Wouldn't be OK with restriction on free speech beyond what we have now. Wouldn't be OK with government confiscation of all guns. Am OK with some restrictions, but believe strongly that they need to be uniform and hence federal rather than state by state. Not going to try and amass enough firepower to hold out against the U.S. army when they come for me. OK with universal national service for a year or two so long as there is some choice in what type of service. Not OK with trying to force everyone into the same mold. You are probably aware that although firearms are common in Swiss households (locked up), the Swiss have very restrictive and tightly enforced gun laws.
I've never understood why the focus is on this very narrow definition of "assault weapon" which involves the barrel length, short or folding stock, the presence of a flash suppressor and the accommodation of large detachable magazines. You can still buy an M1A (.308) but they don't seem concerned about those because they are "long rifles". Buying an M1A in California requires nothing but a 10-day waiting period. You can sell the gun to anyone afterwards and no record of the sale is needed. Buying a .22 Pistol requires a background check and the weapon must be registered, there is the waiting period and the seller will usually required to you look at a safety video after which they give you a safety card to carry in your wallet. Ownership cannot be transferred without an FFL holder handling the sale. I think the whole idea of banning semi-automatics is unworkable. I don't have a link but I'm pretty certain that the majority of guns being sold are semi-automatic and after years of shunning them I've bought a few myself in recent years. I've read that there are something like 65 million gun owners in the USA and I suppose that nearly all of them have a semi-automatic or even more than one. Are they going to go door-to-door asking for them or just place draconian criminal sentences on people who are caught with them? If the ban is only on new sales of semi-automatics how is that effective if there is 60 or so million of them already in private hands? I still haven't gotten a direct answer on the question "why punish millions upon millions of law abiding gun owners instead of concentrating on the mentally ill people who are shooting up schools, theaters and political events?
They will tell you that nut jobs can't get them if we don't have them. I"m still waiting for an answer on this one:
go to your local gun store or even shop online. You're making arguments against things that don't exist. hey man, I didn't label the ar-15 and its variants 'civilian', but they AREN'T the same gun used by our military so I just pointed that out to you. any gun and any number of other weapons used would have still produced tragedy at Newtown. These events are anomalies, and no amount of legislation, and no ban on a type of gun or even all guns will prevent violence in the future. Gun confiscation on the other hand, would turn MILLIONS of innocent, law-abiding Americans into criminals for NOT giving up their birthright.
The agenda is to disarm Americans like most of Europe. The rest are just baby steps in that direction. Just like gay marriage is on it's way to becoming the same as hetro marriage in all respects and government dependency is on course to become available for all. Eliminate the rich through taxation and regulation making government the sole authority over our lives as we make a slow march to socialism, then communism and Marxism and soon it will be the Orwellian society. Just look how far we have come already. The end game is the great society with one world government controlling everyone and everything. Watch out for the thought police. Maybe the robots really will become smart enough to save us from ourselves.
Because we don't know who all the crazies are. Which is why we don't let just anyone have nukes, because the cost of a crazy emerging and employing the technology is too high. So everyone is "punished". We don't know who all the criminals are, but the police need to be more powerful than them. As we don't know if you are crazy or not, or if you'll become crazy one day, you are "punished" by being left at a relative power disadvantage vis a vis the police. Again, everyone is "punished" because of the inevitable existence of crazies and criminals.