did not satisfy constitutional standards for legal use of deadly force…Weaver was ultimately acquitted of all charges except missing his original court date and violating his bail conditions, for which he was sentenced to 18 months and fined $10,000…FBI HRT sniper Lon Horiuchi was indicted for manslaughter in 1997 by the Boundary County, Idaho, prosecutor Denise Woodbury just before the statute of limitations for the crime of manslaughter expired,…
I expect about a million Ruby Ridges.
I also found the post astounding but IIRC it was from a routine gun lover, not sarcastic. Is yours an offer to bet money on whether I can find that post in the archive? How much money are we talking about?
In what bewildered universe is the debate about
Do humans have the “right” to self defense?
My thesis is simply
The obsession of so many Americans with guns implies something very pathetic and contemptible about American culture.
But if the 1st Amendment is repealed, and laws are passed to force everyone to become a evangelical Christian then those rights do not legally exist anymore.
But if the 1st Amendment is repealed, and laws are passed to confiscate all presses and computers- then those rights do not legally exist anymore.
The National Guard is part of the Federal army. It is, in no way, the Militia the Constitution is talking about. It is what the Militia in the Constitution was supposed to *protect against. *Various states still have a State militia, and there are legal private militias- many of who are run by pretty far out people, true.
I didnt. And maybe half of the gun owners voted for Trump.