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Doomination has already begun!
MQ-1 Predator
MQ-9 Reaper

Doomination has already begun!
MQ-1 Predator
MQ-9 Reaper

I haven't said a thing about protecting your home or owning firearms, so you can stop arguing about that at any time, shame302. I'm showing support of removing concealed weapons and assault rifles from the hands of average citizens. Civilians.

After reading your last reply to Carmen, Shame302, I've concluded that you can type fairly well, but you really don't have much in the way of reading comprehension, or at least your memory is painfully short. The fact that your reply to his comments of hunting include his desire to ban all guns is shocking. No wonder this is going in circles. If we don't read and actually listen to each other, the discussions are pretty pointless, aren't they?

Hunting most certainly serves purposes, one of which you admitted to (population control). It also puts meat in the freezer, or do you think I should be forced to buy my food? What if I can't afford it? This was actually the case with me in the year following my car accident, when I was so broke I'd have starved without deer meat and rabbits. It also generates important revenue for government (in particular, the Natural resources department, which is funded almost entirely by hunting and fishing permits).

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out lawing assaoult riffles is just another step towards outlawing them all. i personally dont think you can ban one reasonably without banning them all. they need to be protected just as much as any other firearm. thats my take on it. you say i need to stop arguing home defense but its a lagitamite reason to own a firearm

Here's a good read for you guys:
http://www.gunowners.org/fs9403.htm

Take note that it has CITATIONS at the bottom ;)

Assault Weapons Not the Choice of Criminals
 
 
When the gun control side has it pointed out to them that their sweeping "assault weapons" bans will disarm large numbers of voters, they usually come back with a more limited bill which affects a certain number of scary-looking firearms that they claim are the choice of criminals.
Actually, police departments nationwide agree that criminals do not prefer these weapons:
* Police View: Over 100,000 police officers delivered a message to Congress in 1990 stating that only 2% to 3% of crimes are committed using a so-called "assault weapon." (16)
* Florida study: In Florida, only 3.5% of the guns recovered by the police were guns that could loosely be defined as "assault weapons." (17)
* California study: The California Department of Justice suppressed an official report showing that "assault weapons" comprised only 3.7% of the guns used in crime. (18) While the report was eventually leaked to the media, it received little press coverage.
* Virginia task force: A special task force on assault weapons found that only 2.8 percent of the homicides involved "assault-type weapons" during 1992. (19)
* Connecticut: The Department of Public Safety reports that only 1.79% of all confiscated firearms were "assault type weapons." (20)
* New Jersey: The New York Times reported that, "Although New Jersey's pioneering ban on military-style assault rifles was sold to the state as a crime-fighting measure, its impact on violence in the state . . . has been negligible, both sides agree." (21) Moreover, New Jersey police statistics show that only .026 of 1 percent of all crimes involve "assault rifles." (22)
* Nationwide: The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in 1993 that violent criminals only carry or use a "military-type gun" in about one percent of the crimes nationwide. (23) * Knives more deadly: According to the FBI, people have a much greater chance of being killed by a knife or a blunt object than by any kind of rifle, including an "assault rifle." (24) In Chicago, the chance is 67 times greater. That is, a person is 67 times more likely to be stabbed or beaten to death in Chicago than to be murdered by an "assault rifle." (25)

Assault-Type Semi-Automatics Often Less Dangerous
 
 
California's new assault weapons law bans firearms like the AK-47, which fires a 7.62x39 cartridge, and the UZI, which fires the same 9mm cartridge which more police departments are turning to for their departments' handguns. Neither of these bullets will do half as much damage on impact as the .30-'06 cartridge used by an ordinary deer rifle.
When firing comparable bullets, a 7.62x39 cartridge will generate only two-thirds of the muzzle velocity of a .30-'06 cartridge (2350 feet per second vs. 3140) and barely half of the muzzle energy (1495 foot-pounds vs. 2736). (35) Yet the .30-'06 was invented in 1906, long before the weaker cartridge used by the AK-47. (36)
Why would the military want to switch from a more powerful cartridge to a less powerful one, as it has done? Mr. J. Bolton Maddox, a retired Washington police captain, flatly stated that semi-automatics like the AK-47 were designed to wound, rather than kill. (37) A well-placed shot from any firearm can be fatal. But obviously, a person has a better chance of surviving being shot by a bullet meant to wound a 170-pound man instead of a bullet meant to kill a 500-pound animal.

