[gosu]

AK-47s scare me about as much as any other gun.

It's "good" that rifles are used to kill fewer people than other weapons, and we should choose our battles accordingly.

That doesn't change the fact that I want to make it as hard as possible for crazy people or people on a power trip to be able to fashion machines designed to efficiently kill people like me. That seems like a simple principle.

Maybe the best way to achieve that here is to let these things stay in obscurity. Maybe not.

[duck]

I want to make it as hard as possible for crazy people or people on a power trip to be able to fashion machines designed to efficiently kill people like me.

I would worry more about cars, corporations, and governments. :)

[gosu]

None of those were designed to efficiently kill people like me. The OP's point is that I should be worrying more about handguns, and he's right - but that doesn't mean I can't worry about other things designed to pose a threat to my person too.

[hga]

As the quarter billion disarmed people killed by their own governments in the 20th century, plus all the combatants killed in two "World Wars" and many many others show, there is no single better instrumentality for "efficiently" killing people than governments. In more than a few cases, and most of the deaths, this is by design (Communists and Nazis).

[gosu]

It's true that some governments have killed their own citizens unjustly and en masse. I don't think that my own government poses such a threat to me. If you're a US citizen who feels like their government was designed to efficiently kill its citizens, and if you think that you can prevent that, then we probably can't have a constructive discussion.

I don't know if people just want to start a interesting conversation, or if they feel like disparaging government somehow refutes my point. I hope it's the former, because it doesn't. If you understand why I don't want people to have access to tools designed to kill people like me, but consider government to be an existential threat, it should still be pretty obvious that the list of priorities is something like 1. handguns, 2. rifles, ..., N. governments.

[hga]

"I don't think that my own government poses such a threat to me."

The stakes, for you and yours, are terribly high if you're wrong, now or in the future.

Our government was explicitly designed to be "inefficient" at doing anything internally (externally the President/Executive has a much freer hand), but I do believe that we armed citizens can stop it from mass murder (I am making certain assumptions about the culture of the military and who goes into it WRT to nuclear weapons, of course). If you aren't familiar with the maxim "Amateurs discuss tactics, professionals logistics", you should check that out before seriously considering the overall issue. Or just note that all those 20th century mass murders were preceded by disarming the targets, those governments certainly thought guns made a difference.

But it's undeniable that governments are an existential threat to their peoples; if you learn nothing else from 20th century history you should learn that. And to take my country as an example (are you one of the few foreigners who has a benign view of it???), our current President launched his political career in the house of two '70s "revolutionaries" who, while fecklessly bombing and killing people, estimated that they'd have to kill around 10% of the population after they succeeded, that many would be totally resistant to reeducation.

I'm not trying to say so much about Obama above as I am about our ruling class, which celebrates such figures, rewards them with professorships in higher education instead of reading them out of polite society, or in one very special case, the man (Bill Ayers) with a big picture of him stomping on an American flag on 9/11/2001 in our preeminent "paper of record" newspaper (!!!; a singularly ill timed article in the New York Times).

We know what such people would try to do if they gained enough power, and we have throughout this nation's history made very sure they wouldn't get very far. Heck, do you believe in insurance? I didn't expect to make a big claim when it first started paying renters insurance decades ago, and even if I hadn't (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado) I'd still be paying.

And, BTW, rifles are the alpha and omega here, handguns have never made much of a difference unless that's all you had and you needed them to procure better arms.

[mikeash]

As the Apollo program, smallpox eradication, and many many others show, there is no single better instrumentality for efficiently carrying out great tasks than governments.

Government is an amplifier, nothing more.