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Guns in America

Why Semi-Automatic Weapons Should Be Taken Off The Market



A man with brown hair and a beard wearing glasses and a plaid shirt, standing by a wall.
Charlotte, NC

I grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, where you didn’t have to drive very far to find people who hunted with guns, but primarily the people who owned guns were in gangs. So, the people I knew who had guns growing up I already associated with bad stuff; guns weren’t a southern thing, but a gang thing. It was different where I went to high school, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It’s very outdoorsy, and there being outdoorsy meant hunting.

Once, I got tossed a loaded shotgun in a parking lot because my friend wanted to show me something cool, but I reacted with fear. It was clear he thought I was weird for that and that it was another example of northern condescension in response to southern culture. It’s not like southern people who own guns don’t recognize the danger of guns, but it’s so normalized; at parties, people would shoot hunting rifles at beer cans and it was just a fun thing to do. I just never got away from the city identifiers that saw a gun and assumed danger.

Guns are not actively malicious just like a power drill isn’t actively malicious. Both are tools that could hurt people, but just because you have a drill or a gun in your house doesn’t mean it’s going to hurt someone. Guns are such powerful tools and to own one is a huge deal, but that’s not fully reckoned with on either side of the gun debate. Pro-gun people don’t always recognize how large of a burden it is to own a firearm, but anti-gun people don’t think gun owners are aware of their responsibility at all. Most gun owners I knew in the south were educated and responsible who took appropriate security measures.

I think any semi-automatic weapon should be taken off the market because it’s not necessary to have for hunting, but guns used for sport should be available for sale with more stringent policing of gun ownership requirements.

The regulations need to be responsibly enforced, unlike the way drug possession is brandished like a threat because that just increases distrust of the government. Instead, there should be gun safety courses and ID checks run through local police departments for every firearm purchased. If local police forces are involved with the gun owners and the gun control processes, this collaborative approach would decrease distrust on both sides. Law enforcement would know who had guns and gun owners would know their right to own a gun was being respected.

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1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. Dr. Xram

    April 21, 2018 at 10:51 pm

    I appreciate your concern and your attempt at understanding the gun owner’s perspective. However, I would like to make some points that perhaps will help you understand our position better. First of all, the right to keep and bear arms that is protected in the 2nd Amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with hunting. Nothing at all. It’s purpose is to provide the means to carry out the God given right to self-defense and the defense of liberty. For that purpose, firearms adequate to that task are required. Anything less is an egregious violation of our fundamental civil rights. What would those weapons be?

    Adequate weapons must be of a sufficient grade to allow for a threat to one’s life to be met with force sufficient to neutralize it. While we might desire a utopia where criminals do not have access to deadly weapons, no amount of gun laws or gun bans will reduce this threat. It is essential that law-abiding citizens have guns equal to those possessed by most criminals. This means semi-automatic weapons with standard size magazines (15 rounds for a hand gun and 30 for a rifles are standard size, not “high capacity”). Most criminals do not use automatic weapons (commonly known as machine guns). According to CDC data, there are at least 10 times more self-defense uses of guns each year than there are gun homicides. Some researchers report much more. Thus, a ban on semi-automatic weapons would endanger the lives of millions of law-abiding people by removing their most common means of self-defense.

    There is often some confusion concerning semi-automatic weapons. A semi-automatic weapon only fires one round for each pull of the trigger. Automatic weapons fire continuously for as long as the trigger is held down. Semi-automatic rifles are generally not military grade. In fact, the much reviled AR15 is not used by any military and is even banned from deer hunting in many states because the round it fires is not powerful enough for that purpose. The average deer rifle is at least 2x more powerful than an AR15. It is not a true assault rifle.

    Assault rifles, current military rifles, have been banned from civilian purchase since 1986. Semi-automatic weapons, however, comprise the vast majority of all firearms currently sold and owned in the United States. Not only would it be a severe violation of our civil rights to ban them, such a ban would not be enforceable, and quite frankly, most gun owners would simply ignore it. There is no doubt, whatever, that an attempt to enforce such a ban would lead to resistance, probably violent, that would do enormous danger to the peace and stability of the United States. It is highly unlikely that military and law enforcement personnel would agree to enforce such a ban in any case. It is more likely that they would join resisters of such a ban.

    You say that you want gun owners to know that their right to own a gun is being respected. However, your support of a ban on semi-automatic guns is profoundly disrespectful of our rights. It is, therefore, hard to take you seriously as one who respects such rights. Perhaps this is due to your lack of knowledge, rather than any malice. I hope you will reconsider your position, in light of better information. However, if that is not the case, then know that you will be viewed as an enemy of freedom, the Constitution, basic civil rights, and America, by the very gun owners that you seek to understand and dialogue with. Please note that we will not accept any compromise nor will we negotiate concerning our rights.

    Rather than persecute law-abiding citizens, you should concentrate your efforts on policies that will actually prevent criminals from committing senseless acts of violence. The measures you propose will not do so. They will not effectively disarm criminals. They will not generally disarm current law-abiding gun owners either. They will, however, succeed at turning law-abiding gun owners into unwilling felons. I’m sure this is not your intent, but it will certainly be the result. Meanwhile, senseless shootings will continue unabated. Please consider these facts as you rethink your position.

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