The Assault Weapons Ban: How Silly Was It?
These rifles are identical in every regard except that the rifle on the top has a small bit of metal under the front sight to which a bayonet could attach, and a small vented tube on the end of the barrel that redirects unburned gases.
Both are AR-15-pattern rifles that came off the same assembly line, fire the exact same ammunition, and use the same magazines.
The former was criminalized for ultimately absurd reasons, so that lawmakers could claim they were doing something about gun violence. Both were legal to sell, buy, and possess during the life of the ban.
The story was the same for almost every weapon impacted by the law. The offending cosmetics were removed, and the same weapon was sold under a different model number for the duration of the ban — while the “pre-ban” versions became items of interest and demand merely because of the additional features.
Instead of having having an impact on the reduction of gun crime, the “assault weapon ban” instead became a near-comical example of the law of unintended consequences. Prior to the introduction of the legislation, demand for the firearms that became the subject of the ban was relatively light. The public’s interest was piqued, and sales skyrocketed, directly as a result of the law. These firearms had almost no statistical representation in crimes (which the National Institute of Justice admitted two years later), and interest in them grew both before the ban and after it was enacted. One of the unintended consequences of the law was that these firearms that had had a small role at the fringes of the marketplace were suddenly desired by millions.
The assault weapons ban didn’t reduce the number of military-style semi-automatic firearms. It greatly increased their numbers, their public acceptance, and had the effect of mainstreaming them, “pre-ban” rifles and cosmetically de-enhanced “post-ban” rifles alike. Thanks to the “ban,” AR-15 pattern rifles are now among the most popular rifles in America, and have been mainstreamed even among the change-resistant hunting fraternity as “modern sporting rifles.”
So if the ten-year ban period did not see a substantial reduction in gun crimes committed with the kind of firearms banned, and the expiration of the law in 2004 did not result in a massive upswing in violence even after these firearms achieved mainstream popularity and acceptance, why would the Obama administration be so strongly in favor of advocating for a renewal of the ban?
That is something we hope to resolve in Part 2.
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The Washington Post, May 23, 2011:
On March 30, the 30th anniversary of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, Jim Brady, who sustained a debilitating head wound in the attack, and his wife, Sarah, came to Capitol Hill to push for a ban on the controversial “large magazines.” Brady, for whom the law requiring background checks on handgun purchasers is named, then met with White House press secretary Jay Carney. During the meeting, President Obama dropped in and, according to Sarah Brady, brought up the issue of gun control: “to fill us in that it was very much on his agenda,” she said.
“I just want you to know that we are working on it,” Brady recalled the president telling them. “We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”
In every practical respect, the firearms-related provisions of the “assault weapons ban” were an objective failure. But absurd restrictions on firearms weren’t the only part of that legislation that passed only to succumb to an outcome quite different than it’s anti-gun progenitors had in mind.
Along with creating the term “assault weapon,” this Clinton-era law also created the similarly arbitrary term “high-capacity magazine.”
A detachable magazine is a container that holds cartridges for a given firearm, and the number of cartridges typically varied with the size and the purpose of the weapon at hand and the size of the cartridge it fired. Small turn-of-the-century handguns typically carried magazines of just 6-7 cartridges. The standard magazine capacity of many pistols that became popular in the 1980s was 15 rounds or more. The standard capacity of military grade rifles and carbines was 20-30 rounds. As time progressed, firearm designers were finding ways to put a larger number of cartridges in the magazines of their weapons.
When legislators decided that the “assault weapons ban” should also include a restriction on the number of cartridges that any given magazine could hold, they declared that any magazine that held a greater amount of cartridges was a “high capacity” magazine. It didn’t matter to them that many of the firearms in question had as their standard capacity magazines with round counts from 13-30 rounds or more, or that some of these firearms had had such a capacity since before the congressmen and congresswomen writing the law were born.
Congress arbitrarily decided that 10 rounds was “enough” for American citizens, and included provisions that once the law went into effect, any magazine manufactured after the date the law went into effect that had more than ten rounds would be illegal for anything other than law enforcement use.
Like the firearms provisions of the bill, these magazine provisions also had unintended consequences.
If murder is banned, why is it necessary to ban any particular instrument of murder? Are they going to ban clubs, rocks, glass, metal, hard plastic, (including credit cards), ballpoint pens, hands and feet, and heads, materials which which strangling is possible? The list could go on and on.
The majority of poisons and explosives are already banned. How about dogs? They can be trained to attack on command. How about police and bodyguards? They undoubtedly occasionally murder people.
I think a practical solution to all this government absurdity would be to allow Congress to meet but once annually (as originally instituted), rather than filling too much time with ill thoughtout busywork.
Because this Lanza character could never have murdered 26 people in such a short time with just his hands and feet. Or with rocks. Or with a knife. Most would have escaped after the first killing. Or even wrestled him to the ground.
Why were assault rifles invented in the first place? Why were firearms invented in the first place? To kill more people more quickly than knives or fists could do.
That’s why people own them rather than buying knives.
Draconian laws regarding firearms are highly effective in preventing mass murders in foreign countries. There simply are none.
Unless you count arson, poisonings, car bombs, truck bomb, IEDs, and of course suicide bombers with explosive vests.
And oh yes, mass killings by drug gangs and terrorist groups with fully-automatic military weapons. Usually supplied to them by “sympathetic” governments.
(See “Operation Fast & Furious”, to say nothing of military-grade full-auto M-16 variants supplied to the Mexican police by our Justice Department- that somehow ended up in the hands of the drug cartels before they were even uncrated.)
Consider that recently, a man in the People’s Republic of China killed almost two dozen people in a rampage… with a knife.
Or that with rare exceptions (Son of Sam, Zodiac), serial killers in this country do not use guns. Because that method of killing isn’t as “emotionally satisfying” to them as stabbing, bludgeoning, strangling, etc.
For a little thought experiment, consider the likely result if Lanza had walked into the school wearing a vest containing twenty pounds of dynamite (store-bought or home made), five pounds of finishing nails (for fragmentation effect)- and had the whole thing set up to be fired by a deadman switch. Even if a police sharpshooter had been there, and taken him out, there would still have been an explosion, and casualties.
If he just walked in to a classroom and took his thumb off the switch, you would have had a classroom full of dead children. Ask any Israeli, or Iraqi, how this works.
And if Lanza was as big an Internet and video game addict as advertised, and had the IQ he’s credited with, he could have made such a vest. Period. Google “suicide bomb vest” for the details.
Killers kill because they want to kill. The method is often merely a detail.
clear ether
eon
Instead of using guns to kill with, he could have used a car. Crashing a speeding car into a school could create as many or more casualties as was done in this atrocity.
So in a world without guns, he murders his mother with a knife from the kitchen and builds bombs from the common chemicals under the sink which he uses to kill the kids in the school.
One can NEVER disarm criminals and terrorists, nor can one EVER prevent them from trying to kill others. One can only deter some attempts by allowing a situation where it is known many people in any given location are capable of defending themselves (concealed carry permits) or ensuring that once an event starts, there are actually people in the location (school, mall, movie theater, wherever) that can end the attack 15-20 minutes before the police arrive (concealed carry permits).
If you ban the manufacture of every firearm, they will still be made outside the US and bought by criminals and terrorists inside the US on the black market. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO GET THE GUNS OUT OF THE HANDS OF THE CRIMINALS AND CRAZIES…IT IS ALSO IMPOSSIBLE FOR POLICE TO ARRIVE IN TIME TO SAVE YOU ONCE A MASS SHOOTING OR HOME INVASION STARTS…your only hope of protection is to arm the law-abiding and the sane.
Germany has had multiple shooting massacres in recent years. The problem? Germany’s gun control laws are already strict. Since the Germans don’t want laws that allow self defense with firearms (it well make them look like those “unsophisticated” amerikkkans) nor do they want to re-enact Nazi Germany, they’ve decided to…
Ban paintball because “it promotes violent thinking”. I’m not kidding.
What if he’d made a bomb from household chemicals?
Do we ban household chemicals?
I wonder if that will be springboard for regulation of these products for the green movement. They would be really happy I am sure.
How about if he just took a can of gasoline and blew it up in a classroom? Bet he could have taken out a bunch more kids in a lot less time. Maybe we should outlaw gas!
Even easier. Suppose this psychopathic monster (whom I will not dignify by naming) had not had access to his mother’s guns, but still wanted to perpetrate a massacre at the school.
He probably would have stolen his mother’s car, waited until recess, and then driven it into the school’s playground. I imagine he could have killed at least as many that way.
(And how would people respond had he done that? Ban extra-powerful cars? Make it illegal to have “automatic” cruise control? Restrict gas tanks to no more than five gallons? Propose a mandatory “waiting period” before buying a car?)
Cars are far more deadly than guns, both in theory and in practice. We accept deaths from traffic accidents because we’re used to them, not because they’re somehow not as ghastly as gun-related deaths.
The access issue in this case is a bit of a red herring. Where it might apply is when a child tries to steal the guns -without the awareness- of the parent.
This shooter was an adult and had used the firearms with his motehr for a long time, he realistically would have been aware of the key location or combo.
In any event, he shot his mother in the face as she slept. He was capable of anything. If her guns had been in a safe he simply could have woken her up at knifepoint and threatened or tortured the key or combo out of her. It’s not realistic to think she would or could have resisted.
That actually happened in my neighborhood a few years ago:
http://www.ocregister.com/news/brandon-39631-preschool-sierra.html
So that when a bunch of street goblins are attacking your grocery store because their team lost, or because their team won, or because they don’t like the outcome of a trial, or for any other asinine reason they can conjure, you have enough fire power and ammo to properly discourage them and maybe chlorinate their gene pool a bit.
BTW, “Assault Weapons” i.e. semi-automatic rifles are seldom used in crimes and were not used in Newtown.
So far no one has laid blame on one obvious cause – namely the Black-gangsta and Black rap-culture that young White kids have embraced.
Back in the 1950s when I was growing up, we had plenty of war-surplus semiauto M1 Garand “battle rifles” and M1 Carbines (the latter being a forerunner of an “assault rifle”. But we also had White culture that listened to songs about lost loves, and not songs about “f***k Mamma and rip her wide open”. During my 4 undergraduate years of college, I kept a pistol in my dorm room, as did probably 1/3 of all other students in my all-male dorm, and none of ever considered shooting anyone (even when drunk). We used these guns for target shooting, and occasionally to visit the town dump to shoot rats. So what has changed? Culture…
Yes, the culture has changed… as planned by the Left.
Our Schools and Media establishments scoff at traditional moral values, and actively undermine parents who try to raise their children with those values.
They promote violence to, and the and sexualization of, our children with impunity. They ensure we maintain a completely porous border with one of the most criminally violent countries on earth. They purposely import people from Failed States, actively enticing them with promises of free gifts and services while fanning their imaginary grievances against Western Culture. They condemn personal responsibility at all levels. And they self-appoint a race of cosmetically surgeried “cat people” from Hollywood to join forces with Professors and Civil Servants to dictate the “correct” way for us to live, and tell us which politicians are Gods, and which are Villains.
It was a Long March through the Institutions, but they have finally succeeded.
To paraphrase Adams: “Our Constitution is only for a religious and moral people…it cannot successfully govern any other”
And we are now finally, a Majority Nation of Slackers and Whiners, a collection of dependent idiots born and raised in the toxic womb of the Mainstream Government/Media empire, with a healthy sprinkling of the truly evil, and the completely lazy, thrown in for good measure.
