@ingliz We all know that @Drlee was not talking about chargers/stripper clips and that for shooters of a certain age the terms 'clip' and 'magazine' are interchangeable (Example: In the 60's, Remington Arms when marketing their wares in the popular gun press would invariably call their rifle magazines, clips).
Actually may be correct. I am quite certain I used the term "clip" long before I joined the army. I did, however, use stripper clips a whole lot. That is probably why it came to mind that we referred to magazines as "clips" during the Vietnam war era and later. It really doesn't matter though.
@Godstud Godstud is correct about what is necessary for home defense. If I felt that my security system was not enough for defense and that I had a particular danger to my family from home invasion I would keep a 26" (18" barrel) 12 gauge pump shotgun at hand. Better than a pistol and infinitely better than an AR-15. With the right biometric lock very safe.
Rant on:
I am not going to give an inch on this. I was a very content gun owner for most of my life. I grew up in cowboy country and spent many a weekend in my youth with a rifle in my hands. If you looked at the trucks in my high school parking lot there were gun racks in many if not most of them. But then something happened.
Completely unlike when I was a kid I started seeing grown men talking about taking down the government of the United States. I had absolutely never even heard that notion from my father's generation or other members of mine. All of a sudden men were joining militia groups to protect themselves from...what? Liberals? Commies? Armed blacks?
I remember when I was a kid people discussed protecting our country from a Japanese invasion. They pointed to the number of homes that had rifles and said that the Japanese army would have had to face an army of millions of men. That made sense. But they never mentioned using guns to settle what is, in the final analysis, a political disagreement. Never.
Now we have people like Big Steve who think it is just fine to contemplate this. They try to have us believe that their "right" to own an AR-15 is based upon the notion that they may use it to overthrow the duly elected government of the US because they disagree with the politics of that government. This is treason. It is contemplating the murder of our own children over a political disagreement.
Oh I get that the founders fought off the British. They did not do it in today's climate of air power and surveillance. More importantly they did not do it with small bands of roving civilians popping British soldiers with squirrel guns as popular songs would have us believe. They did it with "well ordered militias". So when the constitution was created it enshrined these militias in the constitution. The founders did not intend to put the power to unseat them in a guy named Steve with an assault rifle. They intended to put it in the hands of the state militias.
Well those times are over. What we have now is a more and more polarized country. We have the increasingly fascist republican party that I just left for that very reason. We have grown adults fantasizing about taking on the United States Army, comprised of their own children, because they think the government is too liberal. Or too brown. Or after their guns. Or killing unborn babies.
No other way to parse it. When a citizen thinks that the rifle in the closet is there to kill a United State Marine, they should absolutely NOT be allowed to have it. Period. So the right wing gun nuts are destroying the future of gun ownership one asshole comment at a time. People are waking up. Younger people are not buying guns like geezers did. The more educated a person is the less likely to own a gun. Republicans own guns at a rate of almost three times that of democrats. But democrats outnumber republicans by a substantial margin. (42 million to 30 million.) The worm is turning.
I feel about this issue like I do about all of the cock fighting I see these days. I have had enough macho posturing. I spent my life in boys clubs (including the army) and frankly am disgusted with adult men who believe that they are going to puff up and blow the house down. I am sick of people my age whining about "lib'rals" all the while seeing their doctor on medicare, drawing a social security check, and buying their home on a government guaranteed loan. Then watch them pull out their wallets and show you the grand kids attending college on government insured loans and Pell grants because they spent the money that should have gone to paying for these kids education on SUVs and $1500.00 assault rifles. They just can't see that they are sucking on the government tit as much or more than any of the poor black families they like to whine about consuming services. They have somehow contrived to believe that they somehow earned this shit.
Real conservatives believe in paying their own bills but not this crop of fools. Oh did you see them whine about Obama when the Bush administration tanked the economy. Oh did they bitch when Obama bailed out the banks saving their jobs and homes. They get in the cool Silverado or GMC pickup and forget that Barak Obama, against tremendous political pressure, (and his on political preferences) bailed out the company that made them. (And now makes the most popular car in China. In fact General Motors exports more cars to China than it sells in the US.)
These people are just stupid. They are politically so tribal that they can't even bear to look at the truth. They are too pumped up with self importance that they can even imagine that some other idea may have merit. I am sick of them and am going to call them out when I see them. If they feel insulted they can go fuck themselves.