The right to bear arms

Horrible events have transpired today at Virginia Tech.

Why in the hell is it necessary that we have the “right” to bear arms? Hunting? Self-defense? Why do we need to have guns? I mean this is just crazy. The University of Utah cannot even legally bar guns on their campus.

Why are handguns in the possession of anyone who is not a police officer? I could care less about gun control or adding more regulations for gun possession. I feel that guns should not be produced and sold. Having access to guns while growing up in Iowa did not make me more of U.S. citizen or a patriot. I feel that the right to bear arms is an antiquated policy that does nothing except provide fodder for political polarization.

How do guns, and the right to bear them, benefit humanity?

Shooting at Virginia Tech / Statement by President Charles W. Steger

By Larry Hincker

BLACKSBURG, Va., April 16, 2007

Tuesday, there will be a university convocation/ceremony at 2 p.m. at Cassell Coliseum.

—————–

The university was struck today with a tragedy of monumental proportions. There were two shootings on campus. In each case, there were fatalities. The university is shocked and horrified that this would befall our campus. I want to extend my deepest, sincerest and most profound sympathies to the families of these victims which include students There are 22 confirmed deaths.

We currently are in the process of notifying families of victims. The Virginia Tech Police are being assisted by numerous other jurisdictions. Crime scenes are being investigated by the FBI, University Police, and State Police. We continue to work to identify the victims impacted by this tragedy. I cannot begin to covey my own personal sense of loss over this senselessness of such an incomprehensible and heinous act The university will immediately set up counseling centers. So far centers have been identified in Ambler Johnston and the Cook Counseling Center to work with our campus community and families.

Here are some of the facts we know:

At about 7:15 a.m. this morning a 911 call came to the University Police Department concerning an event in West Ambler Johnston Hall. There were multiple shooting victims. While in the process of investigating, about two hours later the university received reports of a shooting in Norris Hall. The police immediately responded. Victims have been transported to various hospitals in the immediate area in the region to receive emergency treatment.

We will proceed to contact the families of victims as identities are available.

All classes are cancelled and the university is closed for the remainder of today. The university will open Tuesday at 8 a.m. but classes are cancelled. The police are currently staging the release of people from campus buildings.

Families wishing to reunite with the students are suggested to meet at the Inn at Virginia Tech. We are making plans for a convocation tomorrow (Tuesday) at noon at Cassell Coliseum for the university community to come together to begin to deal with the tragedy.

Podcast:: Statement by President Steger (3.1 MB; Length 3:21)

—————–

Counseling is available in the Bowman Room in the Jamerson Center (part of the athletic complex) for employees who seek assistance following today’s events.

—————–

Virginia Tech has closed today Monday, April 16, 2007. On Tuesday, April 17, classes are canceled. The university will remain open for administrative operations.

Tuesday, there will be a university convocation/ceremony at 2 p.m. at Cassell Coliseum. The Inn at Virginia Tech has been designated as the site for parents to gather and obtain information.

28 thoughts on “The right to bear arms”

  1. Brief comments tonight!

    As far as I’m concerned, my right to not be shot outweighs someone else’s right to own a gun.

    Also, it will be VERY interesting to note what is said – or not said – about gender, as information becomes available. Tough Guise, a film by Jackson Katz, discusses the degendering of male violence by the media and will hopefully be in high demand in social justice -oriented classrooms in the next few weeks.

  2. Hi Michele – Thanks for commenting. I appreciate your words…although this is one of your shorter comments ;-)

    I think that both race and gender will be talked about quite a bit…

  3. I think also gun control will be talked about a lot. Preliminary reports say that the shooter had the serial umbers scratched off of the guns he used. Usually when you say there is no need to have legal ownership of guns you may be right. Unfortunately, usually violent offenders don’t buy their guns from the local store. Getting rid of the second amendment to the Constitution won’t do much to stop violent crime.

  4. Banning guns will solve nothing. If someone is sick enough to commit such an act, they will find a way, there are many weapons available. I bet a few of those students trapped in their classroom’s wished they had a gun to protect themselves.

    Jeff

  5. Hi Jeff – I think that prohibiting the manufacturing and sales of new guns/bullets might lesson the possibility of another tragedy occurring in which one person can hurt so many in such a short period of time.

    Thanks for commenting.