So, BY DESIGN, it is simply no longer ‘reasonable” to continue allowing your typical American “liability on two feet” to possess certain rights which they are clearly not responsible enough to exercise…
The Second Amendment is for a Brave and Moral people…none other can have such without these inevitable catastrophes…catastrophes that point to our own failings, our own weaknesses, our own incompetency to “actually” govern ourselves without the Beautiful People making all the REALLY Important Decisions FOR us.
We indeed have been “Fundamentally Transformed”… such archaic ways of self-evident “rights” and ”responsibilities” can no longer apply.
Our Lord and Savior Bronk-o-bama has made that perfectly clear, hasn’t he?
Lincoln’s ”house divided” speech campaigning toward the 1860 election, was less a lament, less a call for comity, than a warning from history that before the house will fall and become two houses, the house will try to end the division.
Lanza would’ve use a bomb, you nit.
He very likely needed to have power over many and desired to kill many. Thus, being crazy but not stupid, he would’ve carefully figured out a way to make that happen.
You have blamed the gun, again, as the perpetrator.
Hey, sinz, a couple of 5 gallon cans of gasoline might very well have done the job even faster, sprinklered buildings notwithstanding…or driving a dump truck through the 1954 frame building…you gonna ban gasoline, or five gallon cans, or heavy trucks?
it takes a second to swap 10 round magazines in an AR…if no one there was armed or prepared to take him down, banning 30 round mags or AR’s would not be an obstacle to cornering a classroom full of kids, especially when the standard procedure is to put everyone on one corner of the room…
He had three guns. If all three had just “post-ban” 10 round magazines in them that’s more rounds on tap than there were staffers to rush him, even if he did have to reload.
The anti’s don’t know enough to make rational, informed arguments.
Lanza had 20 minutes and there was no one who could effectively fight back in that time.
As an example, a “well-regulated” (which meant “properly trained” at the time) Revolutionary-era militiaman could fire 3-4 aimed shots a minute from his musket, the “assault rifle” of the day.
20 minutes is 60-80 rounds from a weapon the anti-gun crowd snarkily say was what the 2nd Amendment was intended to protect.
60-80 rounds fired at helpless staff and students.
And lest you say “they could have rushed him while he reloaded” that musket came with a 2 foot bayonet, surely you aren’t seriously claiming unarmed, non-super ninja, teachers and staff could take on both ball -and- blade.
Stop blaming the object, it’s puerile.
“Why were assault rifles invented in the first place? Why were firearms invented in the first place? To kill more people more quickly than knives or fists could do”
Which is exactly what a reasonable, responsible person needs when evil (in the form of a government or criminal attacker) comes-a-knocking.
Muskets in 1776 were assault weapons, the most effective killing machines man could build.
Thats why “militia” style weapons are specifically mentioned as “un-infringable” in the “Bill of Rights”
But one thing still needs to be said…Tragic as it is, I’m glad the mom caught lead, serves her right for the SHEER STUPIDITY of teaching her freak-retard son to handle weapons considering his obvious F’ed up mental issues and “obsession” with Violent Video Games, not to mention having them so “unsecured” he was able to physically access them….
If she was still alive, I’d have a mind to shoot her myself for bringing so much misery that SHOULD have been avoided….
With Rights come Responsibilities, and (IMHO) she failed….miserably
Japanese killed a lot of people in China with swords. Granted, these were helpless civilians, but a good sword in the hands of a man who knows how to use it is a deadly weapon. What weapons were used before guns were invented? How was Islam spread over so much of the world in a time before guns were invented? Guns just make it easier for relatively unskilled people to kill. The weapons of the past required both skill and strength. Guns require some skill, but little strength. They also make the “weak” equal to the “strong”. As was said in the mining camps in California in the 19th Century, “God Made Men. Sam Colt Made Them Equal”.
But the debate is not between “guns” and “no guns.” The latter is not going to happen. Ever. The argument, as it’s going to be framed, is that “assault rifles” make shooting sprees significantly more deadly.
Since we’re supposed to “restore science to its rightful place,” you would think we would then see a scientific, evidentiary demonstration of this point. But no.
The Newtown murderer had twenty minutes to kill victims in a confined space. Rate of fire was not an issue. It takes about three seconds to change a handgun’s magazine. He could have achieved several times the necessary rate of fire with a bolt-action rifle, or a 1850s-vintage revolver.
I have never seen a single case where a spree shooter’s number of victims has been limited by the maximum rate of fire of his weapon. Generally, they have plenty of time to kill as many people as they want to. The only thing that limits them is when they’re confronted, preferably with armed men or women. That, perversely enough, is the thing liberals least want to see happen.
Because that would *reinforce* the conservative idea that weapons are sometimes useful, and the overriding question here is not to make Americans safe, but to make conservatives unpopular.
So, Lanza makes some fire bombs, or Mixes Ammonia and Bleach, Uses the car he drove there with and waits for recess, He was not dumb, He was very intelligent according to what I have read about him, Once He decided to do what He did, He would have found a way to accomplish what He intended.
It’s still comes down to that School was a Gun Free Zone, and no one in that school had the ability to defend themselves or the children in their care effectively against a insane murderer on his own warped mission of death.
So next time it’s a bomb. All you are doing is inspiring new and creative ways to mass murder. This isn’t about guns.
Someone who is going to do something like this will ALWAYS find a gun or another way. So even after a few short decades of confiscations, and millions of law abiding Americans are disarmed and many of them imprisoned, a person that intent on destruction will A. Find a gun anyway… B. Make a bomb from common / easily obtained materials and THEN you’ll see much higher death tolls. I recommend an armed / trained officer per every X number of students, per school…
Except that China had 22 kids stabbed in a single attack. So YES, it COULD be done with a knife. In fact China has more people killed by stabbings than we do by shootings.
A handgun is a state-of-the-art tool for DETERRING AGGRESSION. That’s why people buy them.
Wrong a assault weapon was not used it was left in the car only hand guns where used in the shooting.
your a dip shit
sorry sorry sinz54 is a dip shit
Eventually, left/liberals will have to ban sticks, fists and gravity before they’ll admit to being wrong.
What makes you think they’ll admit it then?
clear ether
eon
Because some weapons make murder too easy. Weapons at home make it much more likely that a family dispute will end up as a murder within family. This is a scientific fact. In this case, a family dispute ended up with murder within family, and then spilled out outside. Too make a bomb requires premeditation. Most murders with firearms happen without premeditation. Without arm they would never happen.
You have any cites/facts to back up your claims?
*crickets*
Google health-risk-having-gun-home
MarinaMaine, using your logic, you should get rid of your electric appliances as well.
Oh by the way, since you posted this comment after other posters have mentioned that these shootings were meticulously planned ahead (read: Anders Behring Breivik mass shooting in gun control Norway), deduce that you are arguing dishonestly. Continuing the gun ban debate while using such a vapid mix of dishonesty and ignorance hasn’t helped the anti-gun kooks in the age of the Internet. The MSM is getting weaker MarinaMaine, and now the American public is even further aware of how the MSM and the zombies that watch it (like MarinaMaine) don’t know a goddammned thing about what they are talking about.
Ignorance such as this:
“high caliber rifle bullets” huh? Was a .45-70 rifle used? .50AE Desert Eagle?
“repeating bullets” What does that mean?
“assault weapons” A term invented by the left like Josh Sugarmann.
“high powered weapons” Do they even know what they mean? Is a .9mm pistol “high powered”?
You antigunners are losing because you are being caught as ignorant lying bastards on the Internet. And since this is the 21st century, look up stereo lithography and molecular manufacturing, your worst nightmare for your dishonest movement.
Then why don’t the FBI crime stats bear that out?
Murder rates have been falling since 1994 when they were at a all time high of 9.0 per 100,000, to today were the murder rate has fallen to 4.2 per 100,000, all that with a exponential explosion of 171% in the Number of fire arms in Civilian hands and homes, and the corresponding rise in states that allow CCW to 49 out of 50 states.
Marina, how about you Google John Lott More Guns, Less Crime to see the actual effect gun ownership has on crime?
If you’re referring to the Kellerman study(s) on guns in the home, that is far from “scientific fact.”
The studies are uniformly rife with methodological flaws, the most significant of which is that he continued throughout his research to control for whether the gun in the home was possessed lawfully. You can’t include prohibited persons and rationally make conclusions about lawful gun ownership in the home.
More seriously, Kellerman had the data to do so but failed to note whether the firearm used in the homicide was the same firearm actually possessed by the homeowner. If you have a gun in your home for protection because you live in a high crime area, but someone in the home is murdered by -another- person’s firearm in the course of a crime, that simply means you were right to be concerned but were unfortunately a victim. Your gun ownership was not in anyway “unsafe.”
“…failed to control…” that is.
He used all gun possessors to try to make conclusions about law-abiding gun owners.
Even when the gun was possessed lawfully, Kellermann totally failed to show any connection between the legal gun and the crime.
In fact, if I recall the contemporaneous discussion correctly, one of the legal guns Kellermann claimed was linked to a crime in the home was a WWII souvenir Luger that was locked in a trunk in the basement at the time of the crime.
Right MM, and Nicole Brown would still be alive if oj hadn’t shot her with that knife.
Speaking of ”never happening” –do you realize that what you’re arguing is equivalent to arguing the deaths of people who choke on their food are proof no one should eat?
You say, that’s absurd?
Then you must know the number of crimes that are deterred by guns. The home invasions that are never done, because the bad guys are afraid they’ll get shot by the homeowners, can you produce that number?
Here’s a hint –UK gun crimes doubled the decade following the UK gun ban.
What does that tell ya?
Harder to find that that headline, but you can do it, the body of statistical evidence building by county before and after the citizens were allowed some freedom of choice.
(“Freedom of choice” –where have i heard that before?)
So, really, an accountant should look at both sides of a ledger, right, if he wants a picture of the truth?
So, how many crimes of passion, first degree murders, home invasions, all forms of gun crime and non-gun crime, do we never hear about, because they never happened? Of these, how many never happened because they were deterred? Of these, how many were deterred by the potential perp’s estimate of gun-armed confrontation?
If you don’t have those numbers, then you have no argument at all.
My mom was a juror for a murder trial—the weapon was a hammer.
Wrong and wrong again cars kill more people every year. Just bec some one is armed does not mean they are more likely to kill. Your so called facts are wrong you are wrong and have no clue what you are talking about.
Here’s the problem folks. Will the so called “assault weapons ban” include existing rifles? Will law abiding citizens who have never broken a significant law worse than perhaps speeding on the highway be “required” to turn in their guns or face felony charges? If so, how many arrests of basically law abiding citizens are you willing to tolerate? How many cops are you willing to have shot when they knock on someone’s door who refuses to give up their guns? Which by the way they feel they have a right to possess as protected by the 2nd amendment. Most significantly, if civil forfeiture of private property (turn in your guns or else) is not part of the bill, what are you going to do when the next mass shooting happens at a school or a mall with pre-existing guns? Trust me, this WILL happen. So if we know this will happen, why can’t we talk about solutions that will actually work, rather than solutions that sound and feel good but are totally ineffective? Let’s talk about setting up programs in schools where teachers, faculty, administrators, even janitors can apply for, be vetted for and be trained for carrying guns in the schools. We KNOW that this program will work. Look at the FFDO program for arming pilots. You don’t hear about gunfights taking place on airplanes do you? Why would we assume that guns in schools carried by trained individuals would be different. Lets talk about things that will WORK to limit damage by existing guns, not things that just feel good which is all the “assault weapons ban” would be.
