[Tennessee Gentleman]

Glenn,
Good points. I would throw into the mix the operational design of the firearm. That is where I see the issue with FA. They are designed for the purely military uses of fire supression and area denial.

Fire Suppression, as I have seen discussed in other TFL threads is really a bad idea for civilian SD since we are financially and criminally liable for each round fired and the military in combat generally is not (except if they violate any Law of Warfare provisions).

Area denial is also not feasible in the civilian SD role as even with large civil disturbances, liability and responsibility for each round fired is still in play and the arms available to we civilians now are adequate for the purpose and will not unduely endanger innocent bystanders as much or to the degree FA will.

Same with mortars and grenades. Their purpose is pure military and the issue for us is civilian SD. Civilian SD and the legal liability issues I think pretty much preclude the unrestricted use/possession of FA. FA I think belongs in the curio/hobby world and not in the world of civilian SD.

As to terrorists and the so called "foreign invaders" mentioned in Nordyke dicta, these threats will ultimately be dealt with by LEO/Military and I do not foresee "citizen militias who are really unorganized mobs with guns" meeting those threats effectively.

Indeed they might add more confusion to the mix as the trained responders might not be able to tell the two antagonists apart and cause the wrong folks to get shot. In fact I would see these "militias" shooting each other as well as either the BGs or LEOs/Military responders.

I consider these scenarios kind of nutty anyway and anyone who has spent time in the military knows the difficulty of conducting armed military operations and the foolishness of throwing untrained armed civilians into the mix of those types of combat operations.