Reply #63: There's variety in collecting stamps. Or books. Or in a lot of things that you can't load

[Aristus]

and shoot and use to take out a playground full of elementary school children. Every hear of a bank robbery hostage situation where the people were threatened with an album of rare stamps? Me either. "This just in: The killer cut his swath of destruction using a rare and valuable book stolen from a law-abiding book collector. Authorities are investigating the matter. Back to you, Tom."

I think the word "collecting" is just convenient cover for an absurd and exceptionally dangerous obsession.

Getting back to the bank hostage analogy for a moment, as a way of referencing the "nobody uses assault weapons to commit crimes" angle, no one has ever held up a bank with a 155mm artillery field piece either, (at least not in this country; if someone told me that it happens in places like Uganda or Paraguay, I wouldn't be surprised.) but there are few who would argue that people should be allowed to own these things.