This might be my last post in this thread since I don’t think I contribute to it at all:
While I do understand why some people would want to have a handgun in their drawer just in case, I fail to see any logic whatsoever behind people arguing that we shouldn’t take automatic rifles or any sort of military-grade weapon out of the marked.
Hey, stick around. We like you. Even if we think your avatar from a distance looks like a green robot head.
There’s all kinds of angles to this issue. The “having a handgun in a drawer” statement is itself subject to a thousand questions. Is the drawer locked, or does the gun have a trigger lock? Is the gun loaded? Is ammunition stored in the same drawer as the gun? Has the gun been sitting, unmaintained, in that same drawer for several decades? Does anyone else know that gun is there? Does having a gun in your home make your family more safe or less safe? (okay, we actually know the answer to this one: less safe)
Like all controversial issues, people try to work on “edge cases” first. Mass shootings, automatic weapons, semiautomatics, bump stocks, background checks, etc. Now, all of these are “gimme” options: lots of public support, no downsides. Except they can’t even pass most of these restrictions because of the NRA. The problem is they really only deal with edge cases. But if you want to cause a meaningful change, IMO you’re going to have to start talking about restricting handguns as well. And I’m fine with that.