Politicians don’t pass laws that have discernable positive effects proven out with empirical evidence, they pass laws that give the illusion of progress and allow the simple-minded unwashed mass of voters to get the release endorphins that drives their decision making process. Gun control, welfare, minimum wage, recycling, etc. The end results mean absolutely f*ckall, its all about the here and now. Politicians feed into it out of necessity; reelection won’t come without it.
Yes – the theater of “We Have To Do Something”!
They will try to pass a bill that will do nothing except annoy people.
Old Soldier,
Exactly.
We have all out narco-war just south of the border in a country that has stringent gun laws. The feds refuse to protect our soverignty and our border. And they campaign that gun control laws will produce results?
Drugs of all kinds are illegal under the war on drugs by issuing claims that these drugs are controlled substances. Yet they are constantly being sold on the street and in prisons and jails throughout the country that authorities supposedly control.
I better get my wash rag and bath water ready, the feds and their lakey press are going to start telling me it is raining again.
All This Hype about “assault weapons” is in my opionion the agenda of the radical left with Obama an Reed, Pelosi etc trying their best to shove there view down the throats of lawful citizens. I never ever knew or ever heard of a gun just killing anything, it always took an individual to operate it. Remember Adolf Hitler he asked his people to disarm for the better good of thier population an everyone knows how that ended up. People die in car crashes every day do they ban cars. The goverment banned booze once and did that stop people from drinking. I think our politicians have no “horse sense” at all. I bet Ted Kennedy killed more people than my gun ever will.
Actually, those laws not only do no good, they actively do harm.
For those who may have missed it:
Adam Lanza Learned His Mother Was Preparing To Commit Him To A Mental Health Care Facility
Nancy Lanza knew her son, Adam Lanza, to be spiraling out of control. She could no longer manage him on her own. She had filed a petition with the courts for conservatorship so that she could have her son committed to a mental heath facility as an adult, against his will, so that he could get the care and treatment that he desperately needed.
Nancy Lanza had volunteered at the Sandy Hook school for several years, working with kindergarten children. Adam Lanza, in his delusional state, believed that his mother loved the school and the children at the school more than she loved him. He flew into a rage, and snapped. The first grade children who were killed were kindergartners whom Nancy Lanza had worked with last year. The principle and psychologist at Sandy Hook school were good friends of Nancy Lanza, and they were killed in the attack.
This is not an issue of gun law, gun control, or assault weapons bans. This is an issue of mental health care.
Adam Lanza needed intensive care and treatment at a mental health facility and his mother was trying to get that for him. Unfortunately, the ACLU and others sued the state of Connecticut a few years ago, and the result was legislation that makes it far more difficult, and far more of a lengthy process, to have an adult committed for care and treatment in Connecticut.
We don’t need to discuss gun control. We need to discuss giving the mentally ill effective care and treatment in a timely manner.
Dittos!
And not only that, but she was going to move up wherever he was going to go so she could seee him EVERY day… for a guy who pulled a 3.29 GPA in college courses at 16, even if he is nuts, to be put in the booby hatch AND never get away from his mother at 20 was probably too much.
We need to discuss both.
Why do we need to include a discussion on how to punish innocent, harmless people?
Remember when lefties couldn’t take a breath without repeating Franklin’s quote about sacrificing liberty for temporary safety? Amazing how they’ve changed their tune now that they want to take liberties away from Americans, not foreign terrorists.
ABORTION AND BANNING GUNS IN MORALLY CRAZY AMERICA
What are innocent children infrequently killed by gunfire in savage mass murder attacks compared to the holocaust of unborn children-one million a year-brutally murdered in abortion clinics? Which is worse? A senseless AK-47 that can’t shoot itself (and is neither good nor evil) but can be used to protect life from killers or take it in crime? Or an abortion doctor serially killing one unborn baby after another on a deadly assembly line? Now I’m no more for killing abortion doctors for their evil practices and crimes than are people on the Left for killing gun manufacturers or retailers who do nothing wrong when selling guns to law abiding citizens. But those who want to uphold the laws that keep mass murdering abortion clinics and doctors in business-and a president who pours out his heart over young Newtown victims but believes in live birth abortions (the most heinous kind)-are hypocritical for wanting to ban guns, any guns, because they could be used to kill innocent children or anyone. Where’s the moral sanity in this?
My sentiments exactly.
Pure hypocrisy in action.
‘President Barack Obama announced Tuesday that he is “actively supporting” a proposal to reinstate a ban on so-called “assault weapons.”’
I presume there will be an exception for Mexican drug gangs.
There’ll be an exception only for those drug gangs that contribute money to Democrats.
That would be most, if not all, of them.
Just like immigration laws, gun laws are selectively enforced.
It seems to me, it’s as plain as day that the Newtown shootings was the act of a deranged individual. It was an unimaginable horror, but a (hopefully) very low probability event. Therefore going after a gun ban of some sort will have no effect other than to move forward the left’s anti 2nd Amendment agenda. It also conveniently draws attention away from the actual reason that some of these types crimes occur, the general promotion of victim hood and immorality that the communist/left promotes.
It seems that all the usual suspects are following Rham’s advise. “Don’t let any crisis go to waste”.
Richard Hernandez rightly pointed out in a recent blog that most spree killings are the results of extensive planning by extremely clever and meticulous psychotics. You don’t need guns to do this. Explosives, for example, will do nicely. Obama’s likely gun “reforms” will have very little impact on clever madmen’s murderous strikes.
Best,
Richard
And yet you notice that the number of mass slayings with guns far exceeds the number of mass slayings with high explosives.
Evidently that’s because guns are easier to obtain and use. You need a license to buy explosives like C4 ready-made. Fertilizer can be converted into a bomb, but you work at that in your basement.
A gun comes ready to use off-the-shelf. Buy it, load it, and fire it. And there are zillions of places to buy one.
Not in total deaths.
Beat me to it – McVeigh did it with a fertilizer truck. On 9-11 they did it with box cutters. I see propane and gasoline haulers on the road all the time and wonder when a terrorist or maniac will figure out how to do something horrible with one of them.
No $hit!
Did you also happen to catch the recent news stories regarding natural gas explosions? Entire buildings can be leveled – and LP gas is even more volatile than natural gas, and I see LP gas trucks making deliveries all the time.
Finding a way to murder someone, even a lot of people at one time, is not that difficult.
The issue here is that these monsters lack the internal mental check mechanism that whispers in their ear that it’s not right, that the thought is horrible, and they shouldn’t do such things.
You had to go all the way back to 1995 to find one example of mass slaying with fertilizer bombs. Whereas we’re now having spree killings with guns taking place every few months.
Many gun killings occur in urban areas, where one can’t easily make a fertilizer bomb in a studio apartment. Even in this case, Lanza couldn’t outfit a basement workshop to build a bomb without his mom finding out about it.
I can’t say it’s impossible that all these wannabe spree killers won’t suddenly switch over to making bombs. But that wasn’t the experience in Australia. After they banned weapons like the AR-15, gun murders declined by 50%. There was no massive epidemic of murders by high explosives.
So the important thing to you is to disarm people and prevent “gun murders”.
I prefer to stay armed and prevent any kind of murder.
@ sinz54,
“Even Australia’s Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research acknowledges that the gun ban had no significant impact on the amount of gun-involved crime:
In 2006, assault rose 49.2 percent and robbery 6.2 percent.
Sexual assault — Australia’s equivalent term for rape — increased 29.9 percent.
Overall, Australia’s violent crime rate rose 42.2 percent.
Moreover, Australia and the United States — where no gun-ban exists — both experienced similar decreases in murder rates:
Between 1995 and 2007, Australia saw a 31.9 percent decrease; without a gun ban, America’s rate dropped 31.7 percent.
During the same time period, all other violent crime indices increased in Australia: assault rose 49.2 percent and robbery 6.2 percent.
Sexual assault — Australia’s equivalent term for rape — increased 29.9 percent.
Overall, Australia’s violent crime rate rose 42.2 percent.
At the same time, U.S. violent crime decreased 31.8 percent: rape dropped 19.2 percent; robbery decreased 33.2 percent; aggravated assault dropped 32.2 percent.
Australian women are now raped over three times as often as American women.”
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=17847
So basically, Australian and American murder rates went down a similar percentage – even though the US had NO gun ban in place, but Australia saw drastic increases in all other crimes within the same time frame!
Time for you to find another talking point, boy.
FYI: The deadliest school massacre in United States history occurred in Bath Township Michigan on May 18, 1927 where 38 people including 32 children lost their lives. 58 others were injured, many severely. The murders were accomplished by a deranged man, Andrew Kehoe, who was “angry” over losing an election for city clerk. His tool of choice? Explosives.
Just so you know…….
And the Oklahoma City bombing killed 168 people (including 19 children under the age of 6) and wounded more than 680 others using fertilizer and fuel oil mixed to make explosives.
And the deadliest mass murder in the US was achieved with a can of gasoline and two matches. 87 burned to death.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_fire
You went all the way back to 1927 to find an example of mass slaying with explosives.
While ignoring the fact that spree shootings are now taking place every few months–and individual gun murders are happening every few hours.
Real explosives are highly controlled. You can’t buy C4 without a license. Homemade explosives require a basement workshop, which can’t be done in secret without a family member finding out about it. And if you live in an apartment, it’s even harder to do.
The Anders Behring Breivik shooting in gun control Norway and multiple mass shootings in gun control Germany were recent (as in, the past 12 years). This dishonesty isn’t helping your antigun movement. That’s why you kept losing in America, you can’t hide from the Internet.
Sheesh, it’s like debating the old debunked points made repeatedly by YEC creationists.
Only an idiot like you would assume he had to buy C4 to make a boom-boom. C4 is an advanced explosive for doing advanced boom-boom, not killing children. Simpler chemistry was employed to blow up things a long time ago — hence the historical references illustrating old and cheap technology (not rarity).
A ten dollar gas can, a match, and five dollars worth of chain to shut off the exits will do a bang-up job of killing hundreds.
The Oklahoma City bombing took place in 1995 and the explosives were not mixed in a basement.
troll alert- I think it quite possible that sinz54 is the same individual as Techno who was posting the same sorts of comments yesterday- working a double shift for lil georgie soreass, eh?
The bottom line is that the gun banners track record leads those of us who want the civil right of self-defense to treat any of their proposals as a hudna, the truce Muslims propose with infidels to allow them to build up enough strength to win by outright force. Better not to play at all.
So, your Oz-criminal sez “I’d jump up and commit an AR15 gun crime, but since I don’t have one, I guess I’ll just kiss the wife and kids goodnight, grab some sleep, and get up and go to work in the morning.”
Yup, them Oz is funny folk, alright. They speak “Strine” and walk around upside down.
Sinz,
Yes, gun murders are happening quite often in the US, in places like Chicago, where guns are essentially banned. 492 homicides this year, 425 caused by gunshot wound. Hmm, yep, bans really work, don’t they?
Some swimming pool chemicals and a few cotton t-shirts are enough to kill a few dozen people.
Most people, gun owners or not, just don’t murder. Ban swimming pools. Ban fertilizer. Ban canning supplies. Ban compressed gasses. Ban cooking utensils. Ban pencils and pens, as well as paper. Ban wood. Ban water. Ban pillows. I know how to kill with all those things and more. I know, but I won’t.