Politicians Using Assault Weapon Issue as Political Ploy
 
 
Advocates of gun bans of this sort continue to claim that criminals and drug dealers prefer these firearms. The evidence suggests otherwise. Of the 72 murder weapons used in the District of Columbia in 1989 which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was asked to trace, precisely one was a rifle of any kind. (38) Of the 16,370 firearms seized in New York City in 1988, rifles of all kinds totaled 1,028. (39) (A firearm can be seized for any number of reasons in New York City, including a lack of the proper permit.)
Politicians have seized on this issue not because there is a great problem but precisely because this is a visible issue which appears to affect few people. They can appear to be "doing something" about crime without putting people in jail. Governor Mario Cuomo of New York berated the New York Legislature in 1989 for failing to pass an assault weapons ban in order to protect the police. But it turned out that no police officers were killed with an "assault weapon" during the entire previous year. (40)
Similarly, New Jersey Governor James Florio railroaded the legislature into passing a ban on semi-automatics in 1990, even though "assault weapons were not used in any murder in the state in 1989." (41) Furthermore, the New Jersey State Police admitted that at the time the ban was enacted, they did not have "complete figures on their [assault weapons] statewide use by criminals." (42) Yet despite this lack of hard evidence that there was any problem whatsoever, a law was passed which made criminals of the owners of 300,000 firearms. (43)
The events in New Jersey should remind us exactly what a ban on what many mistakenly believe to be a small group of firearms will mean in practice. Even though military-style semi-automatics are a relatively small part of the nation's firearms stock, a ban on such firearms inevitably must affect more traditional-looking rifles and shotguns. There is no way to mechanically differentiate the firearms proposed for registration or confiscation from the ordinary centerfire rifles honest citizens have used for sport and recreation for years.
Now that Congress feels it can ban some firearms, despite the clear wording of the Second Amendment, exactly what protection do other firearms have? Recall that New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan suggested recently that Congress could ban the sale of 9mm ammunition on the basis that they had already banned Teflon-coated bullets. (44) This ban, it is safe to predict, will have no effect on criminal behavior, which will lead to cries for still more stringent gun control. New York City's original handgun permit law was sold to the public back in 1911 as a way to stop killing. The City murder rate leaped 18% over the next 12 months. The legislature decided the law was too weak 68 times over the next 70 years -- but fewer New Yorkers than ever feel safe in their homes, let alone their streets and parks. (45)

