Quote Originally Posted by Xei View Post
That's irrelevant to the argument at hand. We're talking about very powerful machine guns, and the argument for them that they're for the populace to usurp a tyrannical government; guns which are designed to indiscriminately kill as many people in an area as possible. I understand the argument for defensive firearms.
We are discussing gun control, and my point is relevant to it. There is a list of reasons to keep guns legal, and dealing with a tyrannical government is one of them. I know the government tyranny issue is the main focus of the thread, so I am saying that we can meet that need and still have reasonable weapons laws. It makes sense to keep guns legal to defend against civilian attackers any way, so let's use guns to defend against the government too. The list of reasons for keeping guns legal is solid, so allowing guns for defense against government and others is justified. When we get into tanks and MX missiles, we run into some new problems. The justification for owning those is not solid enough.

Also, I don't think the American public's war against a tyrranical government would be fought on a battlefield or in a militaristic kind of way. We would be more like an insurgency. We probably wouldn't ever corner the government and make them surrender in that kind of war, but the threat of such a thing happening is enough to keep them from going too far. We don't need missiles, nukes, or tanks for that.