Anders Behring Breivik meticulously planned ahead and got his guns illegally, then he proceeded to kill 77 people in Norway. Same for all the multiple mass shootings in gun control Germany.
Buying a gun requires a check of your criminal record — which is more than is required for buying fertilizer and diesel fuel.
Ah, hell… now you’re going to require I show my ID every time I fuel up…
Buying a gun *legally* requires those checks. Remind me what the legal requirements for buying marijuana, methamphetamine, or cocaine are.
I have seen this liberal anti-gun nut, sin54, on several web sites and he always has the same message. Forget about using logic with him because he/she will always come back with the same illogic. It is the same mentality as raising taxes on the rich. Time and time again experience shows that if you raise the rates on the rich, the rich simply find a new way to NOT pay higher taxes. Liberals use the same illogic over and over again on anything that they attempt to “Make better”. This entire event shows that the mother was on the right track and that had the state of Connecticut met her half way this would never have happened.
When hiring a tax lawyer and accountant becomes cheaper than paying taxes, the rich hire a tax lawyer and accountant.
Making AMFO explosives isn’t much of a job; take common ammonium nitrate, add some sort of oil, there you are. The toughest part would be comming up with a detonator, but I imagine a cherry bomb would do it. Total time, about 5 minutes tops.
Yes, it’s just that simple. And there are all sorts of ways to detonate it.
Heck, open the valve on a propane tank, put a lit candle up high in a room, and walk out.
Regarding the supposed flaw in the original AWB, namely that the possession and sale of ‘high capacity’ magazines remained legal while only the manufacture for civilian sale was made illegal….
To fix this supposed flaw would require the federal government to round up from the possession of millions of private citizens the hundreds of millions of these high capacity magazines.
That would probably be enough for some to justify civil war.
The other thought that occurred to me – as it did in 1994 when they passed the damn law in the first place – was WHY it took a constitutional amendment to ban the manufacture and sale of alcohol (Prohibition) which is NOT expressly a protected right in the Bill of Rights, but they could ban the manufacture and sale of certain firearms simply by passing a law even though the 2nd Amendment was clearly intended to protect not only an individual right but also the ability of the states to raise a militia which would necessitate that same militia have in its possession military type arms?
Perhaps it’s time we overhauled the SCOTUS to something that more vigorously protects our rights, rather than having a rubber stamp branch of government that seeks to legitimize any federal power?
Oh, and one other thing.
The shooting at Columbine High School took place 4 or 5 years AFTER the AWB law was passed.
That law did nothing to stop school shootings.
But why would left/liberals let facts and little hellions able to change mags quickly stand in the way of their desires?
Columbine used banned guns and banned standard cap magazines, acquired illegally.
Here’s the study where those numbers came from:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20571454
In states where magazines are limited, people typically go for bigger bullets (.45′s) or smaller more easily concealable handguns. Why buy a 9mm pistol with crippled magazines?
A good hit by .45 ACP hollowpoint beats two by 9mm roundnose.
200 Rounds fired in 10 minutes. 200 Rounds fired in 10 minutes. 200 Rounds fired in 10 minutes. 200 Rounds fired in 10 minutes. 200 Rounds fired in 10 minutes. 200 Rounds fired in 10 minutes.
Think about it.
That is 20 rounds a minute, or one every four seconds. That’s called “rifleman’s cadence.” Just about any shooter can do that with an average squirrel rifle like a Ruger 10/22.
You presumably think you have a point?
I am guessing the point is that 20 rounds a minute could be accomplished with almost any revolver, auto-pistol, rifle, or shotgun. He just happened to steal an “assault rifle” from his mother.
Sure, he’s got a point. It’s called “foot in mouth.”
And it STILL took the police TWENTY MINUTES to arrive.
So what’s your point?
I’ve thought about it. You apparently have simply emoted about it.
I can do that with my 20g pump shotgun. An experienced shooter can do that with a revolver.
Did you have a point?
Three rounds in about four seconds, with an old bolt-action rifle. That’s what killed JFK.
There’s some argument about how long he had to shoot. Most that argue against the “one gun man” theory divide the total time (about 5 seconds) by three, ignoring the fact that the clock started with the first shot, so the total time should be divided by two. Some bolt action rifles can do that, if the pinky is used to pull the trigger. But, the two shots that hit were about 5 seconds apart, if the shot that missed might have been the first or the third, then he had even more time.
First reaction “Uh… So what?”
Second reaction “200 cartridge magazine?”
Third reaction “Belt fed semi auto… Hmmm. Where can I get one?”
There you go again, confusing the issue with facts and logic.
Please submit betters ideas for a BETTER BAN on ASSAULT WEAPONS — We flaming liberals don’t want to take your hunting rifles or anyone’s “identity”. Even “replicas” are ok but please please not so many repeating bullets.
The 2nd amendment isn’t about hunting, it’s about militia weapons. The military pattern, semi-automatic rifle, with 30 round magazine, is a militia weapon. Exactly the type of weapon the Founders intended for civilians to “keep” and “bear”. Whose ownership by “we the People”, “shall not be infringed”. I don’t see the word “hunting” in any part of the 2nd Amendment.
What is a “repeating bullet”?
Apparently he thinks you eat them, and they repeat like bad chili.
sniff sniff…heard a popping sound.
Who cut the cheeze!!!
The “repeating bullet” is the same as the “heat seeking bullet” that can “cook your target”: mythical.
“Even “replicas” are ok but please please not so many repeating bullets.”
Hehe…please be advised that bullets don’t ‘repeat’.
I also suggest that even though the AR15 is THE most popular weapon in the country (one estimate I saw indicated about 3 million in civilian hands), it’s use in crime is relatively rare.
Even when mass shootings occur, it seems the rifle only figures in a few of them.
Perhaps you should turn your angst on the root of the issue – the person who is actually committing the murder, rather than the tools they use as if one tools is unavailable they will always find another tool for their purposes.
Lee Harvey Oswald used a Fucile di Fanteria (Eng: Infantry rifle) Modello 91/38, bolt-action rifle and got off three rounds in about 12 seconds or less.
Jack Ruby later walked right up to Oswald and shot him with a .38 “Saturday Night Special” revolver.
Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
In African tribal wars, even in this century, the weapon of choice is still often the machete. It’s a broad, long knife most familiar to westerners for its use in cutting through the heavy foliage of the jungle. (Note that I did not say “rainforest”.
Excellent points!
As for the Carcano rifle Oswald used, if I recall it was a carbine length too – and the bolt on that sucker is awkward at best. To get that many shots off that accurately is impressive.
Still, Uncle Sam’s marines did teach him how to shoot if they didn’t teach him anything else.
We had a bunch on our farm, but we called them “corn knives.”
“It would take a dramatic and drastic turn of events to undermine the growing gun rights movement and to generate the sort of popular support for more national gun control laws.”
That event happened at Newtown. Let’s not forget that enough Republicans, voted for the original AWB to allow it to pass. I think that Republicans will do the same this time. They are fearful of how they will be viewed, if they oppose the ban, after the massacre of so many children. I do not trust Republicans anymore. They will allow public emotion, instead of reason, to sway their actions. Nor, do I trust the “conservative” chief justice of SCOTUS, after his tortured logic on Obamacare.
Sorry, forgot to include my name on the above. Didn’t mean to post as anonymous.
I’m not so sure about the public mood.
While there’s a lot of heat and smoke right now about gun control, and the gun control idjits are certainly pushing as hard as they can (never let a crisis go to waste I guess), I suspect the majority of people who disagree are simply being quiet at the moment.
If the NRA, for instance, comes out with a statement, no matter how restrained, then they are going to be blasted for “politicizing” the issue even though the other side started it up within hours of the tragedy.
Anyone who disagrees with more gun control will be publicly pilloried as being in favor of children being murdered.
Right now what we are seeing is the left monopolizing the soap box.
If the status quo remains for even a couple of weeks I think the gun control fanatics will begin to lose influence and calmer heads will begin to voice opinions that are contrary.
In the meantime, we DO need to start pushing back on this at every level if for no other reason than to make sure anyone who has not formed an opinion can see there is not widespread agreement on the matter.
I’ve seen some online articles about how, in various locales, the rate of firearms purchases the day after Newton exceeded Black Friday firearms purchases, and the BF sales were so big they were thought to hold the record for some time (at least till the next BF). FWIW, it seems that while some Americans are responding to Newton by running out and turning in their firearms* (highly doubt many gangbangers turned in theirs!), other Americans are responding as they usually do to the threat of gun control laws-by going on a shopping spree. IOW, BHO is again the nation’s number one gun salesman.
* http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2250233/Sandy-Hook-shooting-Buyback-program-Camden-New-Jersey-collects-record-number-guns.html
Great comment. I’ve seen more information come out about the shooter and it is starting to look like this could have been avoided by a more effective way of dealing with personality disorders. Gun control legislation is voodoo. After the adrenalin dump wears off I hope to hear more reasonable suggestions about how to deal with demonstrable personality disorder.
” Let’s not forget that enough Republicans, voted for the original AWB to allow it to pass. I think that Republicans will do the same this time.”
When the AWB was passed in 1994, the Democrats controlled Congress. They lost that control (the House for the first time in 40 years) that November because they passed the AWB.
Not to say that you’re wrong about what Republicans will do this time. But it would behoove John Boehner to remember what happened to the last majority party to pass an AWB.
I have never used the word sensable or logical in context to politicians. Gun control is a “joke” when you give up your right of owning a gun of any kind you are a sheep going to slauther. Has anyone ever heard of a cop stopping a crime before it happened, no they show up after the crime is done. I love it when i hear politicians say” If you give up a few rights we can make you safer”. I wont bet my life on it. Want to make things better, Stop paying out rageous saleries to politicians an make them accountable for the acts they commit, like Holter an his botched “Fast and Furious”. I love my country but distrust every politician that violates the constitution that was payed for in blood, and buy the way they used guns to do it.
IIRC, the bill failed on the first vote. They adjourned for the night, but as soon as enough opponents left, re-convened and took another vote and passed it.
Fast and Furious
Overriding everything is the fact that lefties never forgive or forget. The eeeeeeeeeeeevul Bush and the Rethuglicans took away their ban on scary black guns and they see an opportunity to get it back. That’s all that really means anything to them. Democrat voters will kill more babies before noon today than were killed in Newtown.
Chicago’s gun restrictions create the body count of Newtown every five weeks.
I live in Texas. Although you rarely see a gun here, guns are everywhere. I had to go to Chicago to see a gun used in a crime…
The left is pushing the “assault rifle” ban strictly because that is the easiest battle to fight. We can go on all day about selective fire, full auto vs. semi auto, folding stocks and magazine capacity. That doesn’t mean a thing to the average Joe or Jane on the street. The term “Assault Rifle” sounds evil! It’s a no brainer that every low information voter would naturally support banning anything so evil sounding. The goal on the left is to put a big crack in the second amendment. Once they get one gun banned, the floodgates open and the next thing you know, they will be confiscation EVERY gun!
I found it ironic that Obama could muster up a tear or two for the dead children when delivering his clipped speech on this tragedy and yet he wholeheartedly supports the murder of children through post delivery “abortions”. And the press sees no irony here.
Look, no matter how much or how early we see our foetuses, they are still exponentially less emotionally charged that our six-year olds with names, personalities, speech (to have told us that they loved us or been a pain in the ass) etc. Anti-abortionists make the mistake of equating the two, and they are simply NOT equal. How do we know? The relative pain we feel when we lose one…or the other.