  6. Personally, I’m more for gun control reform than outright prohibition. The illegal market for weapons is already huge. Complete prohibition/non-US production will just make the illegal market larger and more lucrative. It would be kind of like the war on drugs. Yeah, that’s been REAL successful (not that I support it anyway).

    If someone else can purchase a gun illegally, I’d like to have the right to be trained in the use of my own gun legitimately so I can defend myself if this person with an illegal gun comes into my home (insert other potential situation here). Criminals may be more wary of entering homes or assaulting people if there is that chance a the person they are victimizing is armed. What happens when that factor is removed from the equation?

    I’m probably not your target audience here. I’ll be heading to a firing range pretty soon to fire off guns in a recreational manner, and I’m looking forward to it.

  7. Dang, I typo’d. The sentence in the second paragraph should read “criminals may be more wary of entering homes or assaulting people if there is a chance the person they are victimizing is armed”

  8. Hunting and self defense are both pretty good reasons, yes. If any one of those people at Virginia Tech would have also been armed and able to defend themselves this tragedy could have been much less severe.

  9. Ann – You are totally part of my target audience. I really don’t want my site to be full of comments that constantly agree with my views, thoughts, ideas, etc. That would be really boring and I wouldn’t have to think very much…

    J.R. – I’m looking forward to seeing you this weekend!

    I guess I’m not convinced with the idea that a classroom full of concealed weapons is what I want to walk into as an instructor/student affairs administrator.

    …and correct me if I am mistaken, but didn’t the shooter at Virginia Tech buy his guns legally (that’s the last news report that I read…)?

  10. Yeah, he bough it legally. My thing is, HOW he obtained the weapon is really irrelevant. If he had the intention of going on a killing spree with a gun as his weapon of choice, no legislation in the world would’ve been enough to prevent him from carrying out what he wanted to do.

    Like the old addage says, guns don’t kill people; people do. Focusing on weapons and trying to enact laws that outlaw weapons for all people except law enforcement and the military will only help to give even MORE power to those people that can already easily obtain (and will continue to easily obtain) illegal weapons. No laws in the world or bans on any inanimate object are going to change that fact or lessen crimes and other acts of violence and murder from happening, just like it’s not going to stop the wrong people from getting their hands on firearms. So why try and ban guns, when they have legitimate uses, in this case self-defense (and with that, peace of mind for those that responsibly keep a gun at home) or as main tools for hunting?

    If the next incident of mass killing involves some deranged lunatic bludgeoning multiple people to death with a baseball bat, I’d hate to go to Sportsmart and find out I can’t buy a bat because there’s been a ban on the sale/manufacturing and use of baseball bats because they were used as a weapon instead of for the use(s) they were intended for.

    I too am looking forward to firing some rounds off at the shooting range next month, and I see absolutely nothing wrong with having the right to do that.

  11. I think that there is a pretty big difference with the controlled environment of a shooting range vs. folks having concealed weapons on college campuses and the right to bear said weapons on ones person in a public place.

  12. The first three paragraphs were the real meat of my entire comment, not the very last sentence where I mentioned the shooting range. Any thoughts/ideas/opinions from you about the points and arguments I raised in my previous comment?

    Dunno about a handgun’s raison d’être, but Raison D’Etre from Dogfish Head is one of my favorite choices of beer ever! I don’t recall if you’re a big beer fan or not, but you should check to see if there are any stores or brewpubs that carry it. Good stuff!

    http://www.dogfish.com/brewings/Year_Round_Beers/Raison_DEtre/7/index.htm

  13. Hi Vic, Thanks for coming back…

    1st paragraph…I agree, people will always break laws.

    2nd paragraph…I guess I just don’t buy the “guns are necessary for self-defense or hunting” premise. People hunted for a long time without guns and I realize that modern firearms make hunting much more efficient but c’mon, how many people in the U.S. hunt for sustinence? Hunting has been reduced to a sport.

