If your main justification of owning guns is to defend yourself, then you need to define from what one must be able to defend oneself. Defending from a mugger on the street would need one tool, defending from an angry mob another.

The 2nd Amendment allows that a people should defend themselves from a corrupt government. In that case, we must be able to defend ourselves from the United States military. I'm not so sure hellfire missiles and nuclear bombs are out of the question in this discussion.

automatic weapons should be part of that discussion.

about 30 mins. of youtube and you too can be full auto. just sayin.

full auto is not a good way to shoot unless you have a hoard coming at you and then spray n pray may be the best option.

McVeigh didn't pull a trigger.

Right, and after that they made laws to regulate the sale and distribution of ammonia nitrate. It used to be easier to buy than beer.

fertilizer isn't a constitutional right.

How about this:
Let’s start enforcing the laws already on the books.
Let’s quit electing judges who release violent criminals on absurdly low bonds (take note of your home county, Jpurdue).
Let’s quit electing prosecutors who keep finding ways to mitigate the seriousness of violent acts.
Let’s quit electing legislators who endorse violence in the name of politically correct causes.
Let’s quit putting career criminals on pedestals (like Saint George Floyd).
There’s more, but that’d be a great start.
And remember: a federal judge ordered law enforcement to return George Hennard’s confiscated firearms to him, in spite of his mental illness, after which he went on to kill a bunch of Texans in Waco, at a Luby’s cafeteria. On a normal day, several cops would have been in there for lunch, but a large training event interfered. With nobody in the restaurant armed, Hennard was able to calmly walk from table to table killing folks. Yet, it was illegal for him to purchase a firearm. That’s how well barring certain groups from purchasing weapons works.

That happened in Killeen. Just correcting you be cause I was living in Killeen at the time.

Bob, what drops the rate by 50% is to stop counting suicides and "gun violence." ~40K "gun deaths" per year, but 20K of them are suicides which we should not be counting. That's where the 50% reduction comes from. I thought that was clear in my original post. The bullet points were just extras that could drive some additional improvement on the other "real" 20K gun violence deaths.

Okay. How about this. Here's my final offer.

You have to have filed a tax return in the last year (or be of retirement age) and you can't be currently living in someone's basement. That eliminates all the gang bangers and Norman Bates of the world. Reference required if you balding under the age of 25 or have a pedo mustache.