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I've got a firearm ownership license, myself, and your poll options are... lacking, both in appeal and in seemingly any sort of knowledge of firearm ownership in the United States.
Small pistols are
worse and often more restricted than rifles and shotguns... the reason being that the smaller the weapon, the more
concealable it is. Concealed carry licenses are therefore difficult to get in the few states and cities that actually allow them, generally restricted to the police. Everybody else who carries a pistol, they've got to carry it in a case, and must keep it in the trunk of a vehicle. Well, that or they could have a holster right out in the open, inviting suspicion, fear, and sour looks.
Rifles, though, require fewer restrictions for two reasons. First, there's a lot of hunting that goes on. It makes sense to allow families and the like who live in places like Alaska, Minnesota, and other middle-of-nowhere states to be able to have the means to do it. In some communities this isn't a pastime, it's almost an outright need as citizens are so far from any legitimate
farmland, let alone a decent and reliable source of livestock, that... yeah, you eat deer, rabbits, and whatever else you can shoot for a meal. Second, you can't hide a rifle and most hunting firearms make hugely impractical combat and murder weapons. Rifles and rifle ammunition can thus be purchased by individuals of a considerably younger age than pistols--as young as 13 to 16 in some places.
Granted, a lot of gun stores do sell weapons like the PS-90; IE, a semi-automatic configuration of the P-90... which is disabled from automatic fire, autofire being strictly illegal to have if you're a civilian. When these weapons are sold, they're semi-automatic at the very best, effectively reduced to glorified decorations and novelty weapons compared with a decent revolver or semi-automatic pistol. They're harder to aim, harder to clean, bulkier, and the ammo is expensive and difficult to make yourself, as many gun enthusiasts do.
Their main appeal is with hicks who like the idea of military hardware so much that they'll splurge on a hilariously impractical and overpriced replica... though sometimes they've been known to have them illegally modified to
be automatic for kicks. Nothing stops criminals from doing that secretly, you understand, no matter how the weapons are licensed or sold. Or from obtaining fully automatic versions of these weapons or more dangerous ones on the black market, but that brings me to another point...
Ulquiorra4sama said:
OT: I don't think anyone outside law-enforcement should be allowed to carry arms unless they've got a certificate of some kind that says they're fully capable of handling a gun.
That's how it usually is--hence the firearm ownership card... which does absolutely nothing to prevent crime.
Note that we're trying to prevent guns from being in the hands of CRIMINALS, and criminals don't care that they're breaking a law by illegally owning a gun. Plus, a person with no criminal record can seem like a straight-up guy one minute, then the next be on a school rampage. All the restriction of firearm ownership does in terms of crime prevention is prevent repeat criminals from using legitimate channels to purchase weapons to do more crime.
Still. There's always a way to get a gun, and the mere fact that it's illegal for a felon to own one isn't going to prevent a felon from seeking it out. That's why they're felons in the first place. Not saying we shouldn't have the restrictions, I believe that we should--just that in terms of prevention of shootings that it doesn't do anything.
What it
does do is keep guns out of the hands of kids. That's a good thing.
