Assault rifles at work.

A very interesting article was recently brought to my attention by Yuri Orlov.

"A security guard used an assault rifle to kill two robbery suspects at a Red Bird strip mall late Wednesday, police said.Police say the guard grabbed his weapon when one of the men pointed a handgun at him.Sergio Vann, the 19-year-old gun-wielding assailant, died at the scene late Wednesday."

Do you happen to know my stance on assault weapons? If not, here's a piece that I wrote which was censored out of Robyn Ringlers blog:

Robyn: "Allowing the ownership of guns that can shoot down airplanes or cause massive numbers of casualties in just seconds or minutes makes no sense."

Michael: Excuse me?
It may sound logical if you'd read it out loud, but does it really make sense?

It doesn't make any sense to you why people should be allowed to have guns which -as you've so eloquently put it- "cause massive numbers of casualties in just seconds"
Would you be referring to the select fire assault rifles and submachine guns on our streets today? The kind which has a 30 round magazine, capable of firing bullets fully automatically, every bullet posing a lethal threat?
Sound about right, doesn't it?

The only people who regularly carry these guns around town (usually in their car) are police officers, clearly the only purpose of these tools isn't to cause massive numbers of casualties in just seconds or minutes or even days, they are called defensive weapons because they excel in allowing a police officer to defend his own life, and the lives of others around him. Ordinary citizens can use these guns as well, to protect themselves and those around them.

And then I'm not even talking about fully automatic assault rifles anymore. I'm talking about a semi-automatic rifle chambered for an intermediary cartridge, fed by a standard capacity magazine (not high, 30 rounds is standard). A rifle whose stock can be folded so you can safely use it inside your house, or take it with you in a car to the range easier, and a pistol grip for ergonomics and user safety (better grip equals less slip ups, literally)

Why but by ignorance could you claim that it makes no sense to allow law abiding citizens to own such weapons? Because as opposed to the police, we'd never need them? I'll let you in on a little secret, the police hardly ever uses them either, they just hang there in the (locked and deliberately hard to access) rack, waiting -months, years, always- for that one emergency that validates their purchase. Said emergency isn't likely to ever produce itself, not for police officers, and not for civilians, but would you deny the formers the ability to prepare themselves, would you only then seek to judge the latter: us.

Now, reading that article that I found on the real gun guys, turns out I was wrong. It's not only police officers who carry and use defensive rifles, but private security guards do so as well! The guard was able to fight off two assailants who had the drop on him, because he had an effective weapon as well as the ability to use it, to the contrary of the thug with a gun.