Insurance. I have insurance for my car, for my house, for my health, for my death, for my families health, for my families death, for legal representation. But, how much is enough? Do I need an umbrella policy. Do I need a bigger umbrella policy? How do we make insurance choices? Why pick one and not the other?
We pick what we can afford to pay and what we are willing to give to have assurance.
Most of the insurances that we are familiar with only payout after a tragedy has happened. They don’t payout because we avoided a tragedy. Ask your car insurance company for a payout because you avoided travel on a rainy night and therefore did not get into an accident.
An AED hanging on the wall costs about $1000. How much is it worth if someone drops with a hearth condition?
Being able to carry is part of my insurance plan. How much is my training and equipment worth if I have to use it. Can I put a value on my life or my families life?
It is different from the rest of my insurance. It is preparatory and available so that I might continue to buy the other insurances.
Those that oppose carrying just don’t understand that this is an insurance that I chose to carry so that I continue and that my family continues.
All of these issues are a major problem for responsible firearms owners. Training needs to begin early.
From a young age, I knew where dad kept the firearms and the cartridges. I also knew that if I put them together without a damn good reason, I’d be “eating off the mantle” for at least a month.
When I turned 13, dad bought 100 rounds of ,22 ammo for me to target practice with at my grandparents farm. My birthday present at age 14 was a 12 Ga. side-by-side. I still use it to this day.
Education is key. The ammo shortages are brought on by anti-firearm sentiment. The former can eliminate the latter.
Each of the choises are major items for not only gun owners but for those of us who carry concealed. I believe that the best thing for us all is to remain knowledgeable of the law, train endlessly, and to promote a national concealed carry law. This may not end our problems but would go a long way to help us remain lawful defenders of our people!
Right now, if you include the false views created by terms like "assault rifle, it is misinformation that is king.
A lie can be created and communicated in a thousand different ways, but the goal is always the same. Create a false or incorrect view, or belief, that will alter a persons choices so that they will fall more in line with the liars wishes.
The creation and passing of bad gun laws is one such topic where the misinformation comes first, be it “facts” about citizen gun ownership, or the reasons for restricting it. The lies come first.
These may be lies of omission, where relevant facts are hidden, or it may be lies of false characterization, where misleading names are used, and it may even be lies about seemingly unrelated things that, none the less, changes the equation and therefore, changes the result of deliberation.
Every imaginable technique has been employed to convince the American public to accept the loss of their rights, even going so far as to make a public show of the willingness and ability of activist officials to use their office to vilify and intimidate citizens who dare to defend themselves, ( even in the most overwhelming of circumstances ). This too represents yet another kind of lie, - the lie that it is somehow wrong to stand up against evil acts.
If defending yourself against crime and criminals is wrong, what possible use could anyone have for a gun? As crazy as that is, that message is out there, put forward by persons in positions of the public trust.
In my opinion, you have begun to surrender the fight when you accept the use of a term like “assault rifle” when it is a clear and obvious distortion of the truth. They should have been called out for their shameful attempt at mischaracterization and a stand should have been taken right then and there, to demonstrate that misinformation would not be tolerated.
After all, what is the importance of free speech if it is not to ensure that the truth can always be heard?
The “Media” includes the incipient reach of the “Social Media” on the internet that is far more pervasive and harmful than most of America realizes. Unfortunately, over the last few years, the left seems to have lost all honesty and has become driven by irrational hatred. That is fed by the lies from the collective media. We need an information structure equal to that of the arrogant Communist Left Media from which we can fight by using the truth.
Interesting, isn’t it? That now there are arguments being made that there is " no one truth ". Further evidence to me that they do, in fact, fear the truth, as it would be their undoing. That’s why all the shouting and censorship is going on, the truth is the most threatening thing out there that they have to fear. I think the vast majority people, left or right, would never allow all this- if they knew the truth.
