We use firearms for self-defense in preference to less effective tools. The need for effective, capable equipment is not unique to self-defense. For example, no one uses 1986 vintage computers and few people drive 1968 cars. No one claims that access to modern computers should be restricted to deter hackers or that prohibiting new car models would reduce the number of deliberate hit-and-run accidents.

Yet much of the effort by the perpetrators of gun control has been to deny the rest of use safe, effective and well-designed guns. For example, one of the handgun features restricted in 1994 was called ventilated barrel shroud. That fancy term means simply the handguard which keeps the operator of a pistol from getting her hands burned. Can you think of any other tool on which a safety feature like that is prohibited by law?

People who wish you defenseless often claim that effective defensive rifles and shotguns have "no legitimate sporting use". Would they consider defense of your family from an attack to be un-sporting? Remind them that the concept of a "sporting use" comes from their spiritiual forebears, the Nazis. Those thugs determined that trying to stay out of a concentration camp was not a legitimate use of arms, while hunting women and children for sport was.

The other target of the prohibitionists are the magazines. A standard magazine (lower left) for a small or medium caliber rifle is thirty rounds. In 1994 such a magazine cost $15 and worked reliably. A standard magazine for a handgun held about fifteen rounds and cost $20.

After production of magazines with capacity over ten rounds was banned in 1994, the prices on the standard magazines had increased to to over $100 for most models. The crippled ten-round versions (top left) had to be produced in a way that makes restoring them to standard capacity impossible. Those changes made ten-round magazines less reliable. In 2004, that ill-intentioned law sunset, but several states implemented even more restrictive versions of their own.

Why the need for standard magazines? Ask your local police officer. He is on patrol with a handgun which uses standard magazines and, in many cities, an automatic rifile or a submachine gun with standard magazines. Under stress, even well-trained people can miss. Moreover, a single hit is not guaranteed to stop an attack. Fortunately, he has the benefit of body armor and backup just a radio call away.

Most other people have no such luxuries. They don't sleep with magazine pouches affixed to their nightgowns and would depend on that one magazine already in their weapons. Arbitrarily requiring that even that one magazine hold a lot less ammunition than normal has the effect of giving attacking criminals an edge over the law-abiding humans.

Yet another benefit of removable magazines is that they are safer than most types of integral magazines. It is simpler and faster to remove a magazine than it is to unload an old-style lever action gun in which every cartridge has to be chambered before it can be ejected.

The prohibitionists are trying to ban all guns (except those controlled by them). Guns which are too small or too large, too accurate or too inaccurate, ammunition which penetrates too much or too little, in short, they wish to ban every gun ever made. It is of no use explaining to them how safe the designs are or how important for preserving lives: like the Inquisitors out to burn heretics, they are motivated by irrational hatred and by lust for control over others.

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Clearly, our safety is not a concern for the prohibitionists. What they want is to reduce our ability to defend ourselves. Some sick people get off on being in control of others. Some turn to rape and battery to satisfy their urges, others run for Congress. The sentiment which governs the two groups is identical: desire to be in control of others. Just as rape is more about control than it is about procreation, so gun banning is about social control and not about public safety.

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The rifle above is a late 1940s design. Yet even such an ancient tool has been banned from manufacture ostensibly because it has a flash hider (designed to keep the user from being blinded by the muzzle flash), a folding stock (for compact storage)and a bayonet lug. The prohibitionists claim that these features turn the rifle's owners into psychopaths. Yet the very branch of the government enforcing the prohibition, the ATF, issues weapons with similar features to its agents. A double standard at work.

"But all we want to ban are assault weapons and Saturday Night Specials," say the gun-grabbers. "Your deer rifle and you pheasant shotgun are safe." They do not tell you that your sniper rifle (formerly known as the deer gun), your big-bore streetsweeper (aka hunting shotgun) and your Dirty Harry death machine (target revolver) are next. When you read or watch news, look out for loaded yet meaningless phrases like cop-killer bullet, deadly automatic high-power assault pistol, and the like. The sound bytes are nonsense once you think about what they really mean, but not everyone questions what the news tell them.

