Biden: New Gun Laws Wont Guarantee End To Mass Shootings

[Precocity]

[Precocity]

Gun control in reference to assault weapon bans reminds me of a story my mother told me when I was a teenager. We were sitting on the back porch during the summer going through the basket of apples that we picked from the two apple trees we had in the backyard. She wanted me to help her take out the bad ones that had obvious deformities/rot or worm holes to throw them out. The basket had a mix of ones picked off the tree and the ones picked up from the ground. Most of them were good but we did find a few bad ones.

I asked her why don't we just throw all of the ground ones away since it was obvious that the there were more bad ground ones than tree ones. She reached into the basket, pulled out a large one that she remembered picking off the tree, turned it around to examine it and noticed a small worm hole in it. She simply said, "this one came off the tree - see the wormhole?"

Next came the punchline. She told me to never make assumptions. Just because they came off the tree doesn't mean they were ok and just like the ones off the ground didn't mean they were bad. She said there's bad no matter where you find it. She finished it up with, "a few bad apples don't ruin the whole basket" (in a opposite twist from the one bad apple ruins the whole barrel saying). She made a small laugh and handed me another apple.

Of course being a young teenager, I didn't quite grasp the real meaning of it and only just nodded my head and went back to work. Now that I'm much older, I can go back to that story and apply it to gun control. What we see here are a few bad apples (mass murderers) ruining the whole basket (2nd Amendment). When you see politicians using that reasoning, it stops me and make me reflect to that story. What we need to do is pick out the bad apples, one at a time, not dump out a portion of the barrel, including mostly good apples, in the hopes of removing a few bad ones.

Now before all of you go off with bad analogies or there's a difference because people are getting killed, I understand there's a difference. What I will never accept is that the idea that banning assault rifles and large-capacity magazines is a good approach. Tightening up the existing laws and reforming (if needed) universal background checks are picking out the bad ones - one at a time. Not only is this logical, it also has tremendous support across both aisles of Congress.

Dumping out a portion of them with the expectation that some bad ones will be removed is not only fallacious, it steps on the toes of the 2nd Amendment.

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Why isn't banning assault weapons a good approach? They're the guns that can do the most damage and are pretty useless for anything except mass killing.

[Precocity]

[WizardfromOz]

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[Precocity]