Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but there have no been multiple people here stating that hand guns are only for killing people. Please tell me why I have them then...by reference you are saying the only reason i have them is to kill someone. Weird weird weird. saying this kind of things will turn off any gun owner and he will tune you out. If you want change, I recommend starting with some middle ground rather than extreme comments like that.

I actually don't say no guns, I say extremely limited guns. Probably no handguns at all outside of law enforcement, or perhaps only single shot, low caliber target guns. I would allow some hunting weapons, but again, extremely limited, extremely licensed, high fees, lots of supervision in the process. I'd clearly take no guns over anything resembling the nightmare we have today in this country. There are simply too many ill people to allow this many weapons just floating around in our society.

But I want to address your point. You ask rhetorically why you have guns if not to kill human beings, and I legitimately don't know. I don't know why you, or any of my friends and family who have guns, own them, if not to kill humans. Some live in bad areas where they keep guns in case they ever need to kill a human being who would harm them. Good luck with that by the way. As someone who has been robbed at gunpoint, with a (probably stolen) .44 in my chest, it is hard to imagine how having a gun on me would have done anything except perhaps cause the thief to shoot me, and at the very least to take the gun if he saw it.

But I digress, I don't know why, aside from killing humans, anyone would own a handgun. If it is for target shooting, it seems to me that this recreation is essentially founded on the idea of honing one's skill in order to better shoot human beings. I have been shooting when I was young, and we shot at targets shaped like silhouettes of humans. So you tell me what the point of that exercise is. Honestly, I believe that people own them for a variety of reasons, all linked to the potential ability to kill someone with that gun. Whether a home invader, a rival, or in the case of many in this country, the agents of some theoretical oppressive distopian government. I think far too many see their guns and the "freedom" attached as insurance against tyranny, when in fact the type of tyrannies involved in the modern world have far more to do with economics or information than anything that can be defended against at gunpoint.

So again I digress. I don't know why you own a gun, if not to potentially kill human beings, or to practice at shooting human beings, or to feel the power that comes with being able to kill human beings.

So what is the answer, beyond merely that you enjoy shooting it, that would justify the existence of these killing machines?

As a last thought, people as often defend the utility of guns by likening them to cars or knives and the relative killing power of those denizens of daily life. I ask you to think about the utility of a gun, which unlike a knife or a car, has to be kept locked away lest it be used for mayhem and murder. What other items do we lock away from the world for safety. Surely not cars or knives, items with true utility. No, only guns, dangerous animals, and more dangerous individuals.

I'd love to see some serious change affected, unfortunately those interested in the proliferation of guns - financially, fanatically, foolishly - will insure that no change occurs. A year from now we'll mark this terrible event with vigils and blips on the news story, but I doubt that anything will change, and I sincerely doubt that there is anything our executive can do to affect that, though I hope he does address the issue (and boy won't that give fodder to the more rabid part of his detractors) and I hope that my daughter will one day live in a world where such tragedies don't happen, where they are more rare, where their scope is limited, where something like this stands out primarily not because of the sheer number killed, but because of their tender age and innocence

"MANY people use them for recreation, hunting and the like. And as the first guy says, if you tell somebody that people get guns ONLY to kill people, they are just going to tune you out. It's not true and no place to start a discussion on what to do to stop insanity like what we've been seeing of late."