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The gun banners hate effective weapons because armed people are less afraid of their own government and less dependent on it. It is no surprise that totalitarian governments world-wide keep most of their populations disarmed. They know from history that even a handful of armed people can stand in the way of genocide and check its advance. It does, however, take well-armed and well-trained people to stop evil in its tracks. Although most civilians' training level is sufficient only for a last-ditch stand, that stand is much better done with a rifle than with a shovel. I would guess that those relatives of mine who got turned into lampshades during WW2 did wish for a way to fight back, if too late.

The current, all-inclusive catch phrase is assault weapon. These days it is used to describe any gun that the thugs in office wish to ban. For instance, in California, even Olympic style target pistols are classified as assault weapons.

Yet the states which have the most onerous and restrictive laws, all make exceptions for police and military use. They claim that most models of guns are unsafe to the users...unless the users are police officers. Many politicians have bodyguards armed with the guns prohibited to the rest of us.

"I don't plan on getting into trouble."

No one in their right mind looks for trouble. Yet, we must take up arms in self-protection, wouldn't using effective tools help? Our opposition won't go easier on us just because we use obsolete and ineffective means of self-protection.

What makes an effective weapon? Semi-automatic clones of army rifles have been generally considered effective. They are reliable, durable and accept a cartridge of sufficient effectiveness. Because the type is so common, ammunition and magazines are relatively inexpensive, though that is changing as restrictive laws reduce their availability. A mothballed rifle and its ammunition can remain usable for decades. For that reason, people who would do us harm would much prefer that we had no access to such useful means of self-defense.

Ability to defeat body armor is one of the useful characteristics of rifles. Just as the crossbow and the longbow challenged the dominance of the armored knight, the rifle reduces the ability of an armored enforcer to operate with impunity against civilians.

Sporting rifles are usually based on older military designs. They are at least as powerful as the more recent types but have smaller magazines and lower rates of fire. For those reasons, they are less well suited for personal protection.

So, what happens if effective arms are banned from sale and possession? Two scenarios exist.

The first one is that the commoners, the serfs, the subjects, whatever term is used for us, end up with only feeble, obsolete weapons for self-defense. We would be at the mercy of whoever controls the military and police, the way Japanese peasants were at the mercy of the samurai for centuries. Or, if ever compelled to make a stand in our own defense, we'd be in the position of the gun-less natives forced to take on the European machine guns with spears or tomahawks.

The other possibility is that, penalties for any weapon being drastic, we would try to get the most potent arms possible. Moreover, millions of guns already exist. These are durable tools and do not degrade much over time. The only way to get those from the population would be to threaten dire punishment for non-compliance. That way lies a civil war, a distinctly unpleasant process.

Throughout history, anyone who said "Make yourself defenseless or else we will harm you" has inflicted harm even in the event of full compliance. Thus lawful humans have nothing to lose by retaining their ability to protect themselves.

Some prohibitionists express hope that we will run out of ammunition. They don't realize that most individuals have several thousand rounds on hand at any time and, if buying more becomes impossible, none of those cartridges would be wasted on non-essential uses. Fighting will become the sole, essential use.

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The main indication that gun control in America has failed is the fact that its supporters are still alive. Millions of people who have invested in arms, training and lobbying in response to past restrictive legislation have no plans to surrender. If gun control efforts begin to infringe significantly on their ability to fight in the future, those who wish to disarm others will be killed.

The reason for such a blunt statement is that being a gun owner is made up of two components: posession of a weapon and posession of skills and training. One can surrender a gun but not the training.

The only solution to it would be gulags, prison camps or execution for the former gun owners. Soviets, for example, use a combination of the two approaches. Knowing that, gun owners cannot surrender their arms and expect to be left in peace. And the gun control fans cannot just remove the guns and expect to survive long after that.

Fortunately, we have a realistic perception of how terribly destructive a civil war would be. All other means of combating gun control - education, lobbying, moving to less restrictive jurisdictions will be tried first.

Some people dismiss the possibility of civilians going to war over abuses of their rights and actually winning. They say that a handgun is useless against an army. They are partly right: handguns are primarily for self-defense. For that reason, the 2nd Amendment covered all military weapons, as those were needed to check state tyranny.

Fortunately, the army on which the enemy is counting isn't eager to do their bidding. Much of the support for our rights (and for this web site) comes from the members of the armed forces and from police officers. If push comes to shove, at least part of this nation's soldiers will not be following orders.