    3rd paragraph…do you really want me to address the “inanimate object” theme? The major difference between a gun and a baseball bat, knife, chainsaw, beer bottle, etc. is that a gun can kill/injure a lot of people in a short period of time from great distances. The gun vs baseball bat is not an apples to apples comparison. It’s more like apples and [fill in something completely unrelated to apples] :)

    It seems to me that a handgun’s raison d’être is to either kill people or animals…

    Okay, I gotta go to bed now…driving to PDX at 5:30am to catch a flight to Iowa…

  14. Did you know that the president’s first comment was something along the lines of ‘the administration will continue to support the right to bear arms’? For the first several hours of coverage that is all he had to say. He cold hearltedly made this tragedy political in the first moments. Of course, that comment has now been buried. But, it baffles me that his gut reaction to such an event is – we need to be allowed to have access to guns. I agree with Eric, having limited access to guns would hinder such violent acts. Countries where people are killing each other daily have access to guns. Should we really be on that list?

    In terms of prevention, I think we need to take a good look at how we treat each other and how class distiction (which is being furthered by this president) and cultural norms impact a person’s mental health. It is tough to forgive Cho’s acts. But, it is clear that he felt oppressed by this society that values money, English and well, whiteness. Just a side note, I find it interesting that although he was ridiculed for his lack of English skills as a kid, he majored in English.

  15. Two comments.

    First to Eric. How would you react if I made a comment to the effect of “Why should you be allowed to go out and voice opinions on a blog, especially opinions that could undermine the law of the land?” Sounds pretty silly doesn’t it? I bet that you would vehemently oppose that notion on the basis of freedom of expression. I would too. So why do you not give the same respect to our right to bear arms? Both are in the Bill of Rights? Where would we be in this country if we simply picked which rights they want to support and which ones we do not? The founding fathers were pretty wise based on the general success of the COnstitution, so why do so many people who would fight tooth and nail against a restriction on “their rights” not think twice to attempt to undermine the founders’ stance on firearms? And the excuse that they could not foresee what guns have become does not wash. I suspect they did not foresee what pornography has become either, but do you think we should rescind the right to freedom of expression?

    For Tanya, I simply say that that is a weak attack on President Bush to accuse him of politicizing the VT tragedy. That event hardly goes to support the concept of the right to bear arms. Rather, I see this as an attempt to ward off the inevitable efforts of the left to play this dark day to push their political agenda. Emotionally, seeing and hearing the news of these wasted lives leads to an reaction that is much more likely in tune with the notion of gun control. Fortunately, that is an emotional reaction because a logical consideration does nothing to counter the common sense of having an armed law-abiding populace.

  16. we hear about people having concealed firearms could have prevented this.

    Now would an armed citizen really have stopped a lunatic intent on committing suicide on a grand scale? I mean Klebold and Harris engaged in a shoot-out with an armed Sheriff at Columbine. That’s a real trained Law enforcement agent.

    Didn’t stop them from killing 13 people besides themselves.

    What would some armed citizen do to stop the violence if a trained cop couldn’t?

    First off, a private citizen does not have all the legal advantages a policeman does when he engaging in his official duties. The private citizen can legally only protect himself if he, his family, or his property is faced with immediate bodily harm. That harm must be resisted with the least amount of force necessary to stop the attack.

    So, if someone is coming at you and you could stop that person with something less than deadly force, use of deadly force makes the you the aggressor!

    Not to mention if Rambo with the gun there mistakenly hits someone besides the gun toting maniac. Think of the legal liability there!

    Hero to zero in nothing flat.

    Another problem is that the gun toting civilian could also be mistaken for the shooter and be shot himself by the cops.

    Really smart to try and be a hero given both those options.

    Additionally, some people point to Switzerland or Israel. The problem with those comparisons is that there is Universal Military service such that everyone is trained in the Use of firearms. That is a big contrast to the USA, in which the Universal Militia was a failed ideal.

    Would the situation be much clearer had the Second Amendment read, as proposed: “That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.” (From the Madison Resolution, June 8, 1789.

    The stuff we hear from the “RKBA” crowd is all a smoke screen to stop any serious gun regulation in the USA.

    SERIOUS gun regulation, not the crap that’s out there right now. Any “pro-gun” type will point out that there are thousands of gun laws on the books, but they don’t stop gun crime. That’s because they aren’t serious or enforceable.

  17. For me the meaning of this event comes down to a philosophical debate over humankind’s historical track record.

    All aspects of our lives have some negative toll- if I want a sheet of paper, at some point between the tree standing in the forest and my desk, someone probably died as part of the process, or at least, could have.

    This kind of weighing system is there for all things we employ- the chance that someone died doing their job to bring you whatever that is.

