There is no good reason, though there are plenty of bad reasons.

I knew of a few individuals with ties to the black market, and on the black market they could buy guns circumventing the laws requiring any licenses or background checks.

Why would any American need such a rifle? This for a starter- [newsweek.com] Crazed protesters issuing threats of violence, and DHS isn't taking such threats lightly. If I were some of those judges I'd surely arm myself to protect my loved ones just in case. Full disclosure and for what it's worth, I'm staunchly pro choice when it comes to abortion and can sympathize with those protesters on the matter, but making threats of violence is going too far.

Unfortunately, racism is still a problem in the US, might not be a bad idea for black families to have such a rifle on hand in case they get harassed or threatened by a group of white supremacists.

An obvious factor is black market weapons/illegal ways. When someone goes that route, what good are the laws? It's also too easy to lift weapons from local Guard bases or police cruisers, which one guy I knew some years back demonstrated, he and his contacts would steal weapons from a local Guard base and sell them on the street. So much for the laws...

Oops, hit send by accident, was not quite done.

Then you have the issue of radicalized rightwingers who go around threatening acts of violence. Some leftwing groups are just as bad, back in June 2020 shortly after the George Floyd incident there was a huge racial justice protest that marched through my neighborhood, and some of the protesters started harassing my neighbor over an American Flag he had on his deck, and I thought things were going to get violent based on some threats the protesters made and that two of them picked up rocks in anticipation of throwing them at my neighbor. Had not the slightest clue if any of them were armed or not with other weapons. When up against a group of potentially violent thugs, a rifle like that is not a bad idea to have on hand.

Some gun owners like rifles like that due to the unique challenge of sport/competition shooting with them, as each gun out there has a certain amount of recoil etc when firing, so no two guns necessarily handle the same way and some people like that challenge.

@SpikeTalon It's a shame that one has to live with such a 'just in cace' mindset. And it's not that the US doesn't have gun control laws but it seems that they haven't been effective enough in protecting the innocent from gun violence. What you (and we all over the world) need is a comprehensive approach to gun control and mental health reforms. Easy said than done, but still...

@Ryo1 Definitely on the mental health part, and I strongly believe that if there were less cases of mental illness and addictions there would be considerably less acts of violence, when people are fairly content crime usually goes down. My fellow Americans suffer from a multitude of addictions, which in turn eventually cause depression and anguish.

I visited friends of a friend in Idaho a few years ago. The conversation turned to gun ownership and the man of the house said that he had kept several loaded guns in the house when his children were growing up because two local girls had been raped and murdered in the town so he was taking no chances.
I said fair enough for a self defence weapon but why would anyone need a semi automatic weapon.
A reply from someone else was "it may be his hobby". After I suggested that he takes up knitting or stamp collecting instead I think I was asked to leave.
So there you have it. "it may be his hobby" I think the man meant shooting at targets and not school children but I may be wrong.

@Moravian It's just beyond our imagination, isn't it? Everyone wants to live in a society where parents don't feel the need to teach their children how to use firearms, surely. If it's a hobby to collect guns, they don't need to be loaded.

@Garban Were they weak arguments, or did I merely say something that of which you did not like and or want to hear? I have a feeling it's the latter there...

Again, you are focusing too much on the specific details/abilities of certain weapons and not on the actual concepts behind the arguments you are trying to make. As for cannons... yeah, guess you couldn't take them and line them up in a classroom and mow down a row of people in seconds... when you could just station the cannon a relative distance from the school building and fire the cannon into it and wipe it off the face of the Earth? As if that wasn't a possible scenario, since you want to be technical, and rather doubt in such a scenario anyone would have been able to figure out what was going on until it was too late. Besides, going by your own logic that such devices like guns have only one purpose and that is to kill, common sense would then say a cannon is equally destructive in the right hands.

Just saying something is a weak argument because you disagreed or hated what the person told you doesn't automatically make it a weak argument, but I think you already know that though regardless of whether or not you wish to admit to such.

As for your "Government boogie man" (apparently you can't even spell the word boogeyman right, and yet want me to take your claims seriously) comment, so... you think I'm wrong in believing that the Government (namely politicians) isn't being tyrannical now when it comes to reproductive rights for women? I'm just imagining that the Supreme Court is in the process of sending the country backwards where abortion procedures are concerned and that there is no credible threat against a woman's right to get an abortion, is that what you're saying? I sure hope not, because you would be very wrong about that, and eroding our civil rights pretty much would equate to tyranny.