Military-Type Firearms Are Protected by 2nd Amendment
 
 
Assault weapons legislation not only disarms honest hunters and sportsmen while not further troubling the thug and his already illegal and far more deadly sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun, but it also cuts out the heart of the Second Amendment to our Constitution.
The Second Amendment was enacted not to protect hunters and sportsmen, but to ensure that the government never had a monopoly of force it could use to oppress the citizenry. Events not too long ago in Panama, China and the Soviet Union should remind us once again that when a government has a monopoly on the means of effective defense -- like semi-automatic firearms -- there is no check upon its appetites.
Even in this country, government officials can go too far. Consider a small sampling of abuses that have occurred in this decade alone:
* In 1992, government agents murdered a mother and son in the mountains of Idaho. The father, Randy Weaver, and a friend had used a deer rifle even more powerful than a standard military rifle to shoot back at the agents. (Before he was killed, the son had also used a semi-automatic military type rifle to return the agents' fire.) Weaver and his friend killed one agent, although a jury later acquitted both of these men, deeming they had used justifiable force in self-defense. (46)
* New York City and Chicago have begun confiscating firearms of law-abiding citizens, report newspapers in each city. In New York City, officials are using registration lists to identify gun owners, while in Chicago, police are making random searches in apartment complexes. (47)
Noted constitutional scholar Stephen Halbrook has dospoogeented that "[t]he British attempt to seize or destroy the arms and ammunition at Lexington triggered the revolutionary shot heard around the world." (48) Some of those arms were among the finest available at the time and helped win America her independence from tyranny. The British could not understand why the colonists wanted to keep their military-style flintlock muskets since the British Army was there to "protect" them. Today, the same question is asked about the paramilitary assault rifles owned by hundreds of thousands of Americans.
The issue has remained fundamentally the same over the years. The Founding Fathers in their wisdom tried to guarantee that no future tyrant, be he domestic or foreign, could impose his will upon a helpless population.
Those who argue that the authors of the Second Amendment did not intend to protect the right of ordinary American citizens to own military-style weapons must contend with the fact that the same Congress which passed the Second Amendment also passed the Militia Act of 1792. This law required every free male between the ages of 18 and 44 to own the same type of rifle that was used by soldiers in the Revolutionary War and to own ammunition as well.

The Supreme Court confirmed this in 1939. The Court stated in U.S. v. Miller:[INDENT]The Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense . . . [and that] when called for service, these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time. (49)[/INDENT]Thus, military-styled firearms are constitutionally protected firearms for individual citizens. The Court's reference to the militia is not a reference to the National Guard but "all males" who are physically able to defend the country.

As stated by a U.S. Senate Subcommittee in 1982:[INDENT]There can be little doubt from [the Militia Act of 1792] that when the Congress and the people spoke of a "militia," they had reference to the traditional concept of the entire populace capable of bearing arms, and not to any formal group such as what is today called the National Guard. The purpose was to create an armed citizenry, such as the political theorists at the time considered essential to ward off tyranny. (50)[/INDENT]This nation has enjoyed 200 years of freedom because, like the Swiss and the Israelis, individuals have the right to bear arms that can be used effectively against would-be tyrants, both foreign and domestic. That is a far surer foundation for our freedoms over the next 200 years than some bland assurances that we have nothing to fear and never will.

okay, way to back track. you dont seem to get it. out lawing assaoult riffles is just another step towards outlawing them all. i personally dont think you can ban one reasonably without banning them all. they need to be protected just as much as any other firearm. thats my take on it. you say i need to stop arguing home defense but its a lagitamite reason to own a firearm. if i want to protect my home with an "assault weapon" i should be able to. dont intrude on my property, and you would never see it. you either believe i should be able to protect my home, or you dont.
 
protecting your home and protecting your person, its all relative. assuming that even though you "havnt said a thing about protecting your home or owning firearms" your veiw is that nobody should have the right to own them. i dont believe for a secont that you are a supporter of gun ownership.
 
would you feel better if the law allowed a person to carry but rather leagally the firearm by law would have to be exposed?
 
it sounds more like you have a problem with people having arms at their side period. you do not believe in personal protection.
 
again, taking firearms weather it be assault weapons, handguns concealed or otherwise are an infringement on or freedom to do so, and would be the road to a thorough ban on forearms all together. (this would make a frightned person like yourself happy) no?
 

 
dude, you need to get over yourself.
 
what exactly did i say to carmen that was so shocking?
 

 
 
hunting serves a purpouse. sure. but having the right to own a gun to hunt carries no more warrent than having the right to own and or carry a gun to defend myself. i believe you have every right to hunt. i believe i have every right to protect myself.
 
"do you think i should be forced to buy my food?"
"do you think i should be forced to allow a preditor kill me, rape my wife and kill her and my children while he pilferages through my belongings?"

i dont believe for a secont that you are a supporter of gun ownership.

the point wasnt that an assault weapon is the best way to defend your home