    Further, all aspects of our society and interaction with others has a cost. We decide to spend more on roads and less on social support programs, for example, and now a mentally ill person who ended up on the short list has nowhere to go but the street, a detrimental turn for them and whatever environment they decide to inhabit. It is doubtful that they will magically become productive without proper care. They may die, or steal, or hurt others. This is the cost that comes with living the way we live.

    I have to ask, given our myopic relationship with our own long history of making the same mistakes over and over- how much more power are you willing to release to the government at a time when the government is clearly eager to take it?

    And once access to the last resort in protection is gone, exactly what are we supposed to do about it?

    The price we pay for having the freedom we have and living the way we live is that sometimes someone blows a fuse and kills people in this fashion. It’s the same as accepting the loss tied to that sheet of paper.

    A mass killing like this is a sign of our country reaping what it has sown. We want to blame others for not protecting us, not recognizing this kid’s volatility, not making laws to prevent his access to guns, blah blah blah. It’s every one of us who is to blame for not fixing the world we live in, and it’s not going to change until we all decide it will- not through laws but through actually making a difference in the lives of the people who are standing right next to us. (A fanciful world, indeed)

    Our knee-jerk tendency to be litigious and generate yet more nonsensical laws -again- has a proven track record of failing to address whatever issues they set out to solve.

    I completely agree that keeping guns out of the hands of people who would do this is a great idea. The fantastically unrealistic situation where these broken souls who shouldn’t have access to guns could somehow be filtered out and kept from guns will never come to pass. Likewise, the day where gun ownership in this country becomes illegal will also never come to pass unless there is a nationwide state of martial law, and considering what that would take and the state our land would be in- if that happened, I am pretty sure you would wish you had a gun.

  18. I don’t know what the answer is but I do know that this country has made most narcotics illegal and implemented controls of sorts. Yet is still relatively easy to find anything you may crave out there on the “market”. So is gun control the answer? Perhaps it could be part of the solution but gun control by itself may not solve deeper issues. As far as the police, I believe that anytime you sanction someone with the authority to carry a gun (police officers) you are basically sanctioning them with the power to take your life. As a black man living in the U.S. I have a hard time blindly supporting a policy which would allow only police officers the right to carry a fire arm considering the past and current conditions of the relationship between police and non whites and poor people in this country.

  19. Car accident is the #1 killer out there, we all know and acknowledge that. However, we still trust 16 years old teenagers with them. All they have to do is to pay 12$ take a quick multiple choice, and circle around the block with an instructor at speed limit. Now we face countless death, DUIs, and so forth.

    I live in California. I see a lot of anti gun laws but absolutely no car regulations. I haven’t been lucky in my social circle, and I lost 3 close friends to 3 different car accidents (the cars that hit them are all drunk drivers) and also lost 1 friend who has been mugged and shot to death. The police says the gun was unmarked so they are having trouble locating the killer. Another friend sits in jail for shooting and killing a guy who tried to mug his wife in front of his house. The criminal’s gun was also unmarked. HE SITS IN JAIL FOR DEFENDING HIS WIFE!!!

    Some people are gun-maniacs some people are cars-maniacs. What is the use of a 300 horsepower car in the city? Now you might say that you need a car to get around. How about the bus, or the underground, or even a cab?

    Yes, just like any other matters, we can debate this forever. But because guns were originally designed to kill, they are the ones that gets the hit. They are the ones the governments or the people choose to stigmatize to justify their failure to protect their citizens or to properly raise kids. Of course if your dad always taught you that you are God Almighty with a gun in your hand, you’d end up taking pictures like the Virginia Tech shooter.

    People die because of our failure to listen. People die because the majority thinks that the best way to feel better is to put others down. Ganging up on someone because he is weak to make him feel weaker while making everyone else feel better. This society promotes the big and strong. All the commercials for products to help gain muscle making thin people look like useless weakling. All this contribute to forming mental psychopath. What can a weakling do when on the edge of snapping?

    I am 5’8″ and 125 lbs. Every week I hear someone commenting on how skinny I am… like I never noticed. But I spent most of my time living on the streets and those who try to prove that they can break me in half has met a fitting end: the hospital bed. I never killed anyone, but I fought a lot. I even had a gun pointed at me at point blank range. I broke his arm and made him regret that action. The police asked him is he wanted to sue me for inflicting him physical wounds. Thanks to his fear of retaliation, he did not consent. Otherwise I’d be sitting in jail with him. Yes, I have a pretty violent life and wounded a lot of people, but I never shot anyone. I own 4 handguns and a rifle.

