‘Assault’ — The Democrat-Media Complex Strikes Again
In the meantime, for some common-sense, professionally informed expertise on the subject, do yourself a favor and read this. Yes, it’s lengthy, but well worth the time, and it provides all the, um, ammunition a Second Amendment supporter could ever need in debating lefties about gun control. A sample:
The term assault rifle gets bandied around a lot. Politically, the term is a loaded nonsense one that was created back during the Clinton years. It was one of those tricks where you name legislation something catchy, like PATRIOT Act. (another law rammed through while emotions were high and nobody was thinking, go figure).
To gun experts, an assault rifle is a very specific type of weapon which originated (for the most part) in the 1940s. It is a magazine fed, select fire (meaning capable of full auto), intermediate cartridge (as in, actually not that powerful, but I’ll come back to that later) infantry weapon.
The thing is, real assault rifles in the US have been heavily regulated since before they were invented. The thing that the media and politicians like to refer to as assault rifles is basically a catch all term for any gun which looks scary.
I had somebody get all mad at me for pointing this out, because they said that the term had entered common usage. Okay… If you’re going to legislate it, DEFINE IT.
And then comes up that pesky problem. The US banned assault rifles once before for a decade and the law did absolutely nothing. I mean, it was totally, literally pointless. The special commission to study it said that it accomplished absolutely nothing. (except tick a bunch of Americans off, and as a result we bought a TON more guns) And the reason was that since assault weapon is a nonsense term, they just came up with a list of arbitrary features which made a gun into an assault weapon.
Problem was, none of these features actually made the gun functionally any different or somehow more lethal or better from any other run of the mill firearm. Most of the criteria were so silly that they became a huge joke to gun owners, except of course, for that part where many law abiding citizens accidentally became instant felons because one of their guns had some cosmetic feature which was now illegal.
No matter which side of the question you’re on, do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. Reuters should hire Larry Correia, but that would destroy the whole point of their “journalism,” wouldn’t it?
Also read:
I say we outlaw those filthy barrel shrouds again. Oh, and bayonet lugs. I never want the spectacle of the Crips and the Bloods making bayonet charges at each other again in South Central. No more!!
What a “Mad Max” moment. Thank you!
(The Crip lunges at the Blood, using the thrust and parry method taught him in Crip Boot Camp…)
Alas, the Crip loses this one, because he was holding the weapon sideways as he was taught at CBC (Crip Boot Camp).
And that is when they were relegated to drive by bayonetings!
NOT only are they liars, liars and pants on fire when it comes to firearms, but because the media and the Dems are joined at the hip, perhaps the TOP law enforcement official (and his boss) should be headed to the slammer – their lawbreaking and all.
http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/08/01/will-barack-hussein-obamas-lawless-justice-department-under-the-aegis-of-ag-holder-finally-fall-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/….will the whore-like media demand that the duo stand trial, due to the above?
Do pigs fly? And never mind, had the Liar-in-Chief approved funding, not once but twice, for school safety measures, then the kiddies in Newtown may very well be alive! However, the only ones armed in ‘gun free’ school zones are those aiming to kill! How’s that working out for America’s kiddies?
Bastard Dems.
Do you EVER comment without plugging your blog?
Hi there vangrungy – haven’t heard from you in awhile!
Now that you mentioned it, I’m gonna plug my blog too. Here’s an article that the original author specifically wanted shared and re-posted as widely as possible. Larry Correia refutes every possible argument that the gun controllers can raise.
In the spirit of the previous replies, I would also like to put in a link to my vlog. This week we discuss the numerous unreported cases of guns used in self defense, the sever mental illness of recent mass shooters, and what are the real reasons behind violent crime. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Love how they get the dig in about the attendees being mostly white men. So?
It’s all about joining “gun nuts” with “whitey racists.” Not only do gun owners not care when children are murdered, they think, but they wish those kids were all minorities. You join their object of hatred with an already hated community, and semantically you create equivalency. Easy peasy. It’s so much easier to demonize gun owners then, when they’re all just a bunch of klansmen.
It’s craven, it’s wicked, but these journalists aren’t stupid and they know what they’re doing.
