The Second Ammendment Lobby and Police Safety

[TheCurmudgeon]

I'll add some questions to this original one. Mine may expound on this question, if I understand it correctly.

Do US citizens truly own 'assault weapons' (what a horrible term to use in a civilian context) to defend their rights, and to defend themselves against a wayward government (rather than just home intruders)? Or is the actual ownership of those weapons in and off itself the ultimate manifestation of those rights? Can it be that the right to defend against a wayward govt has become a straw-man for the ownership of (these) guns? With other words, have the means become the end?


If the distinction between different classes of guns was never made, would the conversation still exist? I should think so. But would it be just as heated, or do these distinctions serve to concentrate and perhaps increase the heat in one direction?

Kiwi,

I am not sure I would have noticed the pattern unless it had been tied to a specific weapons system. Americans have always tied gun ownership to liberty, but this seems somehow different.

It also does not seem to be tied to any one complaint. Just a general feeling of government oppression. That is the part that scares me. It seems like a "Rebel without a Cause" type of thing.

So if I am seeing this correctly, there is a general dissatisfaction with the American government. A portion of the population is beginning to feel that the normal means of dealing with government dissatisfaction - free speech and the vote - are no longer adequate to deal with the problem. To top it off, they are don't seem to be able to articulate what the problem is.

At first I would have thought of it as a straw man argument for ownership. That is what I had thought for some time. But now it seems like people "believe the hype" so to speak.