    All the cases cited when a legally bought gun is used to kill someone, but we never hear of those who died in front of an illegal weapon. I live near Oakland, there are people shot every week, all of them shot by unmarked weapons. My girlfriend lives in San Francisco Mission District, a gun shot every two days, none of them legally bought.

    Actually, if I ever wanted to kill a lot of people, I’d rent a pickup truck, the kind you see towing trees and mountains on TV, and I would drive full speed through a crowd during the New Year’s countdown. That would make more than 33 death.

    I love shooting just as any of you love baseball. No one has ever heard me talking about shooting someone. Don’t ban the guns, ban the people.

    By the way, the Virginia Tech shooter HAD a medical history and he should not be allowed to buy guns. But the Virginia government chose to sell it to him anyway. Now instead of having a criminal record and medical record check (like in CA), they blame it on guns…

  20. Why do we need guns?

    There are a lot of legitimate uses of guns to include hunting, self-defense and just plain old recreational shooting. Some say that we don’t “need” to hunt. No we don’t, but why restrict our activities to only what we need to do? More children die in home swimming pools than are killed by fire arms. Do people NEED to have a home swimming pool? Hunting is deeply ingrained in American culture. This is lessoning as the country becomes more and more urbanized, but is it right for a bunch of city people to tell rural people what they can and cannot do? I grew up in a small town where none of the kids showed up for school on the first day of hunting season and everybody had at least one gun in the home. The murder rate was almost zero. The only murder I recall was when some people from out of town shot and killed a convenience store clerk in our one convenience store.

    Our founding fathers weren’t thinking of hunting or self-defense against crime when they put the second amendment into the constitution, however. Their primary purpose was to give people the means to protect themselves against a tyrannical government. Many of the weapons used in the revolutionary war were privately owned firearms. The founding fathers recognized that without these weapons, war against the British would have been difficult to get started.

    The second amendment was put in there to protect the rest of the constitution.

  21. The right to bear arms is a feminist position. For thousands of years, women were subjected to the violence of men. Men are generally speaking larger and stronger than men. Your average man versus your average woman with any weapons in their hands is a fight that the man will win almost every time.

    Except with firearms. When firearms were introduced in to an already violent western society, suddenly physical size and strength didn’t matter. Anyone who is not actually paralyzed can learn to handle a firearm. A woman with a handgun is an equal match for any man.

    Take away the right to bear arms and we go straight back to the old balance of power where might makes right. Where women have no choice but to be victims. Pepper-spray and that sort of thing is BS and we all know it. A man can physically kill a woman with his bare hands if he wants to. Only a firearm alters the balance of power.

    What you are advocating is a situation where government has ALL the power. Where individuals are at the mercy of their government and the whims of larger groups of violent people. If you think that government is always going to protect you from violent people then take one look at what happened after Hurricane Katrina. Apparantly we are always one election away from having a total moron in office who will completely fail to do what we expect from government. We are one sudden storm away from total anarchy and violence. A situation where roving gangs of violent young men are in charge. If there are no guns in that situation, then then the roving gangs with baseball bats or knives will win every time. But if they have guns and you have a gun, then you are probably ok. Because if you pull the trigger just once before they can get to you, one of them dies. It’s just not a risk they want to take.

    Tell you what; I’ll let you drive your incredibly dangerous half-ton car hurtling down the highway at over 60 miles an hour and you let me shoot my firearms on the local shooting range. Even though your cars kill far more Americans every year than my guns. Deal?

    By the way, plenty of people in America hunt for food. This may be hard for someone in your social class to understand. I do pretty well for myself but I have had times when I didn’t have money for groceries and feeding my family for the rest of the week was the only reason why I was sitting at the edge of a field with a rifle at dawn. There are millions of rural poor in America and most of them have at least one hunter in the family for a very practical reason. I don’t think you really understand the importance of 60 pounds of deer meat in the freezer for a family on a single minimum wage income. That is manna from heaven in December when you don’t know how to pay for Christmas presents for the kids and heating oil prices just went up.