What’s really funny is that the first gun laws were put in to disarm blacks so the KKK could have free run to lynch, rape and murder. The incongruity of the arguments of the modern day gun banning nutcases, given history, is something to behold.
I was at that KC show today and I can tell you that there were TONS of women there buying handguns. For Reuters to portray this as some kind of a klan-fest is just a lie. People are scared – scared about their personal safety, and scared that their rights are about to be taken away. You can find the Reuters story linked on Drudge. It’s absolutely crap.
I didn’t realize those KKK guys liked pink AR’s.
I didn’t know all those Korean shopkeepers with AR-15′s defending themselves from ghetto slime were “White” men. Who knew?
In modern Left parlance, “white” and “black” aren’t biological attributes relating to the presence of melanin in the skin. Rather, they are now social constructs.
“White” really means “the dominant ones in power,” and “people of color” are “those who are oppressed by the dominant ones.”
Thus in Florida, Zimmerman was constantly referred to by the liberal media as “a white Hispanic,” to emphasize that he shot a “person of color.”
And now the Palestinians are constantly referred to as “people of color” (to be congruent with the implication that “white” Israelis are acting like the white South Africans used to).
And sinz the gun grabber admits that the left is a pack of racists.
And ignorant and dishonest racists at that.
How many Reuters stories have you read on the NBA that need to point out most of the players are black?
The Lakers lost to the Clippers. The players were overwhelmingly black men, with some Europeans and very few ethnic whites. Most of the points were scored by black men. Final: 100 to 98. One of the refs was a Sikh. Read more at ESPN – your HQ for sports and racialism.
I live a mile or so from Fort Worth. I was thinking of attending the gun show but haven’t. I was going mainly to look, not buy—I already have enough guns.
I know plenty of black men who have guns, including scary ARs and AKs with pistol grips and muzzle brakes and other scary stuff on them. Black men like to hunt too.
Of course it’s taboo to mention that the “white men” demographic (together with the considerable number of white female family members who accompany them to the gun shows) have a LOWER crime rate than the population in general.
Yabbut, guns are teh evil and people who want to own them are stupid, scared rednecks, or so says the make-believe media with their “high capacity ammunition” and their “high magazine clips.” It would be to laugh, if they didn’t own the narrative. The only thing that saves us is that people like guns and they like to shoot and they want to protect themselves, their families and their stuff. When guns are no longer good for those purposes, they’ll win, but not before.
“Make-believe media.”
That nails it.
Every weekend i used to visit this site, as i want enjoyment, for the reason that
this this website conations truly nice funny information too.
Article I, Section 8 gives broad authority to the congress to enact laws for the common good. On the other hand, an amendment such as the Second Amendment can be further ammended and even **repealed** as Article 18 was done by Article 27.
Acts of gun violence inflaming the conscience of a constitutionally required majority in the states and the Second Amendment could be left found only in history books! So all you people who think you know the constitution so well and think its some absolute grant of God had better get far more educated pretty quick and learn how to compromise when and if needed!
Just wait until pictures of all those most recent dead babies and others to come begin to surface — they will! In the meantime, data on gun violence with military style and class weapons will continue to stack up. The ‘common’ class guns are slowly but surely being relegated to the obsolete dust bin.
Irresponsiblity enacts laws regardless of any irresponsible defense.
Zeke must be from Washington State and wrote this post high on weed. I think I know what he wants to say but I will fix it for him. We can repeal the Second Amendment if two thrids of boths houses of Congress and three quarters of the States agree to the proposed amendment. That what you meant to say, right?
You just insulted the intellect of most here! If you’ve followed the various PJM writers posts on this topic you’d know the responders all constitutional experts. Thus, I didn’t feel the need to equate the single instances of an Amendment using the process of Article 5 of the constitution. Thanks anyway!
What a Maroon!
The first Ten Amendments of the Constitution are also known as the “Bill of Rights” they are inalienable and are God given and therefore can not be changed, however they are subject to you exercising your right to any of them to retaliation in the event you step on an others inviolate right as defined in the Bill of Rights as stated earlier these are God given and not Congress or the Senate or the President may take them away.