And welcome to the community Dennis22
Democrats
We can stop playing defense, and start playing offense. First, as a community, we need to openly recognize, there is a gun problem in America. Denial gets us nowhere. We all pretty much groan when every day, there are shootings. A simple search of gun crime statistics will reveal that the majority of gun crime is committed with handguns. As everyone has pointed out, the media would tell us otherwise, that it’s all AR/AK platforms.
We need to collectively start providing solutions. It is going to be too costly to let the gun control advocates continue to offer “solutions.” Do I have any solutions? None that I’m comfortable with, but overall, this community has some much smarter people than me that may have some. Let’s start by offering some solutions that we can live with, and stop letting “those people” have the only solutions.
My town has only one newspaper. They will publish Half page anti 2 A and pro gun control syndicated editorials but refuse to publish my letters to the editor in rebuttal. I and any other pro 2 A readers have been “cancelled”.
The problem isn’t the guns. The problem, is the evil in the hearts and minds of people. More people are murdered with a baseball bat, than with guns each year. The solution, would be stiffer penalties for crimes involving the use of a gun. Many of these offenders, get a slap on the wrist, and get released back onto the streets.
Many that have that opinion are the same ones that wish to enact “gun control”. Their ideas on “gun control” always involve making legal firearm ownership more onerous, costly, and legally perilous. Let’s use that same method to fight the “War on Drugs”. Let’s make you get medical training, a license/permit, just to own common medicine, or better yet, “may issue” permits/licenses, because who really “needs” aspirin/acetaminophen, etc.; restrictions on how many pills you can have in each bottle of medicine, say 10 pills, regardless of how many bottles you then need to own for a prescription, or just common pain relievers, etc.
We already have registration for sudafed, and limits on how much you are “allowed” to buy on the theory that will prevent people from making and using Meth. That works as well as the rest of the controls on legal drugs to prevent the use of illegal drugs. The same logic applies to “gun control”.
The issue with the “gun problem” is that it is not a “gun problem”, but a crime problem. The legal ownership and use of firearms is not a problem. The crime is not the firearm, but the criminal acts that criminals engage in, regardless of whether or not a firearm is used.
When the conversation stops being about firearms, and about how to control crime, then we can set-out methods of controlling it (crime). As you likely have often heard, we do not blame knives for criminal use, nor even suggest banning common kitchen knives, even though they are used quite often in “knife” crimes. Nor do we blame cars for “car” crimes. About 40,000 lives are taken each year by automotive vehicles, and far more of those killed are children (about 1,400 in 2017) as opposed to accidental deaths by firearms (62 in 2017). I have not seen any proposals to ban felons from owning and using vehicles, nor do we have even have background checks, let alone “universal” background checks to purchase vehicles. Oh, I know why, because that would not prevent motor vehicle deaths.
The same argument is true for firearms. Felons are already not “allowed” to obtain, possess, nor use firearms, yet, as you stated, we read about them illegally obtaining, possessing and using such in the commission of their crimes. Passing yet another law against law-abiding citizens RKBA will not prevent criminals from using firearms in the commission of their crimes any more than your getting a background check to purchase a car will prevent car crashes.
My solution is written into many state constitutions and into our federal Constitution as the 2A, “shall not be infringed.” That is my compromise. I am for any firearm law that does not infringe on our RKBA. Sadly, our politicians and judges have trampled all over our RKBA for far too long. The 1934 NFA, the 1938 FFA, the 1968 GCA, the 1986 FOPA, the 1994 AWB, etc., etc., have not solved the “gun problem”, but more laws will? Obviously the solution is to teach criminals to obey our laws or go to prison when they don’t. Oh, wait, that does happen.
Maybe one more law prohibiting their use of firearms in crimes will make them stop doing that. That will probably work as well as making Marijuana illegal, which has been a federal crime since 1937, and still is a federal crime. Even in states that “legalized” Marijuana, you are only “allowed” to own a small amount, or face stiff penalties. Yet, even in those states, people are still breaking Marijuana laws. Maybe we need stronger Marijuana laws to prevent illegal use? That will work as well as yet another firearm law.
