The Supreme Court on Monday turned away an appeal by a group of gun rights advocates seeking to overturn Maryland’s ban on assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines under the Second Amendment.
The decision, a major win for gun safety advocates, leaves in place a ruling by the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals which ruled that the state may constitutionally prohibit sale and possession of the weapons.
The state legislation, enacted in 2013 after the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, specifically targets the AR-15 – the most popular rifle in America with 20-30 million in circulation. They are legal in 41 of the 50 states.
Driving is a requirement in america for most. Owning a gun is not for anyone I can think of outside employment reasons.
That’s a pretty common perspective for anyone that’s never lived a life where you must hunt in order to put food on your family’s table, or you need to shoot coyotes or other pests that attach your livestock or crops that threaten your farm-to-table, or lived in an area where there’s literally no police for an hour or more and it’s just you if anyone comes knocking.
Poor rural folks don’t have a huge representation on Lemmy but there are plenty that live this way in the USA.
You don’t see it in the bigger cities and suburbs, rightfully so.
I don’t even live in a small town and there’s plenty of people I work with that drive in ~45 minutes and have livestock that have to worry about coyotes and other wild dogs attacking their livestock.
Guns are a tool. If you can’t imagine what they’re a tool for all it means is you lack perspective to see how - no judgment, just stating the fact. I mention all this because this misunderstanding is a huge reason for the divide between pro/anti gun crowds, and closing the gap can help set us up for better discussions about where we want to go in terms of gun legislation (assuming you’re in the USA - if not then all applies in general, not to you specifically)
Most of the reasons you listed count as employment reasons. I don’t personally think a gun is needed if police are an hour away however, even in the city.