Oh, give it a rest, you idiot.
Linking gun control and abortion is a sure way for us to end up with legalized partial birth abortion and total gun control.
People have a threshold of acceptance. You can have 20 people shot dead in the course of a week in Chicago and it doesn’t even cause a stir. Kill 20 people in a school and it all of a sudden the horror of horrors. But when you throw even the mass killing into the statistical pile you see that deaths from assault rifles constitute an extremely small percentage of the total homicides. In fact more people are killed every year from being beaten to death by bare fists then by assault rifles.
Evil exists in this world. It always has and it always will. The only way for evil to win the day is for good men to do nothing. Our law makers misguided approach attempts to take guns out of good law abiding people hands and leave them powerless to stop the evil of mass murder.
I agree with Harry the Horrible; the narrative evolved from 2 handguns were found in the school and later a Bushmaster was found in the car trunk and now the Bushmaster was used in all the killings and we need to ban those evil black rifles. Yeah right.
Yeah! What’s up with that? I noticed the same thing myself. It’s almost like the story was CHANGED to fit the gun control/assault rifle narrative. You don’t believe the MSM would rewrite the news to fit Obama’s chosen story line do ya? Why the next thing you know they will be blaming terrorist attacks on a youtube video. NAH! It could never happen.
OK, I’m a gun guy so I’m not in favor of any more laws. Since Newtown, I’ve been asking the question, “What CAN we do NOW to help prevent this in the future?”. What are the reasonable options?
1. Arm the school staff – I’m for it now but it should be discussed further
2. Put a cop in each school. Gun free zones (AKA, protection free zones) need protection
3. Enforce the laws we have. If Lanza’s mother owned the guns, by law, sonny should not have had access to them. How can we hold people accountable, before the crime, to obey these laws.
4. Health care for the mentally ill – VERY important
There are more and people should add to the list. Instead of just bashing the democrats/repubs that support the ban, lets come up with a real solution.
CB all of your proposals cost money or are highly burdensome. You want schools to hire a police officer to defend against gun rampage that is extremely rare? Or the alternative, five year old girls having to go through metal detectors! I would rather burden YOU who insist upon the privilege of owning a gun. not by making it impossible or cost prohibitive but by making sure you pass certain tests ensuring you won’t be putting us at risk. Particularly regarding mental illness among family members.
Note to Markus: Gun ownership, just like YOUR right to free speech is not a “privilege” but a “right” as clearly stated in the US Constitution.
Israel does it with a lower GDP than we have. I guess it is a matter of priorities. Schools are gated and there is real security openly armed.
I do not agree with arming the school staff unless there are some with special training and experience, and not the BS one day NRA courses. Protecting our children from deadly harm is not a job for well meaning amateurs.
I have some guns too. If you doubled the tax on ammo to pay for a real high quality security program for schools, not the window dressing we are likely to get, I would support it.
I would also support a mental illness screening program like they have in Israel but you are kidding yourself if you think with all of the guns already here that you can get away cheap and still have something that will actually work.
–spindoc, re problem of training school staff, i was trying to think of something lifting and uniting and normalizing that could have a notion or two –nothing new, but you might take a look at comments –or just at #8.
According to Markus, guarding a bank’s money is worth it but guarding children is not worth it.
Markus,
Got solution, we give Pakistan about 300 million a year an for what. Why dont we use it here instead of giving it to them for who noes what.We give away so much money to angry countries that hate us it would blow your mind. We the American people need to take back what is ours. Stsrting with our country and our rights. Think about that.
Approximately 3.5 children die per minute in India. Mostly under the age of 5 and mostly from preventable causes. Where’s the tear in Obama’s eye?
If you want to blame something, blame a culture of sterile violence. Video games are atrociously violent. As a boy in a rural setting, every boy over the age of 10 had a rifle or access to one. And no one EVER brought one to school. Why? Because your dad would’ve tanned your a$$. And all those boys hunted. All had seen what a firearm was capable of doing to living tissue. It was no game. It was no joke.
I taught both my boys to shoot and firearm safety. One still enjoys shooting, one does not. Their choice. I never bought them or let them buy a video game. Let them read a book, or, heaven forfend, interact with a real human being by playing with their peers. Unfortunately, their “peers” were spending most of the time inside getting fat and having their frontal cortex macerated by video games. Thus we breed a society of men who have no inter-personal skills and are devoid of proper emotional development. Therein lies your problem.
Assault weapons ban?
That’s as insane as thinking ‘shall not be infringed’ means that it’s ok for the government to license and regulate guns in any way or for any reason.
‘The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.’
Question everything – especially your own premises and assumptions.
This does not, however, explain the compulsion progressives have to proclaim that their dogmas and delusions, on all subjects, are what constitute reality.
“Gun control” being just one example of such.
clear ether
eon
If the Newtown shooting is supposed to make us all re-think our opposition to gun control, then shouldn’t opponents of the death penalty also do some thinking of their own?
If Adam Lanza had survived this attack and been captured alive, would death penalty opponents still be arguing that no one deserves to die for their crimes?
I believe Lanza would have been found “guilty but mentally ill”. Assuming, that is, he was even found competent to stand trial, which would be questionable at best.
Either way, he would not have been executed. Rather, he would have spent the rest of his life(hopefully) in an institution under constant supervision.
Which, under the law Connecticut would have passed had not the ACLU, etc., stopped it, is exactly where he would have been before he had a chance to kill anybody.
What does it say about our “enlightened elite’”, that they are opposed to doing anything to stop the truly sick and dangerous people in our society from hurting themselves or others? While simultaneously demanding that those of us who are theoretically well live under their definition of “constant supervision”, even in our own homes?
Their definition of “human rights” apparently only extends to themselves, those they laud as “rebels” against our supposedly “oppressive” society, and those they are counting on to create “crises” they can use to further their dreams of power.
People like… Adam Lanza.
clear ether
eon
Odd, considering that this administration has been caught smuggling weapons out of the country. Why would they do this? Are they thinking of taking over our government by force? A coup?
“If Holder didn’t know about Project Gunrunner, why did he give a speech about it 3 years ago?”
http://www.justice.gov/ag/speeches/2009/ag-speech-090402.html
Holder speech on April 2, 2009 (according to DOJ site!): “Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels. My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner, DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion. DHS is making similar commitments, as Secretary Napolitano will detail.”
W76, search [ mexico to change drug war strategy tactics ]
You don’t get it.
This time they will go for ALL weapons with detachable magazines that allow rapid reloading.
The silliest part of the Assault Weapons Ban was the mention of a bayonet lug. I cannot recall the last time a crime was committed using a long-arm with fixed bayonet. Must have been an awfully long time ago.
I have one rifle that takes an 18″ bayonet. It doesn’t use a lug to attach it.
So, just out of curiosity and in an effort to discern the intellectual honesty of all participants…
If this murderer had not used an AR15 but instead had just stuck to his 2 pistols (a Glock and a Sig Sauer) and yet killed just as many innocent children – would the Bamster be going after pistols then?
Of course he would. Who could think otherwise?
Are you old enough to remember the gun grabber who advocated gun control after a /knifing/ a couple of years before the ’94 gun law?
The reason President You Didn’t Build That and the self-styled “progressives” so frantically agitate for this and other so-called “gun control” laws has nothing to do with sympathy for crime victims, nothing to do with a desire to prevent criminals from committing more crimes of this kind, nothing to do with facts or logic or public safety or anything else they claim. All that is completely irrelevant to them. They know as well as we their claims are ludicrous lies.
Their first and last motivation is intense, blind hatred of the Second Amendment and all of us who believe it protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms. They’ve already turned this most recent mass slaughter into their golden opportunity to deliver a hard slap across the face to us “Neanderthals,” “knuckle draggers,” “dupes of the gun lobby,” “domestic terrorism supporters,” et cetera.
Their scheme since the 1980s has been to isolate one type of gun or magazine or both, demonize it or them, abuse the raw power of the feral government to ban it or them, and repeat the process with the next type of gun or magazine on their list—but that’s only an incidental benefit in their view.
YDBT and the “progressives” are shrieking hysterically for so-called “gun control” to express their acute, chronic hatred of the Second Amendment and us.
I believe we need to look it squarely in the face. We need to call it exactly what it is. We need to identify and expose it, speak the truth about it, and hope there are enough genuine Americans left to reject hatred.
why would the Obama administration be so strongly in favor of advocating for a renewal of the ban?
The answer of course is that there is not (yet) anything else the politicians can do to stop “gun violence”. Politicians will not blame anyone or anything other than guns, because then the blame would eventually fall back on politicians themselves; for doing stupid things such as creating “gun-free-zones”, and refusing to restrain people who are obviously mentally ill.
The Communists now running our government are not yet ready to order total confiscation of all firearms from the public because they know it would lead to a civil war. So until that time, they must be content with demonizing the NRA and any other groups associated with guns. I bet insurance companies will soon be forced by the government to refuse to issue homeowner policies to anyone who admits to having a gun in his home – or hugely increase insurance premiums. Watch and see.
That’s how they eliminated popularly priced performance cars in the late ’60s and ’70s; only the very well off could afford to insure a performance car. Add to that the fact that emissions regs made “performance” pretty much a misnomer for the better part of two decades for all but the most expensive cars.
Ever hear of “smog,” Art? Ever see a photo of a large American city around 1969-1970?
Air pollution was a severe problem. One photo stays in my mind: a statue in Florence, Italy which had halfway dissolved from airborne chemical pollutants.
Leaded gasoline was pretty much the major element in the creation of smog. QED.
So let’s not spin pollution issues into some Proggie plot to rule the world.
Yes, lefty idiot, I’ve heard of smog, but smog isn’t why the insurance rates went through the roof on popularly priced performance cars. Damn you people are stupid and deluded!
I don’t follow the big media conservative stars, but did see on TV Ann Coulter call this whole Obama saga ‘a communist takeover-by-insurance’.
So you look at it, these guys did use insurance (Credit Default Swaps) to inflate, then pop, the mortgage bubble whereby they came into office with a full-blown crisis created by the ideological opponent, so, a Free Hand, and the rest is history –and we may all be history, in the future..
Clinton era legislation set up the CDS build beyond control. They needed AIG to oversell ‘em, so sicced Elliot Spitzer on AIG boss Hank Greenburg (the case so bad the judge threw it out in hours, years later!), and got him outta the way. Soon, to get away from the bogus case, Spitzer took the lipstick exit (like Clinton -monica- did to escape having been caught selling China our tech edge), then got his reward, the year on CNN, to try to become a star.
Same model as how Clinton’s Wesley Clark got that shot at the Presidency, and British Army professional Col. James Blunt zoomed to the top of the UK pop charts. Candidate Putin needed the Clark/Blunt Act incident to wake patriotism and win the election (the Last Russian Election). DNC, BBC, KGB, CNN, MSM –good work, guys! Almost ‘there’, ain’t ya?
Their hatred is based in cowardice: they are intensely afraid of facing the wrong end of a gun when they move to steal your lifestyle and your freedom. It is frustration and fear, and, in the end, the lashing out of a toddler deprived of the ability to throw his food at you.
The real reason progs go for gun bans is that they believe it will disarm the taxpayer and make it easier for the armed street gangs (the left’s standing army) to subjugate the taxpayer. Thus making him easier to control. They know the gangs won’t be disarmed and they believe that the taxpaying shopkeepers will comply with the ban.