I honestly don’t know what anti-2A people think it is about guns in legal hands that’s so bad, but I wonder if there’s some bizarre notion that guns “corrupt” people. You know, like the Ring of Power in the Lord of the Rings.
I’m not going to test the theory, but I’ll bet half my social circle in my liberal city would suddenly distance themselves if they knew I both own firearms and shoot regularly.
Socialism is the single most threatening issue to firearm ownership and organizations such as the NRA and USCCA. And we are moving full speed ahead towards being a socialist country under the current administration,and its oligarch media allies.
I would disagree with your statement. In terms of this statement, the reality is that two things are true.
Firstly, all forms of gun violence which impact the innocent — whether it be mass shootings, gang shootings, or individual acts of murder — are deplorable.
Secondly, America does not have a gun problem.
The United States has a “lot of gun violence.”
Yes, gun violence does occur in the United States, but the United States is far from the worst by any relevant metric. Looking at the firearm-related death rate per 100,000 people in 2021, for example, the United States is ranked 11th, after Honduras, Venezuela, El Salvador, Swaziland, Guatemala, Jamaica, Brazil, Colombia, and Panama. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the United States is joint-55th when ranking by the rate of intentional homicides per 100,000 people.
So yes, gun violence does exist in the United States. However, the relevance of the connection between gun ownership and gun deaths — as opposed to the existence of gun violence as a form of violence — is the important part to analyze next.
Yes, there are a lot of guns in America. Yes, there is gun violence, but gun violence is declining as gun ownership is increasing.
No, America does not have a gun problem. IMO
All of the above…BUT…As an avid history re-searcher, ATF gun law site crawler etc. and having been up to my eye brows in the political arena for the past 28 years I truly believe the biggest danger now and for the past several years is the lack of American citizens watch dogging the leftist politicians, holding their feet to the fire, and a woeful lack of historical knowledge… we’ve been to busy “pursuing the American dream” now a technicolor, full screen nightmare. In '93 the democrats wanted to push for more draconian gun laws but decided it “just wasn’t the opportune” time. And please remember, during that time Clinton went after the Davidians (all with the RAH RAH RAH go gettim" slander of the “media”) with his “butcher in chief, Reno” after the supposed “alarm” that they had sequestered “thousands of guns and millions of rounds of ammo”…this was, I believe, the real reason that almost 86 AMERICAN men, women and children were first tortured mentally for 51 days then murdered with the un-Constitutional assistance of the United States military.,by the by also using CS gas, banned many years ago as “to cruel for warfare”!! Another quote from Reno added “fuel to the fire” (literally) “we’ll show those Christians whose boss” Yes, I heard her say this. And don’t forget Ruby Ridge. Both of these tragic events were “covered” by the leftist propaganda spewers as “They had it coming” in so many words. As a good friend said a while back “Auschwitz didn’t begin with the gas chambers.” Hitler first forced the Jewish people to register their guns. Of course when he started their elimination, his jack boots knew exactly where to round them up. Before this, was his constant rhetoric similar to what we’ve been hearing (but NOT on the lamestream “media”) from the left for many years. For a predator to obtain victory over it’s prey, the prey must first be disarmed. There are literally thousands of gun laws on the books. It’s not about law…it’s about disarming law abiding citizens. Also notice the deliberate gutting and weakening of criminal law over the last several years leading up to the insanity of deliberately gutting our law enforcement…we’ve seen this in living color for the past year! Criminals commit crimes with stolen guns…we the legitimate gun owing people get maligned for it. This is not and has never been random…it is deliberate with malice of fore thought. And lets not forget “Larry, Moe and Curly” IE:Hitler, Stalin, Lenin for openers…millions of innocent civilians murdered.
Welcome @Sylvia4 Democrats is the easy answer but more precisely I believe and I think you will agree, it is liberals/socialists who want to take control and dictate lifestyle and behavior.
Welcome @Lawrence_V The control of the media (print & electronic) nationwide is terribly slanted by liberal/socialist agendas,