And personally, I think the NRA's position (or anyone else's for that matter) that calling a "weapon" a "firearm" is somehow beneficifial in any way is just plain stupid.
Just going thru this thread has revealed to me why the "other" side has made so many gains over the years (i.e. assault rifle).
We're in the game, whether you like it or not - as they say;
you may not care for politics, but that does not mean politics does not care about you.
We can think it's a stupid game and refuse to play if we want, but doing so will allow the other side to continue to score with the general public before moving up the chain.
And for those that consistently pooh pah citizens standing up to an oppressive leader...
It used to be standard policy for many LE agencies to assign you to an area outside where you grew up. The stated reason was to get you away from friends, relatives, acquaintances, etc. in case you were into something less than legal, and to make it more difficult for you to get involved in such by dropping you in a new environment.
I had one fellow who was with the State Police told me a secondary (unofficial) reason was should martial law ever be invoked (by an overreaching politician / elected official, or ?) that those tasked with carrying it out would not be doing so against friends, relatives, acquaintances, etc.
Should the worst happen, those tasked with controlling the masses may do so grudgingly (and some probably won't do so at all), but who is to say if they were doing so against relatives and folks they grew up with how many would view that as the straw that broke the camel's back?
Now throw armed citizens into the mix - those same officials that were tasked with implementing martial law (or whatever illegal order they've been handed) might grudgingly do so against an unarmed populace, but if they were to go into a neighborhood / town / city etc. and find armed citizens opposing them instead of unarmed...well, how many of those officials would view that as the straw that breaks the camel's back?
With some of the politicians / policies we've seen over the last few decades, who is to say had the American public been unarmed that someone would not already have tried some type of takeover / control of the population?