The problem for the progressives? The US federal government is $16T in massive debt with a future $55T in unfunded liabilities. The taxpaying shopkeeper might simply ignore the government’s authority. Who would enforce such a ban when there is no real coin to pay The Legions?
I think that progressives believe that the world would be a better place if we let them run our lives. Gun control is just a subset of control in general. How dare individuals prepare to defend themselves or save for a rainy day. Progressives may genuinely want to help, but they’re so ineffective that depending on them in an emergency can get you killed. If you own your own house on land above the flood zone, a car, guns, water and food supply, chain saw, tools, generator, etc. you were fairly well prepared to survive the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. The big limitation was being able to buy gasoline. If you lived in a high-rise apartment, you were almost completely dependent on others for day-to-day survival. However, the helpless apartment dweller is held up as the model of “sustainability” in the progressive world while the resilient prepared individual is the object of derision.
The idea that the progressive ideal of high-density core-city habitats is somehow “sustainable” was disproved long ago by science fiction writers; see The Machine Stops (1919) by E.M. Forster.
For a more recent treatment of the theme, written as a warning about the environmental unsustainability of the sort of cities progressives dream of, read High-Rise (1974) by J.G. Ballard.
The reason we SciFans make a very poor audience for progressive dogmas is that we tried them on for size decades ago. And found them a very poor fit to reality.
clear ether
eon
Excellent post, SW –by focusing on the hatred of 2A, but pointedly omitting any speculation on the ”why” of that hatred, you bring a reader to ask him/her self to that basic question; ‘the’ basic question, the question where the response is where the non-sequitur makes its appearance.
Everybody knows what a non-sequitur is, it’s an argument in which the conclusion does not follow from the premise.
If I were to do a point/counterpoint with a 2A critic, i’d have about five sheets of paper in front of me, each one bearing one of the empirical truths of the issue, and make sure to hold up each one in my turns, the large-print headers square to the audience or camera, and ask, what about this?
With the followup, “why would you want to degrade security and civil order?”
“No, really, why?”
This whole debate reminds me of the over-compensation after 9/11 which gave us the monstrosity and expense of the TSA. Rather than be perceived as politically incorrect or profiling of would be terrorists, we now pay lazy and incompetent inspectors at every airport in America to harass grandmothers and children and every day traveler business people. Government can and will screw up a wet dream and anything else they touch — just look at FEMA and the Sandy victims. No wonder the national debt is umpteen trillion dollars — no tragedy will ever go to waste by having dollars thrown at it by liberal politicians.
Great post. It is clear that everyone agrees that the only solution is more guns because there is absolutely no other solution. What a failure of imagination. The NRA is a lobby for gun manufacturers and cares very little for the rights of individual gun owners, and will sell us out in a heartbeat. The UN is coming for your guns, better arm up, stock up, hunker down. But the world ends on Friday so it doesn’t really matter. God bless and go forward.
I don’t know why you guys are so attached to assault weapons. Historically, fertilizer bombs have been your preferred method for defending freedom.
Seriously. You dream of revolution, but it wouldn’t take a genuine military force very long to finish off a bunch of hicks holed up in a farm. Your fetish for lethal toys doesn’t make you formidable. It makes you ridiculous. Meanwhile, while these absurd guns aren’t even useful in a bad political cause, they certainly increase the ability of individual maniacs to kill and maim.
Would it make a huge difference if assault guns were illegal? Beats me. But there is essentially no downside to such laws since assault rifles have no defensible use whatsoever and outlawing them would be a vote for civilization over barbarism.
History proves you wrong. Look-up Warsaw ghetto circa WWII.
Define “assault gun” and “assault weapon”. I bet you don’t have a goddamned clue what you’re talking about. This ignorance as well as the dishonesty is the reason your anti-gun kook side kept losing.
As for resisting a government, I remind you that the US federal government is $16T in debt and the debt is rapidly rising.
Oh by the way Jim, no assault rifles were used in the Newtown shooting.
Don’t worry, lefty punk; we on the right are just as contemptuous of you as you are of us and we aren’t nearly as ignorant of you as you are of us. There are also many more of us because the looters and moochers you so carefully cultivate for political support aren’t any more likely to get up off their dead asses to fight for you than they are to get off the sofa to go to work.
Badda Bing Badda Boom……great reply to the troll, Art.
“hicks holed up in a farm”….lol….yeah, the redcoats thought the same thing.
Still, your comment is illustrative of the pretzeled logic that passes for thought amongst the left.
You go on about fertilizer bombs – yet guns are what our Founding Fathers used in abundant numbers.
You dribble on about “revolution”, yet I don’t want a revolution – I want a restoration!
You mention fetish???
Interesting choice of wording there….so are you referring to an excessive and irrational commitment to preserving our constitutional rights? Somehow I don’t see that as irrational at all.
Or perhaps are you are suggesting that gun owners see their property as endowed with some sort of supernatural powers? Again, I doubt a reasonable person would see it that way though I always see leftists referring to inanimate tools as “evil”, so perhaps it’s the left that has a fetish issue?
Or were you referring to some sort of sexual fetish – in which case I guess the left can be depended upon to sexualize damn near anything…
Then you go on about “absurd guns” not being useful even for a “bad political cause” – precisely what cause would that be? It seems to me that the communists were quite adept at using such “absurd guns” to further their “bad political cause”. One is even famous for saying something about “power flowing from the barrel of a gun”….
While it is true a maniac does employ a powerful tool if he uses it to murder, that 90 pound 4’11″ tall female teacher is likewise empowered if she is able to defend herself and her students with that great equalizer – a firearm.
Then at the end, after such tortured logic, you make the declaration that there is no downside to more laws or gun bans, that there is no use for such weapons, and that it is the more civilized course of action to outlaw them.
Just how ignorant of history can one person be? Seriously?
Let’s see just how “civilized” such actions have historically turned out, shall we? Following are a list of genocides carried out by governments all over the planet, and it’s not even a full century’s worth!
—————————————–
Ottoman Turkey
1915-1917
Armenians(mostly Christians)
1-1.5 million murdered
Art. 166, Pen. Code, 1866 & 1911 Proclamation, 1915
•Permits required
•Government list of owners
•Ban on possession
—————————————–
Soviet Union
1929-1945
Political opponents;farming communities
20 million murdered
Resolutions, 1918
Decree, July 12, 1920
Art. 59 & 182, Pen. code, 1926
•Licensing of owners
•Ban on possession
•Severe penalties
—————————————–
Nazi Germany & Occupied Europe
1933-1945
Political opponents; Jews; Gypsies; critics; “examples”
20 million murdered
Law on Firearms & Ammun., 1928
Weapon Law, March 18, 1938
Regulations against Jews, 1938
•Registration & Licensing
•Stricter handgun laws
•Ban on possession
—————————————–
China, Nationalist
1927-1949
Political opponents; army conscripts; others
10 million murdered
Art. 205, Crim. Code, 1914
Art. 186-87, Crim. Code, 1935
•Government permit system
•Ban on private ownership
—————————————–
China, Red 1949-1952
1957-1960
1966-1976
Political opponents; Rural populations; Enemies of the state
20-35 million murdered
Act of Feb. 20, 1951
Act of Oct. 22, 1957
•Prison or death to “counter-revolutionary criminals” and anyone resisting any government program
•Death penalty for supply guns to such “criminals”
—————————————–
Guatemala
1960-1981
Mayans & other Indians; political enemies
100,000-200,000 murdered
Decree 36, Nov 25 •Act of 1932
Decree 386, 1947
Decree 283, 1964
•Register guns & owners •Licensing with high fees
•Prohibit carrying guns
•Bans on guns, sharp tools
•Confiscation powers
—————————————–
Uganda
1971-1979
Christians, Political enemies
300,000 murdered
Firearms Ordinance, 1955
Firearms Act, 1970
•Register all guns & owners
•Licenses for transactions
•Warrantless searches
•Confiscation powers
—————————————–
Cambodia
(Khmer Rouge)
1975-1979
Educated Persons; Political enemies
2 million murdered
Art. 322-328, Penal Code
Royal Ordinance 55, 1938
•Licenses for guns, owners, ammunition & transactions
•Photo ID with fingerprints
•License inspected quarterly
—————————————–
Rwanda
1994
Tutsi people
800,000 murdered
Decree-Law No. 12, 1979
•Register guns, owners, ammunition
•Owners must justify need
•Concealable guns illegal
•Confiscating powers
—————————————–
Grand total for your “civilized” gun control measures at the hands of various governments in less than a century?
Somewhere between 74.2 and 89.8 million souls.
http://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/deathgc.htm
The purpose of gun control is to protect armed barbarians from civilized people who are defending themselves. They’re just gangbanger protection laws. A facet of a phenomenon known as Anarcho-Tyranny.
Anarcho-Tyranny, or Ideological Home Invasion.
Did Mr. Fogel have a gun? If so, they surprise-attacked –with knives. Don’t open this link, just imagine your family home life with ‘known no deterrence’, as you watch the short video in comment #41.
You have to be more than unusually stupid to think that gun control laws are the explanation for the political crimes of the 20th Century as if a few rifles would have saved the Armenians.
“You have to be more than unusually stupid to think that gun control laws are the explanation for the political crimes of the 20th Century as if a few rifles would have saved the Armenians.”
So, no facts to rebut what I commented, only degeneration to calling me (gasp) “stupid”?
Yeah, that’s about the expected response from the clueless left.
Allow me to slap ya side the head with yet another history lesson:
“Hanna Krall, who interviewed the only surviving uprising commander, Marek Edelman (from the left-wing Jewish Combat Organization, Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB), stated that the ŻOB had 220 fighters; and each was armed with a handgun, grenades, and Molotov cocktails. His organization had three rifles in each area, as well as two land mines and one submachine gun in the whole Ghetto.[11][12][13][14] The insurgents had little ammunition; more weapons were supplied throughout the uprising, and some were captured from the Germans. Some weapons were hand-made by the resistance; sometimes such weapons worked, other times they jammed repeatedly.”
And from the opposing side of the Germans:
”
“When we invaded the Ghetto for the first time, the Jews and the Polish bandits succeeded in repelling the participating units, including tanks and armored cars, by a well-prepared concentration of fire. … The main Jewish battle group, mixed with Polish bandits, had already retired during the first and second day to the so-called Muranowski Square. There, it was reinforced by a considerable number of Polish bandits. Its plan was to hold the Ghetto by every means in order to prevent us from invading it. … Time and again Polish bandits found refuge in the Ghetto and remained there undisturbed, since we had no forces at our disposal to comb out this maze. … One such battle group succeeded in mounting a truck by ascending from a sewer in the so-called Prosta [Street], and in escaping with it (about 30 to 35 bandits). … The bandits and Jews – there were Polish bandits among these gangs armed with carbines, small arms, and in one case a light machine gun – mounted the truck and drove away in an unknown direction.”
—Jürgen Stroop, 1943[21]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising#Opposing_forces
Yet, armed with such meager weapons in few comparatively few numbers, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising managed to hold the full might of the Germans off from April 19, 1943 to May 16, 1943.
They even managed to forestall attacks by the Germans who were using tanks!!!
Imagine what an entire country with a heavily armed civilian population would have done to the Germans under similar circumstances.
Sadly, the Armenians didn’t have a chance once they were disarmed – just like the rest of those who are listed above.
