I'm a firearms enthusiast and collector as well. Guns don't make people bad. Bad people use guns to do bad things. Good people use guns to do good things. Like hammers and axes and even fists, there is nothing in this world that a bad person can't turn to an evil end, but that doesn't make the tool they use evil in and of itself.

He of course, is bad, very bad.

How much money did they manage to weasel out of you before it was all said and done? I ditched the cult around '96, though I hadn't really had any real involvement in it since '94. I was poor as a church mouse back then, no money to scam me out of beyond the price of a few books, though that didn't stop them from begging. Truth be told, if you put aside the opportunity costs involved in being part of a predatory criminal cult, my time as a scilon was a net gain financially.

This recent flurry of phone calls is literally the first I've heard from them since Clinton's first term. Yet I read about other people being hounded by them for years. I have to wonder if the different experiences people have comes down to how much money the cult people think they can con you out of.

It's hard to imagine one person, armed only with an axe, hammer or fists being able to kill a dozen people, and wound dozens more, in a movie theater with numerous military veterans and young athletes in attendance.

Funny thing is, there are tens of millions of guns in the hands of tens of millions of Americans, yet situations like what you are describing are exceedingly rare. They are so rare precisely because normal people don't do such things. The evil individuals who do seek to commit such crimes are not limited to using a gun, far from it.

I could drive my car into a cafe and single handedly murder a dozen people, and wound many dozens more. In fact I could do this with my car far more easily and effectively than I ever could with a gun of any kind. Guns take skill to aim and shoot. People tend to duck and take cover, and a few might even shoot back at me. An automobile hurtling into a crowd depends upon nothing more than mass times acceleration. Events of precisely this sort do happen from time to time, yet no one calls for cars and trucks to be banned. No one attempts to blame GM.

If you don't like guns, you're free not to own one. You're not free to deprive other people of that fundamental human right.

Except that driver's licenses are a privilege, not a 2nd Amendment right. Plus, the killer might be horribly injured crashing into a cafe, so instead of watching the bodies fall, he has to beg to be rescued.

Convicted felons can't legally own guns, just as convicted drunk drivers can't legally operate cars.

Killers who attack by any violent means run the risk of being injured or killed themselves. Many end up committing "suicide by cop" or are shot down by one of their would-be victims. Why? Because they're crazed killers. Self preservation isn't at the top of their agenda.

I own a .40 cal pistol with several 13 round magazines (which would be illegal in California if they hadn't been registered prior to the state assault weapons ban) and a shotgun.

However, I find it intellectually dishonest to argue that a hammer is the equivalent of my Glock 23.

I find it intellectually dishonest to pretend that such an argument has been made.