Zeke, you’re the one who is obsolete. Gun control is obsolete. Google “wiki weapon”. You’re finished Zeke. Your whole movement is finished. You don’t belong in the 21st Century. The home 3d printer will kick your ass.
**R7**
Let me engage you just this one time with two questions for which I anticipate you will not be willing to fully and honestly answer.
1. What is the ‘purpose’ of gun ownership in the U.S.?
2. What are ‘all’ the possible circumstances that comes to your mind in which ‘you’ would use your weapons?
1. So that the government may fear the people and not the other way around.
2. To defend my life liberty and/or property from transgression.
Since you appear to have actuall answer those two questions honestly, I’m going to reply to them.
With regards to your #1. There is one way to constitutionally achieve an unregulated malitia that very broadly would fit into the context of your statment. only a very few states have wondered into that territory to date and those that have are very recently in our history. Otherwise, regulated malitia’s are very well defined constitutionally and statutorily and redefined rather recently in our time.
With regards to your #2. This is an area that the federal courts and the supreme court more and more address — defense! On another similar topic posted towards the bottom, I addressed some of the courts opinions to Tom Perkins that you may find interesting.
@ Zeke
Actually, the “militia” of the united states has generally applied to all able bodied male citizens between 18 and 45. When early presidents “called out the militia” that’s what they meant. Further, every male citizen of this country over the age of 18 has had to register with selective service (the draft). This means that at any moment, at the sole discretion of the government, I could be called up and sent into combat. This makes me, and every other male citizen over 18, a member of the “militia”. I would think that a modern reading would extend that to women as well.
And as for defense, that can take many forms. In a breakdown of law and order one’s defense may well depend upon high powered weapons capable of killing large numbers of people quickly. Look up the Korean shop owners in the Rodney King riots.
“A well regulated* militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
*regulated, in the context of the late 18th-Century, meant trained and equipped, as the militias pre-dated the Republic, and were composed of all able-bodied men (which would today be taken to mean both men and women).
So, a well trained and equipped militia (which relied on each member supplying his/her own arms) being necessary to that free state, it was essential that the government be kept from infringing upon the right of the people (individuals) to have those arms necessary for them, and by extension, the militia to carry out its duties in defense of the people, their property, and their liberty.
The 2nd-Amendment, dear Zeke, ain’t about duck hunting!
Well said. Thank you.
I can answer both of your questions, Zeke.
1. What is the ‘purpose’ of gun ownership in the U.S.?
The purpose of gun ownership in the U.S. is already provided for in the 2nd amendment: to secure a “free State”. Additional uses for guns (example: sport, hunting, or personal defense) are merely consequential to this primary purpose.
2. What are ‘all’ the possible circumstances that comes to your mind in which ‘you’ would use your weapons?
Any lawful circumstance, up to and including active duty in a well regulated Militia, where proficiency with a firearm is necessary.
Now a couple of questions for you, Zeke.
1) What is the purpose of the Federal Interstate Highway System?
2) What are ‘all’ the possible circumstances that comes to your mind in which ‘you’ would use a federal highway?
Zeke, Your writing atyle is unique. Is English your native question ?
Zeke I see you are afraid of the 21st century, the technology, you are afraid of the future. And I agree that you are afraid of the future. You see, it is over for you, you have lost.
I find it ironic that zeke “wants” an “honest” discussion when he was being dishonest throughout this discussion. They always are dishonest.
How apt you are to point out that the 2nd amendment could be repealed. That would, in fact, be the only legal way to deny the right to keep and bear arms. However, most gun grabbers aren’t this honest, they know full well that the second amendment will never be repealed and so try to have it dishonestly interpreted by the courts or infringed by legislative means.
If the gun grabbers want to repeal the 2nd amendment I encourage them to go ahead and try. It won’t happen. Even the polls they cite taken in the hysteria following the immediate aftermath of a well publicized shooting show a floor of around 50% support for the status-quot of gun rights. Then consider that the half of the population that wants more regulation is mostly concentrated in a small number of big cities in a handful of coastal states and you will never NEVER find 2/3 of the states to ratify anything infringing on the 2nd amendment. The constitution was made very difficult to amend for a reason, that reason being so that knee-jerk reactionaries like you couldn’t eviscerate our rights in a wave of hysteria. There could be one of these happening every week for 10 years and you would not find 2/3 of states to repeal the 2nd.