Imagine 2 million armed Jews in Nazi Germany defending themselves. Do you think Hitler would’ve invaded Russia in the midst of what would’ve been a civil war? And even if the Jews and Armenians had ultimately all died even if armed, I guarantee you there would’ve been a few less Nazis and Turks. So I don’t know about you, but I’d rather die fighting taking a few of the bastards with me than be dragged off to an oven. And that’s the long and short of it.
Oh, and as an after thought: Yamamoto (you know that Japanese admiral from WWII) felt it would be impossible to invade and subdue the US because of how heavily armed the US citizenry was.
Benefits of gun control: Concentration camps, killing fields, gulags
http://www1.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/index.html
No guns –Stalin had disarmed his own people. Maybe villages across the steppe would’ve died anyway, but we’ll never know. Maybe an armed populace would’ve prevented the invasion in the first place, but we’ll never know that, either.
Mr. Grumpy you are correct.
Mr. Hope and Change isnt to bright. And he doesnt know history. My grandfathers fought ww2 in Europe and the Pacific, wonder if they were alive to day what they would say, ” probily why the hell you send me to fight to free the would when in to days time the good ole USA is turning into what we fought to stop”. Mr. Hope and Change is no different than Hitler or Stalin in my opinion in the fact of he doesnt want you to have rights, or only the rights he will allow you to have.
Like my dearly departed grandfather said,” Not every tyrannt is 4000 miles away your own can be just as bad.”
Have Jim Harrison look up the word “Democide” (examples of).
Of course, as an ideologue, no facts will change him, his is a whole different game.
Here’s Ward Dorrity’s stunner, Killers Without Conscience
The advantage of an AR-15 is it’s light weight and lethal at a distance. The threat is the criminal underclass, not the US military. Only the suicidal would point a gun at a soldier or the police. A group of criminals can do a quick cost/benefit calculation and decide not to find out how many bullets are available.
You dream of revolution, but it wouldn’t take a genuine military force very long to finish off a bunch of hicks holed up in a farm.
Paging the Iraq insurgency, paging the Taliban, phone call for your from Jim Harrison…
As I said right off the bat, the preferred political weapon of the right is the fertilizer bomb. The Iraqi case is good evidence that explosives are much more useful than rifles. It was the IED that did the most damage, a fact that I’m sure hasn’t been lost on you would-be terrorists.
Terrorists of all stripes seem to like explosives. See, e.g., the President’s friend Ayers’ colleagues, whose only difference from Tim McVeigh was lesser competence. (Terrorist Rule #1: When setting out to blow up a Fort Dix dance, set off the bomb *at the dance*, not in your own apartment.)
Just wondering: Has there ever been an American president with as few degrees of associational separation from an honest-to-God terrorist?
You’re trying to talk an uninterested hostage audience into building IEDs and fertilizer truck bombs in order to commit murder in the most efficient way, and WE are the ‘would-be terrorists’?
Are you out on bail, or typing from the inside?
I wonder which right these bombs are preferred by. I think the straw man is getting tired. I think you’d make Alinsky tired.
you=Harrison
“You dream of revolution, but it wouldn’t take a genuine military force very long to finish off a bunch of hicks holed up in a farm.”
We don’t have to beat a genuine military force. If, God forbid, the kind of tyranny liberals during the Bush administration were darkly warning “could happen here” did, in fact, happen here, the United States military would not support it.
I’m not so sure, on the other hand, about the in-house security forces of various government agencies (all the cool bureaucrats have them, these days), or the police forces of some of the more corrupt Democratic cities. Those are the ones we’d have to outgun, not the Army. Let a usurping regime try and call out the Army, to back up an outmatched security force, and that’s the end of the regime. Just ask Mr. Ceausescu.
Alternatively, there’s the possibility that you people would use the tactics of Hugo Chavez, or one of the other tribunes of the people you love: Leave the wet work to unofficial, plausibly-denied thugs, and let the police have more pressing business, like writing parking tickets, at the right times. That is to say, we don’t have to outgun the Army. We just have to outgun *you*.
Nah, failed premise, he’ll never come with a gun, he thinks things happen ‘in’ a farm –how would he ever figure out how to load the thing?
Before you invoke “fetishism” and firearms in the same sentence, you should be aware that while Sigmund Freud is often invoked by “enlightened” anti-gun activists for allegedly referring to guns as p***s “substitutes”, he didn’t. It was Kinsey who made that assumed correlation.
Freud actually said that an inordinate fear or hatred of weapons was a sign of sexual, and intellectual, immaturity.
Just thought you should know.
cheers
eon
I prefer to rebut with the rhetorical question, “If firearms are a penis substitute, why is there a market for handguns with two inch barrels?”
–right –and it’s not like the barrel gets longer when you point it at the target, either
:-/
Jimmy, you are likely correct that a self-organized civilian militia could not defeat a Regular Army unit in a conventional fight, but that misses the point.
The real point is: would our soldiers actually fire on civilians? I think not. If we get to that point, we will be facing problems much worse than semi-auto “assault” weapons in the hands of civilians.
Given Jimmy’s scenario, I wonder if it ever occurred to him whether at least some of the state National Guard units might join the rebels. American States have more fire firepower than most countries.
Oh, well, this is just pleasant “what-if” mongering. Jimmy has become so used to listening to the stereotypes in his head that he’s confused them with reality. In the real world most of us are more concerned with protecting our own rights than starting any kind of shooting war.
Let’s take Afghanistan.
Our highly trained and well-armed organized US military is engaging “armed hicks” and still, US soldiers are getting killed.
Ridiculous ROE notwithstanding, Our guys have helmets, vests, high-powered everything and the “armed hicks” are still getting a victory here and there. They wouldn’t if they had full-reign to engage in combat properly, I assert but my point is that these uneducated, ideology-driven, incredibly ignorant masses of people are holding their own in what they consider a worthy cause.
Similarly, in the late 1700′s our “armed hicks” formed armies and militias to defeat the British. There were numerous mutinies in the ranks of Americans. Often there was outright desertion. Many stuck with it because they saw the greater good that was forthcoming. But those who did managed to sufficiently curtail the king’s plans. And again in 1812 with the help of the French and Canadians.
The Canadiens? They kicked our butts when we tried to invade in the War of 1812.
Well, if it isn’t our favorite compulsive, left-leaning triangulator, Dwight. What new “synthesis” do you have to offer on this subject, mein Herr? Please advise us as to what type of weapons we should surrender when the demand to do so comes, as it most inevitably will?
More importantly, how many of your neighbors do you plan to rat out to the confiscatores once the bans go into effect?
The revolution against Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines was accomplished when the military disobeyed orders to fire on the rebelling citizens.
I suppose Harrison thinks the right is stupid enough to not operate under Geneva Convention protections if there were a revolution here. Most people aren’t keen on political actions that involve having them go to prison or die.
Where did you get the silly idea people would be waiting for the military to show up to start shooting when they are already surrounded by government employees and liberals?
So….how are ANY federal gun laws legal?
What part of “shall not be infringed” is not understood.
While the Constitution gives Congress the power to tax, why was it necessary to pass the 16th amendment? Why did they not just pass a “law” that allowed for an income tax?
Why did they have to create and pass the 18th amendment to outlaw alcohol? They passed the Volsted Act but that was not sufficient to overrule the states by the feds. So they had to create the 18th amendment. Of course, when it was so unpopular they had to rescind it through the amendment process (in other words, through deliberation and representation of the people).
So, why is it today that congress can just pass any law and it overrides the laws of the states (marijuana for example). For the fed govt. to override state laws, why do they not have to create and pass an amendment (approval by majority of the states) as they used to?
Passing a law to “alter” the 2nd amendment, regardless of the Supreme Courts “interpretation” is not only illegal but immoral. So, Scalia’s opinion may have made some pro-gun people happy, it was really bullshit because why would he have jurisdiction over an existing amendment? (In his “opinion” he rambled about the mentally ill, felons, and other examples where someone may not be “allowed” to possess a firearm).
To make any changes to the 2nd amendment legal under the Constitution, there would have to be a new “amendment” to the Constitution. This way it would be deliberated, and hopefully written to make it clear what those changes were.
The difference is that in the past the Constitution was accepted as to what it is, the legal construct of the existence and power of the federal govt as given by “we the people.” The states used to claim more power as to their rights which is today all the difference n the world.
The original 10 Bill of Rights are the “identified” as rights of MAN, i.e., through God, Providence, nature, whatever you wish to call it. They are not rights ALLOWED to men by other men. So why do men have the right to alter that without consent of the governed?
We have a RIGHT to bear arms (regardless of the reason, but I suspect it was to stave of tyranny) and NO Man, without agreement by “we the people,” have jurisdiction over this Right. That is why our Constitution is structured the way it is.
That is how far we have strayed form OUR Constitution.
Try explaining this point of view to the feds when they come to confiscate your guns!
“California Democrat Dianne Feinstein — who carried a concealed weapons permit while calling for disarming American citizens — is once again promising to introduce an “assault weapons” ban in the U.S. Senate.”
Just great… some decrepit, crazy, shriveled up old bat from a bankrupt state is going to lead the country into a new era of peace and safety. Stupidity, much like time, marches on.
If it were only a matter of the look of evil that counted in banning something I know a few politicians that need to be banned. And while I am ranting… why not impose an assault vote ban? Not let any politician cast more than 5 votes in a single year. And ban hi-capacity bills. Only one subject per individual bill. And stop the importation of bureaucrats into Washington D.C.
Come January 2nd, America will wake up to the reality of this last election. The collective gasp will be heard across the universe, through the vacuum of space. I can’t wait!
Shouldn’t politicians be banned from holding office when their age exceeds their IQ?
38. stargazer
“Come January 2nd, America will wake up to the reality of this last election.”
Actually that may wait until January 15th, then the first paycheck stubs are read, showing how much is left after the taxes go up, up, and Away!
Merry Christmas everyone.
The objective of the Regime and the left is not really gun control…it is “Control”, period…
Control of your shower temperature and how many gallons per minute,
Control of your calorie intake, sugar intake, tobacco intake,
Control of the kind, motive power and size of vehicle you drive,
Control of your lifespan and what medical care you are allowed to receive,
Control of your income, and thereby control of how you vote…
Face the facts, folks, it’s not really about guns, at all…
…they know what’s best for you and yours, as long as they and theirs are exempt, and they’re going to make sure you know who is in charge…
BE IT KNOWN BY ALL POLITICIANS: I WILL NOT VOTE FOR ANY POLITICIAN, DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN, WHO SUPPORTS FURTHER GUN-CONTROL LEGISLATION. I WILL ACTIVELY WORK TO DEFEAT THAT PERSON IN ANY AND ALL FUTURE POLITICAL ASPIRATIONS. I WILL ALSO APPLY EVERY CENT I HAVE, EARN, INHERIT, OR EXPECT TO HAVE TO DEFEAT THAT INDIVIDUAL WHO OPENLY OR SECRETLY SUPPORTS ADDITIONAL GUN-CONTROL LEGISLATION. LIBERAL-THINKING POLITICIANS ARE TOTALLY IGNORANT CONCERNING GUNS, KILLING, AMMUNITION, AND THE CONSTITUTION. OBAMA HAS ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHAT GUNS ARE ABOUT. HE SEES EVERY GUN AS AN ENTITY THAT COMES OUT OF THE CLOSET, LOADS ITSELF, AND AUTOMATICALLY KILLS FOR THE FUN OF IT! THAT IS NOT WHAT GUNS ARE ABOUT…ONLY MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE ARE THE ONES WHO PULL AN OKLAHOMA, TEXAS, OR CONNECTICUT KILLING. YOU CANNOT CHANGE THE CONSTITUTION…WHAT PART OF “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED” DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?
