The cycle of fear that drives assault weapon sales

[bossy22]

30. stastically you shouldn't be

It has to do with knowing several people like this well, and personally, over a significant period of time. I have heard the pornographic glee with which they describe the optimum mix of Black Talons, Hydra-Shocks, AP, tracers hot-loaded in the XL clip of their Magnum.

First off, there are always outliers. There are doctors out there that are licensed who really have no clue what they are doing or make mistakes that even a 2nd year medical student wouldn't make. Secondly, I don't know who you talked to, but no one uses black talon (they haven't been made since the early 1990's IIRC), Tracers (would destroy the gun barrel) and Hot-loaded (could blow-up the gun) in their defense guns. Again, ofcourse there probably is someone out there who does but they are not the norm- just like there are people who use cars to race- but there isn't a large movement to restrict all automobiles to 85 mph top speed.

And there are too many private arsenals and armories out there poorly secured, and endangering both the public and fire/ems/hazmat/police who may encounter them when their integrity is compromised. How may THOUSAND rounds do you need to keep on hand? There were once 30,000 rounds in my house, and a seriously disturbed former co-worker admits to 16,000

This is a difficult question to answer and one the media likes to throw around. They like to use big numbers like "he had over a thousand rounds of ammunition at home". The truth is that it really depends on the ammunition. For example 22 L.R. (A very very common calibre- if not the most common) is primarily sold in packages of 500 rounds. You might think that is alot, or that such a package must be quite large, but in reality it is the same size as a standard brick on the outside of your house (which is why they are commonly referred to as a "brick of 22&quot . So if you stick 2 bricks side by side of each other, thats what 1000 rounds would look like. It's really not that impressive right? Personally I have about 4000 rounds of 22lr, which fits nicely into a small shelf in my gun safe. Many times gun owners will buy in bulk for savings.

Also, as a member of the emergency services (fire and EMS), the thing i'm most afraid of is not bullets, but cars. More firefighters and EMTS are killed by cars then are killed by bullets. I get pissed when gun control proponents use us to promote their goals. I've heard everything from, "having large stores of ammunition in a house could kill firefighters in a house fire" (though in reality, unless all that ammunition is loaded into a gun, all it does is make a loud pop- nothing more. The movies over-dramatize it.) to "assault weapons need to be banned because of what happened to the firefighters upstate" (which would have happened even if the guy had used grandpas hunting rifle, might have been a bit worse because most hunting calibres are much stronger than a 223 and would have made swiss cheese out of car doors and other places one would hide for cover)