Alphecca

You don't have to be a gun nut to need more than one.

I own a plinking gun, a .22 rifle with a scope that is specifically set up for competitive use. To compete in a school rifle team, I had to own a gun similar in features to this.

I also like having a defensive gun. But a .22 rifle with scope is not a good defensive weapon - it's a single-shot bolt action, and shoots less than 600 fps, which is about fast enough to give you a nasty welt. That plinker wouldn't deter a rabid dog, nevermind a human. So I own a rather underpowered pistol, but one that's loud enough to be a deterrent and with multiple shots before I have to reload, which I've found very important in a home-defense situation.

And what if I was a hunter? Neither of the above are ideal or even reasonable weapons to use if I wanted to come home with a reasonable piece of meat and not gored by a mildly irritated buck. If I were a hunter, I'd need a higher caliber, higher speed rifle or a shotgun, depending on what I wanted to hunt.

And what if I wanted to follow the very tenant of the 2nd Ammendment? Preventing terror or tyranny with any of the above guns would be foolish at best and, more likely, suicidal.

I just have two questions for the sort of mind that asks that:

Is there ANY other device or product that has a limit of how many can be bought in a specific amount of time?

Is there ANY reason to believe that a murderer can not kill with one gun a month?

It's all about "choice."

How about cars?
People recklessly handling cars kill many times the number killed with firearms. How would he feel about a law limiting you to only one automobile purchase a month? Who needs more then one car anyway? What normal person buys more then one car a month? Anything more and you should need a special dealer permit. I doubt your emailer has ever bought more then one car in a month, but would he like it to be a law? What if he bought a lemon and it died a week after purchase? What if after driving it a week he just didn't like it? What if he was a car collector and found his dream car for sale? Even though most people will never buy more then one car in a month, there are legitimate reasons some people do so. How would he like to be told it's against the law? Now that I think about it, he probably wouldn't mind. Those types are more then happy to give up their rights and freedoms "for the good of society".

The assumption underlying the entire

"one-gun-a-month" argument is this:

"guns cause shootings".

Therefore, if you reduce the number of new guns,

you necessarily reduce the number of shootings.

Given the number of guns already in private hands,

This is absurd on its face. However, what is

demonstrably true is: If you reduce the number of

shooters, you necessarily reduce the number of

shootings. Sadly, while this is clearly a

logical truth, it is not a political

one in Philadelphia County or Allegheny

County (Pittsburgh).

I've been asked the same question before. My answer usually runs along this line:

How many books does a person really need? Isn't one a month? Might you suspect that there's something wrong about someone with filled bookshelves in their living room, den, kitchen, every bedroom and basement? And why do we really need so many newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations to provide information? Wouldn't one be enough? How about religous nuts? I know a lot of people who think that anybody who attends church more than once a month is probably incipient theocrat, just waiting to impose his or her will on everybody else. Isn't Christmas and Easter (or Rosh Hashanah and Pesach) enough?

If the person hasn't walked away by this point, he or she frequently asks, "well then, how many guns do you own?" Although the count increases monotonically over time, the answer is always the same: more than I need to do the job or can afford; not nearly as many as I want.

I foresee a time in the future when i will no longer live on a boat. I hope at that time to get involved in Cowboy Action Shooting, and I would like to purchase a pair of Ruger Vaquero six guns. My preference would be for matching engraved weapons with sequential serial numbers. Both would be purchased as a special order through Ruger's engraving program at the same time.

I would also need a repeating rifle (something like a Henry) and a double-barrel shot gun, probably the Stoeger Couch Gun Supreme in polished nickel, with black furniture.

Don't know if I would buy these all at once, but if I did, that would be 4 guns in one month.

My husband and I get a lot of questions about that, too.

Snort.

We collect guns of military interest and most of them are pretty old. I could not even tell you how many guns we have - lots and lots of them.

Why do we have them? It's my husband's passion - history and the military and weapons. And that should be reason enough!