–haven’t yet read the thread, so this may’ve been covered, but –
This is the argument ”for” hi-cap magazines in your gun locker:
…along with the fact that the people in the video, except for the FBI mole, are the people who part & parcel put this administration in office, and among another interest or two, are right now pulling its strings.
No matter how “silly” the assault weapons ban was, after misfire-mouth Biden gets done with his “investigation”, the old weapons ban will be yearned for.
America is suffering from a lot of neglect, and has many dents and scratches from the current regime, but, We ain’t seen nothing yet.
This regime intends to run this machine without any lubrication or cooling capacity until it seizes from abuse. Mechanisms abused to that condition are usually scrapped for the raw materials value.
The only parties that benefit from the scrap is the salvage operator.
And We all know how much the retards running the current regime care about the passengers.
One of the better analogies –one of the better tangible images in support –i’ve ever seen on any topic whatsowhatever.
infringe [ in'frinj ] definition:
verb ( trans )
1. actively break the terms of (a law, agreement, etc.):
2. act as to limit or undermine (something); encroach on.
Isn’t there enough evidence that the Obama Regime has no idea what “infringe” means? Or even slightly cares about this phenomenon?
After what has already been forced upon We The People, somehow the Supreme Court will figure out how to call it a “TAX’ that makes it permissible to remove handguns from the proletariat.
hahahahahahahaha Is that why you only get 2 features for your gun on Call of Duty. My shotgun, I mean ‘Assault’ shotgun just became so much more deadly. Because it wasn’t already.
, Andrew Kehoe, who was “angry” over losing an election for city clerk. His tool of choice? Explosives.
Andrew Kehoe was “angry over School Taxes!!!!Mr Kehoe was on the school board which is how he managed to place the bombs in the basement days ahead of time.
Bath School disaster – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
Then you can just pee in the coffee pot;
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=1040928
Saw this just aster I posted my own essay about the silliness of the ban’s return, illustrated with present-day firearms. Click here.
What will our politicians do? The same thing they’ve been doing all along – create more problems that cost more money and solve no issues. And then campaign on the result.
There are times when the ignorance of our politicians work to our advantage. Their expertise in life seems to be spending our money on the parasites that infest our nation. Fortunately I am well stocked with “assault rifles”, high capacity magazines and ammunition, so I am not participating in the current buying madness. AR-15′s and ammo is selling out fast. I’ll wait a few months until things calm down before adding to my stash. In the meantime, I’m glad countless Americans are adding to theirs, we’ll all need them some day.
I know nothing about guns but am very supportive of 2nd Amendment rights. So I am asking for your help in determining what (if anything) can be done with regards to guns. It sounds like this article is just pointing out how ineffective and uninformed the “assault weapons” ban was. Does that mean there actually is a way to write a law that works? Like I said, I don’t know about guns, but is there a way to make it more difficult for bad guys to shoot a lot of people in a short amount of time? Are you arguing that there isn’t a practical way to ban “automatic weapons” or “assault weapons” (and I don’t even know what that means), or are you arguing that such a ban is against the 2nd amendment? I also realize that if guns weren’t available to him, he could have made a bomb or driven a car into people, but a gun seems like the easiest option to me.
Dave, start with a new concept. You may be ‘defending’ your school, home, family, self, from someone on the offense against you.
But at the moment of expressing your defense, you need to offend the attacker as fast, hard, and quickly as you possibly can –to give his targets the best possible chance to survive.
At that point, the criminal on ‘offense’ will ‘defend’ his mission, by hitting as many targets as he can, even on the way to the ground, almost but not quite finished.
Naw, it won’t happen that way every time, but that way is what you want to arm for, as you don’t want to do everything you can but still lose people because your firepower has been deliberately crippled.
Buddy called it. His approach is what they are using in Israel, and it works.
There is no way to make gun control work without enslaving the population and setting up segments of it for genocide.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MURDER.HTM
Those who want to ban firearms or certain classes of firearms would do well to study the history of the prohibition era, the Volstead Act and the now-repealed 18th Amendment to the Constitution. Americans then, like Americans now, liked alcoholic beverages – and except for a small but very vocal minority, resented the intrusion of the government into their private lives over the personal choice of whether or not to consume alcohol. Banning alcohol didn’t keep people from wanting to consume beer, wine and spirits; it merely moved their buying of said products into the black market and under-ground economy. An era of extremely violent crime resulted as the mob fought for control of the lucrative illicit liquor trade. Only after an ocean of blood had been shed over 13 years was the Volstead Act repealed and the 18th amendment voided. Prohibition didn’t work. Banning guns won’t work – for the very same reasons that banning alcohol didn’t work. Beware of the law of unintended consequences.
–well, with the ‘war on drugs’ under pressure from the insurgent Tea Party, what’s a poor Chicago mobster gonna do for contraband?
Yes and the racist/paranoid/hateful delusions in the comments really seem rational and informed. As an outside observer, it seems crazy to me that your country would even question potential regulations regarding assault type weapons after the multiple attacks on innocent people. These gun owners call themselves responsible even when their unwillingness change causes the deaths of twenty 5 year old children…
With all the mental health problems in your country, how do you feel safe knowing that anyone can buy an incredibly lethal weapon without so much as a background check? And then astonishingly, the pro-gun answer seems to be more weapons!?
The 2nd amendment was put in place at a time where there was a real threat of war and violence on american soil. Now in today’s society, the massive amount of US gun deaths shows that the violence perpetrated in america is caused by the very same thing that you think will protect you. It’s terrible to see such a large portion of a population fall victim to ignorance like this.
So, it’s ‘realistic’ to believe that some groupings of people who “…really seem rational and informed” are actually “…racist/paranoid/hateful delusion(al)” -?
Why do they ‘seem’ rational and informed?
How do you ‘know’ they’re actually racist/paranoid/hateful/delusional?
What is your key? How do you do it –how do you read minds and hearts so unerringly?
Do you feel that it should be obvious that the world would be a better place if all evil people could be eliminated?
What do the bad people look like –what is the phenotype that needs to be guided to the left, with a riding crop, or to the right?
How many of us will in that mass column approaching you and the riding crop? Does the answer to that depend on whether the evil 2A is standing between the masses and the riding crop’s need to sort them out?
Are the answers to these questions functions of your psychic powers, or are they a meaningless ‘false consciousness’ of the masses ?
It can’t be that your key is whether or not you agree or disgree with us on the issue, can it? Because –taken to the logical conclusion –that would put you about two steps ahead of Adam Lanza and two steps behind Dr Joseph Mengele, wouldn’t it?
Yeah. Sure. Unlike some, we are well aware that human behavior is uniform across national and racial lines.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MURDER.HTM
Funny how some that claim creationism is a crock and evolution is real reject the correlary that humans would have instincts.
The 2nd amendment was put into place to prevent a hyper-intrusive government such as those in Europe. Despite what you may have been told we do NOT have huge numbers of mass slaughters, which is why they make the news. Consider for a moment that we had just over 200 murders with semi-automatic rifles that would be affected by Joe Biteme’s law, when he’s done gutting our Constitutional rights. We’ve had over 800 beaten to death with fists in that same year. Should we ban hands, or just license any hand possessing a thumb? The expectation that any kind of gun control will help with violence is foolish and naive. We’d be better off arming up, and preparing for the worst instead of simply reacting to it. The 90′s proved that gun control won’t work. Let’s try something else.
I think we should just make murder illegal. That will stop all murders.
A few questions, slightly off topic, concerning the Newtown shootings:
How long after the 911 call from the school did it take before a police entered the school?
When did the first officer arrive at the school?
How many officers were in place at the school before any police entered the building?
How much time transpired from the time the first officer entered the school until the dead body of Adam Lanza was discovered?
There are numerous additional questions as to police standard operating procedures and practices that need to be examined.
Joking about the ’94 AWB only points out its shortcomings and encourages the anti’s to make a new one worse. Also, every media discussion of Sandy Hook, every Fox News tongue clucking and every commemorative bell ringing keeps the disarmament message fresh. And moves us closer to draconian restrictions.
Note on folding stocks: A rifle or shotgun is long and easy to bang on things, and with one hand carry, the balance puts the hand very near, in, or on, the trigger guard, where a finger can accidently hit the trigger. Each time the rifle or shotgun knocks against something there is a risk of an accidental discharge.
A folding stock makes the rifle or shotgun shorter so it is less likely to knock against anything and changes the balance point so the hand is no longer near the trigger, so a folded stock increases safety.
Some of you may want to look this up…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
Good pix at your site! Really good pix –esp the Israeli teacher behind the schoolkids. It’s only a photo, but you can use it on yourself –would you feel in your gut that those kids would be safer if it was just the teacher, and not the armed teacher, behind them?
http://1389blog.com/2012/12/17/in-which-1389-weighs-in-on-the-sandy-hook-tragedy/
The final body count in Chicago will be about 500 (give or take a couple). That’s a little more than 1 1/3 murders per day or about 4 every 3 days. Of course, most of the victims are killed on weekends by gangs killing their competition and virtually none of the guns are ‘registered’. This in a city with the most severe gun laws in the nation. That alone proves that gun control doesn’t work. Legal gun owners have a very low crime rate yet they seem to be the target of legislation. As usual the ‘do gooders’ have it exactly backwards.
When someone writes an piece of writing he/she maintains the thought of
a user in his/her mind that how a user can know it. Thus that’s why this paragraph is amazing. Thanks!
One more thing.
Search the two names, and see the extensive ties and history of cooperation between the new gun task force commander Biden and National Security Adviser Donilon. Avoid wiki, as wiki has scrubbed Donilon’s critical role in preventing –even to the point that he had to wait out a CYA govt lawsuit –the oversight of Fannie Mae, during the blow-off, the wreck-the-economy phase.
Considering the MO of this guy, and the Biden omerta ties, i’m sickly afraid we are going to see more of these incidents.
As Stalin’s terror-master Lavrenti Beria noted, at some point the people will come to you to stop their misery, even if they know you are causing it, because they also know only you can stop it.
This is, of course, the deepest, coldest essence of total corruption, and explains why the USSR’s people could at once produce world-class state projects, while the people of the state plummeted their life expectancies and birthrates, and skyrocketed their alcoholism. Western intellectuals, of course, blamed that social pathology on the West, on America being mean to the Russian people.
But the guilty party was the Nomenclatura, and now they are here.
===
Lastly, nobody wants to talk about this, but everybody is thinking it. Are these shooters being deliberately stimulated?
Considering the morality exposed by, say, the Molotov/von Ribbentrop Pact, which made the nazi and the commie allies for a couple years (years which ended with Katyn Forest Stalin stepping right up as Uncle Joe, best pal of FDR and Uncle Sam), would anybody be surprised? What video games are these seemingly mind-controlled social outcasts playing? Is there any game these guys share –these guys who, last few years, always fit the same profile re computer isolation and game playing?
Why did the latest guy smash his machine and destroy the hard drive? Why did the Aurora shooter recently start talking about an ‘evil therapist’ that put the bad thoughts into his head? And, if a weak ego can be conditioned by an entertainment artifact to increase his odds of ‘snapping’, why wouldn’t the Spirit of Katyn and Auschwitz give it a try, in the struggle to remove that bright magnet of human and financial capital, the liberty and the free market of the north American continent?
(that was me –i avoid ‘anonymous’ on principle –but just forgot to ‘sign’)