Rose we've been through this before and I've been though this with a lot of others too... It's a common response from people who don't have a counter argument for any of the points I make. They revert to this i***t idea that you can't talk about guns without being an expert on everything there is to know about them. I'm not going to pretend that I spend half my life obsessing over guns, joining gun clubs and going to every gun show that rolls into town. I'm not what I would call a "gun nerd". But I did grow up with guns and I know how to use and maintain the guns I own. That's good enough for me and it's more than enough to understand the impact they have on society or the pros and cons of gun control.

Oh THAT! - LOL One of the most overused joke-arguments ever... "Criminals are people that break the law so therefore they wouldn't be the one's abiding by a gun control law."

Ah, the bliss of a simple mind...

Never mind the fact that most serious gun control laws aren't meant for "criminals" to follow in the first place. They're meant for the dealers to follow so that certain types of guns are effectively removed from the market.

If a gun is taken off the market, it won't be so easy for a criminal to get one. It won't be impossible but it will be a LOT harder AND riskier. Not just for them but for anyone else which means there will be fewer of them left around by careless owners where their r****ded klds or their friends can find them.

All around it decreases the chances that such a gun will wind up in the hands of criminals or i***ts whether they buy them, borrow them or steal them.

All those nancy-pansey laws about background checks are being suggested by groups like the NRA that would prefer that the state profile everyone than to stop dealers from selling a line of firearms. That crap won't work and they know it. The only serious option is to ban the products that make k*****g lots of people SO ridiculously easy that even weak and mentally r****ded kids like Rittenhouse can do it.

As a gun owner myself and a defender of the 2nd Amendment, I can tell you with utmost confidence that NONE of the assault weapon bans interfere with our right to bear arms. I have a perfectly legal Mossberg 500 for home defense because I know enough about guns to know that an AR-15 is a super-s**tty choice for that purpose. And guess what? My Mossberg is NEVER on a ban list. I'm not much of a h****r because I don't get off on k*****g things for fun but I know there's a wide range of hunting rifles that are also NEVER on a ban list and I'm sorry but if you need a magazine of 30 rounds to hit a deer, you're not much of a h****r.

There IS a valid purpose for a gun like the AR-15, which is actually a very well-designed and versatile weapon and that's the battlefield - the ONLY place where you will ever be surrounded by a lot of people trying to k**l you. That's where you actually need something that can fire off a lot of rounds in a very short time. Otherwise, there's no reason for it.

It's not my intention to turn this into my 1,200th argument over gun control, but at least you will know better than to come back with something as naive as "guns don't k**l; people do." So if you want to have this argument, think it over first... Just assume that I'm way beyond the typical "guns don't k**l; people do" rhetoric.