Obama and the Democrats would do well to remember that they win elections only when they prevent the election from being about gun control, and solemnly swear (lie) that they believe in the 2nd amendment. There are no anti-gun Republicans, but a lot of pro-gun Democrats. For every hard-line domestic enemy of the constitution (who votes for them anyway) that they appease by going after our rights, they alienate a vote.
Agree! There is alot of pro-gun Democrats. The anti-gunner position is both politically and physically impossible.
Actually, repeal of the Second Amendment would be a repeal of the entire Constitution. Most people don’t remember, or were never taught, the colonies of the eventual United States, most notably Virginia, demanded that what we know as the Bill of Rights be included in the Constitution for them to ratify it. Simply put, about half of the colonies demanded inclusion of the Bill of Rights before they would agree to the central government.
So what is it that make people anti gun? Are they wusses or never handled or fired a gun of any sort and live in a cocoon somewhere where everything is pleasant and nothing bad ever happens (especially to them)?
Have they ever been mugged or robbed or had their home broken into have they ever been treated like they are princes with armed guards surrounding 24/7 then they might just wake to reality someday, albeit a little too late and wish they had a gun of some sort, but until then they will live their stupid naive liberal lives!
Yes, the 2nd amendment could be repeated by a super-majority of voters.
That is not what the grabbers are proposing, of course. They are proposing that the 2nd be simply ignored, and all firearms not under the control of the state be confiscated.
Do you think your freedom of speech or any other freedoms would fare any better under such a regime?
And irresponsible laws get ignored. See Prohibition.
To ratify an Amendment to the Constitution requires 3/4 of the state legislatures. Meaning that you would have to get a number of conservative Red States (where gun ownership is popular) to vote for any amendment modifying gun rights.
Good luck with that.
AFAIK, none of the Bill of Rights (which includes the Second Amendment) has been amended since the day it was first ratified.
The 14th amendment alters the scope of the bill of rights, forbidding the states and local jurisdictions from interfering in any right the feds are forbidden to interfere with.
The first Ten Amendments are the Bill of Rights and are given by GOD and not politicians and the Founding Father recognized this and so placed them as the first ten amendments all the rest are amendments considered by the politicians and the country as was and as is as a majority.
We all have the right to say anything we please according to the first amendment of course there are consequences to that, and the second amendment allows for a militia of able bodied people to gather and defend a state or the country in the event the regular Army or Navy or Marines or Coast Guard as we have presently are otherwise engaged elsewhere. It also allows regular non felons to keep and bear arms for that purpose keep and bearing arms means just that. I keep my weapons and can bear them as I wish…what is so hard about that to understand?
“Not a snowballs chance in proverbial Hades.”
“What is the chance the second amendment would be repealed, Alex?”
I guess you haven’t noticed that despite the false narrative of the alphabet channels, that guns sales are way, way up.
There are some HUGE holes in the etory about the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting that make the whole story suspect. From the evolving news accounts we went from 2 handguns at the scene of the crime and a Bushmaster in the trunk to 4 handguns to the “assault rifle” doing all the killing. ALL these weapons are semi-automatic which means one thing; they eject the shell casing with every shot. The tiny 9mm or .40 S&W casings look nothing like the much larger .223 casings from the Bushmaster. Upon entering the crime scene, anybody in law enforcement would immediately know by the shell casings all over the floor if the shooter used handguns or an “assault rifle”.
The term assault rifle (and now assault weapon) are the lefts term of choice because it sounds evil enough that the low information voter couldn’t care less about the semi vs full auto debate. It just sounds like a really unreasonable firearm that nobody needs to own. The problem for the left was that their “assault rifles” didn’t get used at mass shootings. So now they started showing up for some reason. In the case of the Sandy Hook shooting, the cops KNEW the moment they entered the school if the shooter used pistols or an AR. The story didn’t have to evolve. There was no need for a medical examiners report. They knew from the beginning what gun or guns were used, but evidently the facts didn’t fit the narrative. How could the left scream for a ban on “Assault weapons” when the shooter used a Glock and a Sig?
