reply to post by HunkaHunka
You are trying to compare apples to bananas. A nuclear bomb is ordnance, a weapon designed to inflict massive damage to a city, base, or large group
of people/soldiers. It is not a personal weapon, like a rifle or handgun.
A gun, even a machine gun, is classified as "small arms" meaning non-explosive, man porable, and used for personal defense.
You wouldn't haul out a nuke because someone breaks into your house or starts shooting people in your office building. That's what a gun is for,
personal defense.
As for AKs and other self loading rifles (I'm talking US civilian legal semi-automatics) account for only 2% of all gun related deaths, including
suicide and accidents. Yet those on the left and in the media demonize them as "the prefered weapons of criminals and terrorists". Criminals prefer
small, inexpensive weapons like handguns because they are easy to conceal, small enough to use in a car, and can be hidden or thrown away and cheaply
replaced later on. Terrorists prefer bombs or bio-chem weapons because they attack a lot of people with little effort and "terrorize people".
As far as machine guns go, since the US government made civilian ownership of machine guns difficult in the 1930s, and even more limited in 1986,
there have been less than five murders with lawfully owned machine guns, and only two since the 60's and both of those were committed by police
officers.
All the others are done by criminals with black market, or illegally converted weapons.
[edit on 16-4-2009 by killswitch1982]
