No you see they need it to protect themselves from an evil governement that supports people, violates the constitution and harbors criminals, whilst threatening most of their allies and teaming up with genocidal regimes.

They will put these arms to their intended use any minute now...

AAaany minute now.

Come on Lemmy, you can't have it both ways. How are we going to stage a massive revolution and die horribly in the process if we don't have a shit ton of guns?

I mean, if you hunt deer, pheasant, small game, target shoot, and have a handgun or two for home defense, that's already 6ish guns right there. If you have any heirlooms or collector items that are firearms, that's a few more. I don't have 12 guns, but I don't have a hard time picturing why someone might, especially an entire family who hunts and does outdoorsy things. Then again I live in the western US and outdoor recreation is huge here.

Though if you don't have any sense of responsibility, you shouldn't have any guns either. If anyone disagrees with that, I don't know if logic can reach them!

he assured them, but dint actually do it. if someone has and wants 12 firearms, they are unlikely to fully secure them at all. they probably have it stashed all in one place or multiple places for easy acces. thats how these ammosexuals think.

It's possible you need the first 11 to kill the 200 people coming for you.
But, what if there are 201???!!!!

checkmate, cynic.

Need?

Who cares about need.

When it comes right down to it, nobody needs more than one of most things.

But in reality, there is a limit to how much "you" (as in someone that is trying to limit someone else's access to something) should be allowed to limit said thing without both due process and significant cause. When something is a fundamental right (and anyone with multiple firearms is definitely of the mind that firearms are a natural extension of fundamental rights, so long as they exist at all), you, me, the government simply shouldn't be able to declare that anyone has to show need to exercise that right.

To the contrary, suppression of rights has to be done only under extreme and unusual circumstances.

Now, from your comment, I doubt you consider the right to defense as extending to firearms. That's fine, I'm not debating that by this comment (and won't, it bores the fuck out of me because nobody ever has anything new to bring to the debate). I'm just saying that if something is a right, placing your idea of need on it simply isn't acceptable.

A dozen, a hundred, a thousand, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that the right exists. And, in the US it is a specifically enumerated right. There's wiggle room on when rights can be curtailed, suppressed. We do it all the time. But it can't be done lightly, and shouldn't be based on some arbitrary, ill defined standard of need.

That being said, the role of a handgun vs a shotgun vs a rifle at least points to three use cases that can't be met by the others. Since different calibers of ammunition have discrete properties, it can also be said that significantly different rounds would fulfill different roles (you shoot a squirrel with a .50 cal, you ain't scraping up enough to roast). Just based on that concept, it would be easy to point to at least six different firearms being "needed" to fulfill roles.

If you have multiple people using the firearms, you can need different ones for each person.

So twelve? It really isn't that many. I've seen hunters that will regularly use at least twelve different rifles in a year, sometimes more, depending on how often they can find time to hunt. Ignoring any debate about hunting being something you or I support, it is a use case that is common enough to merit the term need when it comes to the tools used to do it.

Now me? I don't need that many. Not a hunter, don't compete in shooting sports, don't even target shoot as a regular hobby. But you sure as hell don't get to decide what I do and don't need. Nor does anyone else without the application of due process and just cause.

You just wait until the zombie apocalypse, man. Then you'll wish you had 12 guns.

I can see it adding up a lot faster than you might think.

Hypothetically, let's say you have 2 or 3 people in your family who are avid hunters, lots of people go hunting with their spouses and/or children. And each of you have, let's say, a deer rifle, a shotgun for turkey and waterfowl, and a .22 for small game. So off the bat that's about 6-9 guns.

And maybe you started your kid off with a .410 or a 20 gauge shotgun and a smaller .22 rifle for them to learn the fundamentals when they were younger, and when they got older you got a 12ga and a more appropriately-sized rifle for them to use, so there's another couple guns.

And maybe some of you have different guns for different purposes, maybe you prefer a semi auto shotgun for waterfowl and a pump for upland hunting for whatever reason, or if you live in the suburbs you might be limited to shotgun slugs and straight walled rifle cartridges in the areas you can hunt closer to home so maybe you have a gun that meets those requirements and then another rifle for when you can go hunting in the mountains.

So you can pretty reasonably have a dozen or so guns in your household from just having a couple people who like to go hunting before you even start talking about carry or home defense guns, dedicated range/target shooting guns, or collecting them, etc.

One for each finger.

There are many thing I don't need yet still have