"If they want to kill, they will find a way to do so."

In Defense of Self-Defense - Reason.com: "Most of the mass killings by gun in the United States in recent years—Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Newtown, Charleston, San Bernardino, and now Orlando—took place in venues where local or state law prohibited carrying guns, even by those lawfully licensed to do so. The government cheerfully calls these venues "gun-free zones." They should be called killing zones...

We know from reason, human nature, and history that the right to defend yourself is a natural instinct that is an extension of the right to self-preservation, which is itself derived from the right to live...

The Framers recognized this when they ratified the Second Amendment, which the Supreme Court recently held was written to codify—and thus prevent the government from infringing on—the pre-political right to own and use modern-day weapons for self-defense or to repel tyrants. The term "pre-political" derives from the language of the Second Amendment, which protects "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms."

The constitutional reference of "the" right to keep and bear arms makes clear that the Framers recognized that the right pre-existed the government because it stems from our humanity. That's why pre-political rights are known as fundamental or natural rights. Because the right to use modern weaponry for the defense of life, liberty, and property is natural, we should not need a government permission slip before exercising it, any more than we need one to exercise other natural rights, such as speech, press, assembly, travel and privacy...

In the Orlando tragedy, the man who killed 49 and wounded 53 used a handgun and a rifle. The handgun accepted magazines containing 17 bullets, and the rifle accepted magazines containing 30 bullets. The killer, using both weapons, fired more than 250 times last Sunday morning. That means he reloaded his weapons about a dozen times. Each time he reloaded, he stopped shooting, as it is impossible for any person to shoot and reload simultaneously...

It is likely that it took between three and seven seconds each time he reloaded the handgun and longer with the rifle. In those time periods, any trained person carrying a handgun in that Orlando nightclub could have wounded or killed him—and stopped the slaughter. Don't expect to hear that argument from the gun control crowd in the government. It is the same crowd that has given us the killing zones. It is the same crowd that does not trust you to protect yourself...

Hillary Clinton called the rifle the Orlando killer carried a "weapon of war." It is not. It is the same rifle that her Secret Service detail carries. Many of her acolytes have called it an assault rifle. It is not. It fires one round for each trigger pull. True assault rifles—not those that the politicians have renamed assault rifles because they have a collapsible stock and a bayonet holder (I know this sounds ridiculous, but it is true)—fire numerous rounds per trigger pull. They have been outlawed on U.S. soil since 1934.

What do we have here? We have a government here that is heedless of its obligation to protect our freedoms. We have a government that, in its lust to have us reliant upon it, has created areas in the U.S. where innocent folks living their lives in freedom are made defenseless prey to monsters—as vulnerable as fish in a barrel. And we have mass killings of defenseless innocents—over and over and over again. How dumb are these politicians who want to remove the right to self-defense? There are thousands of crazies in the U.S. who are filled with hate—whether motivated by politics, self-loathing, religion, or fear. If they want to kill, they will find a way to do so. The only way to stop them is by superior firepower. Disarming their law-abiding victims not only violates the natural law and the Constitution but also is contrary to all reason. All these mass killings have the same ending: The killer stops only when he is killed. But that requires someone else with a gun to be there. Shouldn't that be sooner rather than later?"

WaPo in 1994: Ban 'Assault Weapons' to Set the Stage for 'Broader Gun Control' - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Never mind that so-called assault weapons are not, in fact, the "weapon of choice" for mass killers, who overwhelmingly favor ordinary handguns. The Post says "assault weapons" are nevertheless intolerable because they are "capable of firing dozens of rounds in seconds." Never mind that the same is true of any gun that accepts a detachable magazine. The Post notes that a lawyer who is suing the businesses that supplied the gun used in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre calls military-style rifles "the gold standard for mass murder of innocent civilians." Never mind that the lawyer and his colleagues cannot explain what makes these guns uniquely suitable for mass murder and uniquely unsuitable for legal uses. The Post has been beating this drum for a long time. But when the federal "assault weapon" ban was enacted in 1994, the paper's editorial board was a little more honest about the point of it. While "it's ridiculous that the banning should even be an issue," the Post said then, "no one should have any illusions about what was accomplished. Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime. The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control." The mechanism for achieving "broader gun control" is the recognition that "assault weapons" account for a tiny share of gun homicides and that many other firearms are just as deadly—points that advocates of a ban are keen to obscure for the time being."

No-Fly List, No Guns: Trump Agrees with Obama, Clinton. He Thinks the NRA Should, Too. - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "On this issue—the issue of whether people should lose their rights because the government merely suspects them of doing something wrong—the NRA shows more respect for civil liberties than most Democrats. Denying guns to people on the no-fly list is an obvious violation of due process that, if allowed to stand, could easily imperil other rights. As Mark Joseph Stern writes at Slate: If the government can revoke your right to access firearms simply because it has decided to place you on a secret, notoriously inaccurate list, it could presumably restrict your other rights in a similar manner. You could be forbidden from advocating for causes you believe in, or associating with like-minded activists; your right against intrusive, unreasonable searches could be suspended. And you would have no recourse: The government could simply declare that, as a name on a covert list, you are owed no due process at all. President Obama and Hillary Clinton are wrong to think that arbitrary lists are a valid and legal means of stripping Americans of their gun rights. It would be nice if the Republican Party had chosen as its standard-bearer someone who could articulate the conservative case for the Second Amendment and due process. Instead, it chose Trump. Now gun rights will be in jeopardy, no matter which of the two charlatans currently seeking the presidency prevails."