1. Controlled, limited, and reasonable background checks which are readily available make sense. "Controlled and limited" due to respect for privacy, and "reasonable" meaning irrelevant facts about a person must not exclude him from being able to purchase a weapon.
2. There should be absolutely no limit on magazine capacity. No one can know how many rounds I'll need to protect myself.
3. There's no such thing as an "assault weapon". The term was coined by a Bill Clinton aide who was a gun control advocate. "Assault weapons" differ from other weapons capable of a certain degree of firepower only in appearance (
Assault weapon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). I mention this intending to educate. I'm sicka people throwing around ant-gun terms as if they know wtf they're talking about when they don't.
My first concern about gun control has to do with what the Founding Fathers knew when they escaped tyranny to come to the New World, who soon wrote the Bill of Rightsv(which of course was written to protect
us, common American citizens), considering the right to keep and bear arms important enough to be
second on their list. They knew more than any of us do. They experienced firsthand and from history that governments sometimes want to possess and oppress their subjects, and will when those subjects have no power to prevent them. The thing totalitarians - not only Nazis and Communists but any who disguise themselves as well-wishing good guys out to help the downtrodden - want to do is disarm their countries' subjects first. That's not opinion, it's historical fact.
My second concern about gun control is that laws limiting gun owners in any way ironically cause more gun violence (a term I completely detest, btw) because criminals don't obey laws. Nothing at all, least of all gun laws, prevent criminals from getting guns, including so-called assault weapons, and of course criminals rarely go through legal channels. What prevents a criminal from shooting someone is when he sees or fears that the individual in his sights has a gun, too. It's common sense.
To my chagrin, though I have an excuse, I haven't read sK's GUNS essay, mostly because there's no way any action causing gun control has not already proven itself nonsense, and also because I don't need the grief. I consider Mr King a friend (I don't know him, have never met him, yet still a friend). Most of my friends historically have leaned left politically. I don't know why that's been the case but it remains so. Maybe it's because I love people who have passion, and so-called liberals* are passionate. Of course, my reasons must include that I believe in many of the causes liberals believe in just as much or more than they do. I love and personally need true liberals enough to agree to disagree. After all, no two of us believe anything precisely the same way. I'll end this thus: I say that most of the members here are not what's known as Modern American Liberals*.