What is the best (serious) response to this sort of exaggeration?
We can trust them with guns if the government ensures that they are trained effectively in their use. The swiss model but not the ‘anything goes’ American model.
“Would you trust citizens to defend themselves with rocket launchers, tanks, or nuclear weapons? Then why should we trust them with guns?”
My opinion/response to that is, rocket launchers, tanks, and nuclear weapons are designed to kill a whole lot of people all at once. It is almost impossible to kill just one assailant, or one small group of assailants, with these weapons. Of course you could just drive a tank around, so that may not quite apply, but anyway. . .
I have a right to bear arms, to defend myself/family/property, but I don’t have a right to do a mass indiscriminate killing.
Anyway, that’s how I see it.
Freedom of speech doesn’t give anyone the right to scream an inch from someone’s ear and damage their hearing. Freedom of assembly doesn’t give anyone the right to jump out in traffic with their friends and hold a tea party. Freedom of the press doesn’t give anyone the right to put a banner loaded with obcenities on the wall of an elementary school.
You are within your rights as long as those rights don’t endanger others simply by their mere existence such as the radiation of a nuclear device. By the way, nukes aren’t exactly arms. They are devices such as walking around with a ticking time bomb. I don’t think the Second Amendment covers endangering people if you decide to commit suicide by bomb in a crowded subway.