I've used shotguns to shoot skeet and sporting clays.
I've taken two pistol-shooting classes, and done target-shooting.
Private ownership of all guns should be banned.
People don't need a gun to:
Defend themselves from the government.
Do you really think
you could stop them if they want to arrest or "oppress" you ?
Could you stop the 101st Airborne ? Or even the local SWAT team ?
How long could you hold out without access to the supermarket,
or if they turned off your water, gas and electricity ?
Defend the country from invaders (yes, someone actually made that argument to me).
Do you really think you could stop even a squad of police from some other country ?
Defend themselves from criminals.
Odds are that you
won't be near your gun when you need it, or that you're safer
just giving a robber your money and letting the police
arrest them later (maybe). Odds are even higher that you'll
kill some innocent person, or someone will commit suicide
with your gun, or that it will be stolen.
People should be able to rent a gun for a short amount of time to:
Learn to shoot.
Sport-shoot (target, skeet, sporting-clay, etc).
Hunt.
Yes, for the first years of a complete ban, law-abiding people
would lose their guns and criminals would still have them.
But over time, most guns will be removed from the
country, and most criminals will lose their guns.
With fewer opportunities to buy or steal guns,
this will happen.
I'm not persuaded that the Constitution guarantees
private ownership of guns. The Founders also believed
in slavery and no voting for women or Indians, didn't know or care
about environmental issues or abortion, didn't say
anything about privacy, authorized land and naval forces but
not an air force, didn't put freedoms of speech and religion into the
Constitution (they're in the later Bill of Rights), etc. Certainly they didn't
believe blacks or Indians had a right to possess guns !
And the Founders weren't unanimimous about anything,
and fought each other politically before, during and after
the Revolution.
And lots of things
have changed since those days; the Constitution is
just one component of the laws of this country,
there is a long history of reinterpretation
and modification of it, and even the Founders called
their work the start of an "experiment".
And a strict literal reading of the Constitution leads
to unreasonable logic: "bear arms" would mean no limits
at all. Machine guns, RPG's, dynamite, anthrax, mustard gas,
car-bombs, cannon all are "arms". Are they all to be legal ?
Why not ? And it doesn't say that "the People" can be taken to
exclude criminals, the insane, and children. Strict literalism
is wrong.
The USA should stop exporting weapons, too. They just
spread death around the world, and often come back to
hurt the national interest of the USA (for example,
the USA armed the Afghans, who became the Taliban and Al Qaeda). I know the French and others
would take up the arms-exporting slack, but then we could
start pressuring them to stop exporting too (at least to individuals), and we'd
have some credibility in the argument.
Some people seem to feel so threatened by the outside world
that they have to have dogs and alarm systems and guns,
and they still feel under siege in their own home.
Maybe I'd feel that way if I'd been raped or my spouse
had been murdered, or if I lived in a place dominated
by gangs. But I think it's more effective to take guns away from
citizens and criminals, and make the police work better. I fear
all the wacko, aggressive, drunk or just confused citizens
out there with major firepower at their fingertips.
Mistakes, suicides, accidents, child-access, theft are much more
prevalent and likely than successful defense with gun. [But someone
told me New Hampshire, I think, has unrestricted concealed-carrying,
and there aren't bloodbaths there. I'll have to research that.]
Conflict and crime will always be with us. But it would be better if
fights involved fists or knives instead of guns or bombs.
Less chance of death, to those fighting and to bystanders.
Other countries seem to get by without a gun in every house;
why can't we ?