>>>>There is a resort town close to here called Big Bear. It's up in the mountains, and I took my family up there Thursday through Sunday. They have a shooting range inclduing Trap, which I went to. I brought my own shotgun on Saturday and shot with my 15 year old daughter. On Sunday, there were more people there, and the range owner let me use his shotgun to shoot trap again.
>>>>
>>>>There were close to 20 shooters out there, of all ages from 9 years old and up. My 5 years old son sat with my wife and watched while I shot Trap.
>>>>
>>>>No one got shot. No one commited a crime. No one was unsafe. On either day. Statistics have proven over and over that the majority of legal gun owners don't commit crimes with guns.
>>>>
>>>>The Supreme Court was smart enough to realize that "Guns Don't Kill People - People Kill People".
>>>>
>>>
>>>That's probably true. (Then again, it's also true that people with guns kill a lot more people than people without guns). But it had nothing to do with the court's ruling. They ruled that the 2nd Amendment confers the right of individual gun ownership, thereby making gun bans like that in Washington DC illegal. The court did not venture off into opinions about what is done with those guns.
>>
>>I bet in the back of their collective minds they were thinking "If we make guns illegal, on illegals will have guns". Think the crime rate is bad now? Take away the right of the law-abiding citizen to own a gun and watch what happens. I'm guessing the justices had all this in mind.
>
>We have a genuine difference of opinion. For the life of me I can't understand how more guns is supposed to be the solution to the problem.

I'm not advocating issuing guns to all citizens. I'm against taking away the guns citizens already own, or preventing those who want them from buying one.

This same discussion went on here some time back, and I participted. I posted some links to studies that show that gun bans don't prevent crime, and that in areas where the citizens were allowed to carry concealed guns, like Florida and Texas, the crime rates are actually lower.

Consider this. I live in an afluent neighborhood. I work in LA, 2 hours from home. We carefully selected the neighborhood we live in because it's on a cul-de-sac, and there are lots of kids on our street. Nice, well to do area. My neighbor next door is an LA county firefighter, and 2 doors down is a country deputy. Everyone is very nice and it is peacefull. Well, almost....

Last year some gang members from LA moved in across the street into a house someone foreclosed on. For reasons I'm not entirely clear on, the bank is allowing them to stay there rent free until it's sold!! Don't ask because I don't get it. In the year they have ocupied the place it went from a brand new 6 bedroom house to a run down ghetto looking dump. Real eye sore.

These people have had wild parties almost every other weekend where dozens upon dozens of kids show up at all hours of the night. There are cars lined up one side and down the other on our street. The music blares until the wee hours of the night. We come out in the morning and there are beer bottles lined up & down the sidewalks. The partygoers have intimidated people in the neighborhood.

The very first time they had a party, my wife came home from work at midnight to find a mass of cops on the street. It seems the bangers and their rivals were lined up on either side of the street with guns drawn. People in my neighborhood are scared. We moved away from LA to escape all this. Now they have followed us here.

I went out and bought a Mossberg Security 500 shotgun. I keep it loaded with 00 buck. My wife is learning to shoot it, and the nights I'm away, she removes the cable lock.

The crime rate isn't going down. The gangs are not leaving. I'm going to excersize my constitutional right to defend myself and my family. If my right to defend myself with a gun were taken away, it would seriously jeopardize me and my family's safety.

Just ask Sean Taylor. http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3129406