    Can people hunt without firearms? Sure, it’s possible. But in Virginia during the 2005 hunting season, only 25% of those hunters who bought an archery permit for deer actually managed to get one in the course of the entire season. Primitive weapons are best used by dedicated subsistence hunters who are in the business of doing nothing all day but hunt. They can spend a week tracking one animal and waiting for it to come within arrow or spear range. But the modern guy in America who makes $7 an hour and has 2 kids to feed doesn’t have all week to track a deer. He has an hour after work before the sun goes down. Maybe most of a Saturday now and then if he’s lucky.

    You clearly don’t know anything about hunting. That’s ok. Most people in your social class do not. I don’t know much about cardiac surgery. So you know what I say when cardiac surgery comes up? Nothing. I keep my mouth shut and let people who have some idea of what they are talking about say their piece. And I learn from them because I have no clue what I’m talking about. So it is with hunting. M’kay?

  22. Jackson –
    Thanks for commenting. I am curious though as to what social class I am in? You work for an insurance company and are apparently the third generation to do so. Most of the members of my family have not even gone to college and and I am one of only a couple who have graduate degrees. I’m curious as to what my social class is compared to yours?

    Let me give you a little snapshot about my background:

    I grew up on a gravel road in rural Iowa. Hunting, guns, bows, fishing, etc. were an integral part of my experience growing up surrounded by corn fields and timber. My Uncle John gave me a bb gun for a birthday present one year and a recurve bow for another. I shot all sorts of handguns and rifles at my parent’s house. Several milk jugs were riddled with holes by myself and my brother. I grew up eating venison and pheasant meat. I used to read the Cabella’s catalog for fun.

    I may have a graduate degree and work in higher education but my class markers define who I am and how I relate to this world. I grew up eating government cheese and wearing clothes from the Goodwill.

    I appreciate that you took the time to write a comment on my site and I value your opinion. However, I do not appreciate when people diverge from “I” statements into the land of “you this” and “you that.”

  23. Eric,
    Primary purpose of firearms is TO PROTECT. Protect myself, protect my family, protect my community/country.

    Anyone who wants to take away MY ability to defend MYSELF and MY family against bigger, stronger, violent criminals has to be able to look ME in the face and tell ME that they do not trust ME with a firearm.

    Ever notice how there are no mass shootings in places where there are lots of people carrying firearms? Police stations, gun shows, gun stores, shooting ranges, rural areas with liberal carry laws, etc.

    Terrible shooting such as these take place in places where law abiding citizens are prohibited from carrying firearms: schools, post offices, etc. The killers can be very confident they will find plenty of unarmed victims in those locations.

    Besides, Eric, RIGHTS (such as the right to self defense) are innate, inalienable. Even if one accepted the proposition that banning guns was beneficial to society, that is no justification for depriving me of my inalienable right to use one.

  24. Constitutional Scholar,

    Joke.

    I have no legal or moral requirement to resist a violent attack with the LEAST amount of force necessary to repel the attack. I am required (again legally and morally) to use a level of force that a reasonable man would use under similar circumstances.

    Why do people go on and on and on and on and on and on about how “ordinary” citizens are to incompetent to use firearms to defend themselves. Another joke. Is it only trained attorneys who have legal rights in this country? Is it only “trained, professional” journalists who have the right and ability to publish papers and voice their opinions in this country?

    Your own post is hogwash. You say that ordinary citizens are unable to use firearms as well as the police; and to support this claim you tell of two kids who outgunned the police. Ridiculous.

  25. Eric I would like to respond to your previous post concerning your doubts regarding the necessity of gun control. The main reason we should be allowed to carry guns is because it is a right guaranteed in the second amendment which clearly states that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” How can a citizen at home being victimized by an intruder defend him or herself if there is no time to call the police? The person entering the house illegally is obviously not extremely worried with following laws in place regarding gun control so I do not believe it would affect whether or not the criminal is in possession of a firearm. You mentioned that guns should not even be produced; how could this possibly be regulated? First of all, police need to have firearms to pose some sort of a legitimate authoritative threat to criminals. Second, if guns were not legally produced, they would just be illegally produced and fall into the black market category of alcohol during prohibition. If humans know how to make a gun, a gun will be made, regardless of the legality behind the issue. The right to bear arms was a guaranteed right by the founders of this country for good reason; primarily the freedom and safety of those in this nation. This should be the policy that we continue to stick by.

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