Whoa, slow down there ace, what do you mean by killing capacity that I feel entitled to? What evidence do you have to back up such an absurd albeit slanderous claim? I've been around firearms since a young kid and started using them and airguns in my teens, and not one time did I ever use said guns on a living being and or cause any physical harm to any. I enjoy target practice only with paper targets or pellet traps, and I'm careful whenever engaged in such so as to cause a ricochet accident, and I swear to that on my friggin balls. Target practice is a sport just like any other sport, and when it's the type I engage in it's non-violent, so your assumption there was grossly wrong. Also, what's this entitlement crap you were babbling on about? When did I ever say I felt entitled to anything? If I earn my money honestly, and I do, and I pay for the gun magazines myself minus any handouts, I don't see how that's an entitlement, and I also don't see how that's anyone else's business what I buy with my own money provided I am not impeding on the free will of another. There you go making assumptions again. Now... you want to talk about entitled folks, let's talk about some genuinely entitled folks out there that people like you readily back. The Democrats are all about entitlements at the expense of others, from getting taxpayer-funded contraceptives to free cell phones to free college tuition to free public housing and the list goes on. How's that for entitlement, eh? All at the expense of other hardworking individuals. I pay my own way in life and never took a handout, and don't feel "entitled" to anything, I work hard for what I have. There are alot of things in life that are excess or not necessary, the Democrats certainly believe in excesses of the sort, yet you don't see me going around telling them they are wrong for participating in needless or unnecessary things, because it's not mine or anyone else's business what they do or the choices they make so long as they aren't impeding on anyone else's existence. Seriously, some of the things you people (meaning gun control advocates) have said to me over the years on the matter of gun control has been borderline paranoid schizophrenia at best and at worst a total emotional meltdown. Makes me wonder if I'm talking to Forrest Gump here, or just a paranoid schizophrenic who goes around making baseless accusations about others?

Just remember, if by chance you're disgruntled again by what I said, you started it by making wild and baseless assumptions about me. I'm not disgruntled like that, and will gladly engage anyone who's interested in having civil discussions or debates, and as you can see I'll respond appropriately when someone decides to get personal with me. Your paranoid self-righteous delusions might sway the mindless drones who occupy this group, but it won't sway me any, I'm all too familiar with the usual gun control arguments as I was once one with that crowd myself.

Lastly, my fears on the matter are warranted. Have you not studied history, are you not aware of the fact that Governments in the past have and continue to oppress the people they are supposed to be serving? Just keep in mind that the Government which is powerful enough to severely limit or totally ban civilian firearm ownership, is also the same Government that is powerful enough to diminish or remove rights that you hold near and dear to your heart (namely leftwing causes like gay rights or bodily autonomy). That's not an opinion, that's reality, and anyone who would try to claim otherwise lives in a fictional world. Children aren't getting killed on a scale you'd want me to believe by the way, I don't buy into those horseshit opinion rag pieces from far-left propaganda outlets who have an axe to grind. There haven't been over 200 "mass shootings" this year, more to the truth there were four- [statista.com]

Not saying those four incidents are to be taken lightly either, but what I am saying is facts matter and putting stories in the right context matters, and the far-left have been spreading misinformation on the topic of mass shooting incidents this year, riling people up with propaganda in the process. I could go on and on about the gun control misinformation campaigns, but I think you do get the picture, and as time allows me I'm going to do a future post on here asking some questions we all should be asking regarding the recent Texas school shooting, the kind of questions hardly anyone else on this site has the balls to ask because I suppose it's easier to go along to get along. Suffice to say, the post will be pointing out how useless your gun control laws have been and continue to be. You know how thoughts and prayers are totally useless? Good, you know what else is useless? More gun control laws, because criminals don't give a damn about what laws you set for them, which is why they are criminals. If someone honestly believes that either a sign saying no guns allowed on school grounds or "enhanced" background checks are the solution to the problem, I know full well that I'm dealing with someone who is delusional and maybe even emotionally unstable. It must be inordinately taxing for anyone to be that naive or clueless.

If you're up for civil conversations minus the wild emotions, I'll be around. If you're in the mood to get personal and hurl accusations at me, just remember two can play that game, ace. For what it's worth, a few years back the originator of this group and I didn't get along well either, constantly heckling one another among the two groups, yet once he was willing to at least attempt to try to understand why I was arguing like I was his mind opened up to other possibilities, and in the end he finally conceded that repealing the 2A or more laws was not the solution, and in turn I conceded that more guns is not necessarily the solution either. We never did settle on a semi-permanent solution to the problem, but we realized that each side raised valid point(s) and concerns, and that was a decent first step. Such diplomacy is largely missing in our society these days, which is a big part of the problems we face.

Tell that to Beto;

@Robecology As if he did not already know that. I am truly delighted that he did what he did.

What sort of society allows a kid just turned 18 to buy two of those guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition ?. Do the people watch dystopian superhero movies and confuse fiction with reality ?.

@Moravian A very sick society let’s this happen. I do believe that all the doom and gloom that Fox News and other media sites like them spew, cause a lot of the angst and anger that trigger people to do these horrible things.