I did some digging last night and found a few things. The FBI estimates that about 100 million US households have legal firearms and they also tracked about 350 deaths where a “rifle” was used. Semi-automatic rifles are some subset of that 350 number, but it is not explicitly tracked separately from bolt actions, pump actions or single shot rifles. So, the rate of “preventable deaths from semi-automatic rifles that are not needed” is no more than 0.00035%.
Then I went to the CDC stats and found that they estimate that about 8-10 million US households have swimming pools and they tracked about 3,500 drowning deaths, but they do not track specifically the subset of drownings that occurred in bath tubs, lakes, streams or swimming pools. So, the rate of “preventable deaths from swimming pools that are not needed” is no more than 0.035%.
Our government’s own numbers are showing us that swimming pools are 1,000 times more dangerous than semi-automatic rifles!
If we are willing to accept the premise that the federal government should infringe on our liberty to address unnecessary deaths, then we would see much more value in banning swimming pools! In addition, we would cause harm to much fewer individuals and we don’t even have to deal with a Constitutional issue.
Heck, we all know that swimming pools are a luxury that no family needs! We should only allow people to swim in government owned pools.
Or we could simply live with the consequences of individual liberty and understand that we can address evil doers whenever possible, but we will never be able to stop all evil.
What do they even mean by semi-autos that aren’t needed? Who says we don’t need them? Need them for what? Hunting? But we don’t have a right ti hunt. We have a right to self-defense, and also defense of the free republic.