OK, I'll have a bash at justifying heavy duty machine guns for all you loony pacifist types.

Obviously we need guns for our protection, and a regular gun's just fine if you're attacked by one assailant. However some situations call for more firepower. Just imagine yourself getting caught in the following situations without your trusty Beretta:

1. You are mugged by 30 gun toting, drug crazed maniacs at once.

2. You're called upon to rescue a large number of hostages (including your own wife) from a high office building, wearing a vest and no shoes.

3. A long lost army colleague drops in one day, and asks you to parachute into the South America rain forest, where, armed with only a strong Eastern European accent, you and your men are pursued by an invisible reptilian predator.

4. Settlers on a distant asteroid lose contact with Earth, and you are called in as technical adviser, due to the presence of a monstrous alien creature with vicious teeth and acid for blood.

5. Giant insectoid creatures launch a meteroite at New Buenos Aires, and only you and Denise Richards stand in the way of a grisly death for all mankind.

I'm sure you'll agree that these are the sort of things that could happen, without warning, every day of the week. QED we should carry machine guns at all times.

It's not necessarily about the right to defend your family from other people (though that is a pertinent issue). When it is guaranteed in the US Constitution, it is about the people defending themselves and their rights from the government. What if the only ones who have the guns are government officials? How would the average person be in power? Most regimes start by taking power and rights away from the citizens. Brandishing weapons is a way to curtail any such abuse of power.

Now that's a comforting thought too!

The wonderful thing about this forum is the fact that we can believe what ever we want, and share that with others in a civil manner. And I certainly respect and consider all views. Views that are contrary to my own cause me to continually reassess my own thoughts. I can understand those that are against guns completely as some of you are, and are simply for any thing that furthers gun control. I have no desire to change your mind.
What I can't understand is how you can be so sure of your position and yet realize you know little about the material.

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Needless to say these weapons you're debating with Jax, are totally out of the realm of comprehension for many of us..we simply cannot comprehend a valid use for having them..
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Automatic weapons have been tightly controlled since 1934, and eventually ban from manufacture and sale.
Since 1934 there have been created an estimated 20,000 state and federal gun laws. I am not saying some gun laws are not necessary, but presently have far too many. Each enacted after a disaster. Every time, thinking this is the one that will work. It seems gun control proponents will use any disaster to further their cause. And well intentioned citizens are sucked into the stampede with a misinformation. With names like crime bill, assault weapons bill, etc. Many not understanding the law and holding to a belief that one more gun control law can only help, not hurt. But they do hurt honest law-abiding citizens, and the problem goes on until another disaster occurs. We are not going to have an effect on mothers murdering their children in Texas by controlling rocks. And we will never understand or solve violence crimes until we realize that gun control is not the panacea.

Fact is there are estimated to be around 200 million gun in America. The percent that are misused are very small.

All or none of the thousands of laws have not stopped gun crimes. In fact statistics shows many laws have increased crime.
The reason gun laws have failed to stop crime is very simple. Criminals do not obey the law.

Another gun tragedy involving a child....

Student kills himself at school with father's gun

WELLSBORO, Pennsylvania (AP) --As he waited with his tractor-trailer to pick up a load of coal from a mine, David W. Roby used his cell phone for what would be his last conversation with his 12-year-old son. Before they hung up, he made sure Davey was getting ready for school and said he loved him.

An hour later the camouflage-clad fifth-grader was dying on a school bathroom floor of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Seven of his father's guns and hundreds of bullets were strewn around him.

Although relatives said they saw no warning signs, Davey's classmates told police that he was picked on by other pupils and had talked for months about killing students and teachers at the 548-student Rock L. Butler Middle School.

Roby, 44, is left with a heartache that won't go away and, like others in this picturesque community 15 miles south of the New York state line in central Pennsylvania, more questions than answers.

"We wonder if there was something going on inside that we just couldn't see," the father said Thursday, three days after the funeral.

The shooting, the third school suicide in Pennsylvania in two months, took place shortly before the start of classes on June 4. Three friends who had been in the bathroom with Davey left when they saw the guns, and school officials say one of them went to tell staff members.

After a fifth-grade teacher looked into the bathroom and confirmed Davey had the guns, the school started an emergency lockdown. A police officer responding to the call was about 30 feet from the bathroom when the boy put a Colt .45 handgun to the side of his head and pulled the trigger.

"We all heard a gunshot but everyone thought it was thunder," said 13-year-old sixth-grader Kristen Smith, who said Davey was "really shy" and got picked on because he weighed nearly 170 pounds.

The three other boys were stunned to see the arsenal Davey pulled from his father's scuba-diving bag that morning, said Tioga County District Attorney John F. Cowley. Authorities believe the other boys had not signed on to any school-attack plan, he said.

"I think in the end a scared little boy took his life because he was just cornered and he didn't know what to do," Roby said.

Roby believes that his son was acting out a child's fantasy and didn't intend to hurt anyone. He also suspects the other boys had indeed been part of the planning, citing the number of weapons involved as well as an incident in his own office the night before.

Davey and another boy were role-playing an espionage game with toy guns and ski masks. The game may have been practice for an assault on the school the next morning, the father said.

Roby said he does not blame the other boys for Davey's death. "These kids are devastated. I took time (at the funeral) to hug them and tell them that there's no hard feelings."

A hunter like many others in Tioga County, Roby enrolled his son in a hunter-safety course and made sure his own weapons were locked up. But in a fateful twist, he hung the key on a wall hook after finding it underneath the couch just two days earlier.

Roby speculated that after he left the house, Davey used the key to take the two handguns, three rifles, two shotguns and ample ammunition.

"He chose what I would say were his favorite firearms. He wasn't afraid to shoot the big guns and he liked them," Roby said.

The father felt he could trust his son, who he described as an obedient boy who spent the night before his death doing laundry and other chores.

But the file from his parents' 1997 divorce at the county courthouse indicates Davey received psychiatric treatment and that his mother expressed concerns about "psychotic" and "uncontrollable" violent outbursts.

The mother, Sharon Peet of Middlebury Center, did not return several telephone messages this week. Phone messages left with Roby on Friday seeking comment on the divorce records were not immediately returned.

Father and son lived alone in an unincorporated village known as Broughton Hollow, next-door to remnants of a propane business that Roby's father once operated.

An average student, Davey played sports, was active in a church youth group, loved fishing, and had recently discovered a passion and talent for go-cart racing. He won a third-place trophy during his first race.

Although Davey enjoyed playing "Metal Gear Solid," a commando-themed video game, his interests had lately evolved toward car-racing and flight-simulation games, his father said.

Davey did not leave a note, and a police examination of his computer and reading habits turned up no obvious clues about his reason for killing himself.

"You never can (tell) with a suicide, really," said Tioga County Coroner James Wilson. "Somebody's pretty desperate."

http://cnn.com

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Who knows how those 7 guns might have been used if this poor child had not killed himself first?