Most criminals, and certainly the two who killed Sergeant Liczbinski, are ALREADY banned from possessing firearms, no more law is needed.

So was the illegal alien who shot a young black man recently in my town, less than 24 hours after release after serving a sentence on felony assault. He is banned from owning a firearm as an illegal alien and a felon, and it took him less than 24 hours to acquire a handgun and ammo, and find a target.

See how effective gun bans are? This is why people like you lose the arguement. Bans don’t affect the people doing the shooting, and it is bad people doing shooting, not guns and not the law-abiding gun owners you think should be disarmed.

Your inability to see the failure of your illogic, to see what two decades of “shall issue” laws have done to crime rates, is criminal in itself. You would put the law-abiding at higher risk by implementing a demonstrably failed policy.

How many will have to die before you admit you are wrong?

I don’t really believe that, just like I don’t believe in more gun control. Because with such restrictions, the news media will be more likely to be controlled by the government-bureaucracy party and become instruments of that party.

Kind of like back in… uhh… now.

I very much appreciate your sincere reply. Yes, there will always be violent, dangerous criminals. One approach is to ban guns in the hopes that they will be less dangerous. But I’m not sure if being shot is worse than being strangled, clubbed, or knifed to death. Guns equalize these matters…particularly for women. Defensive handgun use benefits women FAR more then men, as women are more easily overpowered. And dangerous, violent criminals can be killed lawfully, by you, by me, or by anyone in any of the 50 states (justifiable use of force to prevent death, bodily injury, or in Illinois, the commission of a forcible felony). We might differ here…if my wife were to kill a would-be rapist, I would say that death was good. To some, no deaths are good, yet to others death to those who deserve it is good.

It’s amazing how divisive this gun issue is. How entrenched both sides are. It’s a little similar to the abortion issue (I am pro-choice but trying to convince a true pro-lifer is impossible). Or the evolution issue (I am an evolutionary biologist, but trying to convince a true creationist is impossible). And so, perhaps, it is with guns. Thankfully, those of us that keep and bear arms, and value the right, have history, the constitution, case law, and public opinion on our side. And we anticipate a biggie with the Heller case.

Need? Plenty of reasons to need guns. But really…needs are considerations of priviledge. Not rights. You don’t need a reason to excercise a right. Sorry, but that’s the way it is. Even if I didn’t need a gun, you could not justify taking it away (outside an appeal to Article V of the constitituion). I can justify the need to own guns, but be assured I do it out of courtesy to you, and not becasue I’m required to justify a need. Assault weapons? Sure, I can think of times that I might need one. Remember the LA riots and the shopkeepers on their roofs, defending against lawless looters? That is a time when having such a rifle could save everything you own, and have worked so hard for. But I don’t own any assult weapons, as they’ve been heavily regulated by the Fed since 1934 (GCA). I do have several semi-automatic rifles, and one of which is just like the one that deranged SOB used to kill the Sergeant. But regardless of what the Philly media tells you, an assault weapon it was not, because it fires semiauto only. Gun owners can’t stand to have the guns we know so much about misrepresented by people with a political agenda that don’t know squat about guns. You call that rifle an assault weapon and you tell an outright lie.

So if that big bad gun lobby conceded on semiauto firearms, then what? Then there would be a new campaign to ban another class of firearms, say pump shotguns. Then gun owners would resist that, and you’d complian that it was irrational and unreasonable to resist such a ban. After all, who really needs a gun like that. Then we are “reasonable” again….and next, it’s all bolt-action guns. And on, and on, and on. Until all firearm ownership is criminalized in the US. This happened in England, and we are very aware of that. And we know that the incidence of violent crimes are growing in England by leaps and by bounds. They are talking about banning kitchen knives, now. They just don’t get it. We do. What happened in England will not happen in the US. Can’t accept the reality of the 2A and an armed populace? Move to England. Or Russia. Or Brasil. Or Myanmar.

“All constitutional rights have limits.” On this we agree. “So should the Second Amendment.” On this we agree, too. Yet the devil is in the limits. Reading DC’s briefs in the Heller case, the limits that Dellinger and DCs amici argued were reasonable were complete and utter bans on all handguns and any functional long guns. What is reasonable about a total ban? This was John Robert’s question. A total ban is clearly unreasonable (under the constitution), and you know it. It’s pretty hard to reaonably limit “shall not be infringed.” Reasonable to me? Clearly, criminals and mentally ill have no right to arms…indeed, they are not even in the militia. Another? Don’t shoot anything or anyone unless you are lawfully justified in doing so. But keep the law reasonable. It’s inherently reasonable to shoot a burglar in your house at night, or a car-jacker in the parking lot, or a rapist in the forest reserve. Anyway, rules such as those are consistent with the right to keep and bear, that shall not be infringed. Keep whatever you want, bear whatever you want, but just don’t use them unlawfully. That’s the kind of limit the 2A should have.