And with the feds raiding the gun store where the Bushmaster was purchased right after the shooting, all records of who REALLY purchased the rifle are in the hands of the government.
There was a series of video captures shown in the London Daily Mail of the shooter (won’t mention his name) walking out of the store, unimpeded, with what appears to be an AR-15 pattern rifle. The accompanying article also states that that store has a problem with firearm security. Seems that a number or firearms have gone missing from there,apparently they’ve just walked out the door.
This also bothers me, greatly. I have read four wholly different reports of the guns used, and brought to the slaughter, from hand weapons, to the AR 15 variant, to a shotgun, or rifle in the shooter’s car. We do not get accurate information from the press. How are we to judge the capacity of a magazine when we don’t even know what weapon was used? Rifle? Hand gun? Shotgun? This is lousy police reporting.
Should we ban 30 shot magazines in shot guns?
The entire argument is non sense. If the shooter had 8 shot magazines, bags of them, would the carnage be any different? He would have simply reloaded one or two times more, a few seconds. The only valid argument against a multiple round magazine is to limit the firepower in combat, between similarly armed opponents. That would be decisive. I await a valid, candid argument on weapon and ammo.
Zeke backs into the real argument. There are power groups in the US who wish to repeal the Constitutional right of citizens to “bear arms”, to personally own and possess weapons. Over the last decade, one after another of jurisdictions have seen their laws nullifying this right be challenged and overturned. We live in an age where bureaucratic regulation trumps Constitutional rights. The assault rifle ban was just dumb. The only real results were increased cost and a break down of respect of Congressional law makers, by gun owners.
If Zeke, or anyone, wishes to repeal any provision of the Constitution, they have this right. They have zero chance of repealing the Second Amendment. He is also correct, that no article of the Constitution conveys absolute rights; reasonable legal limits are permissible. However, he argues in the face of reality, the many (unconstitutional) bans against the simple possession of a firearm. This destroys any trust in drafting effective laws. Liberals present their PhD studies proving guns are bad; the NRA presents their PhD studies in rebuttal. Does anyone really believe Joe Biden can help?
The arguments are just dumb.
Can we start on a common point? All Americans loathe the evil that was inflicted on those babies in Newtown. How do we really prevent this evil from hurting others?
I have not heard an honest answer to the central issue; the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Any the combat can occur anywhere.
I had the same thought about the shell casings. There should have been no doubt. Either he used pistol, rifle, or both, it should have been know from the first time the police release a statement. You can never trust the media. Never.
“Article I, Section 8 gives broad authority to the congress to enact laws for the common good.”
No it doesn’t. Article one does just the opposite, Zeke.
Rather than giving Congress “broad authority”, section 8 instead restricts the authority of Congress to a fairly short and specific list of powers. “Enacting laws for the common good” is not on the list.
Get a clue, Zeke.
It appears that Zeke is a product of the modern day Civics instruction in high school, i.e. the Constitution is whatever progressives say it is.
The Federal Government does have broad “implied powers,” a concept going back to Alexander Hamilton and ratified by the Supreme Court case McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). The “implied powers” have come to mean a huge expansion of the power of the Commerce Clause, for example.
But those implied powers end where the Bill of Rights begins.
Are you the same “sinz” that has posted before? I have associated that handle with a totalitarian gun-grabber; if I’m wrong, I apologize.
If you’ve changed — what changed your mind?
Nonsense, sinz54. The “implied powers” referred to in McCulloch v. Maryland arise from the “necessary and proper” clause; i.e. the power to create laws to carry out the “express powers” enumerated in the Constitution. The court found that the federal government may exercise broad authority in passing laws to execute an “express” power granted it by the Constitution. But Congress has no “express power” concerning the “common good”, and therefore, as I told Zeke, Congress has no broad “implied powers” to pass laws for “the common good” either.
The left isn’t woried about facts or proofs or eviudence.
They need to disembowel the Second Amendment in order to complete their ‘long march’ through our institutions.
At the moment, the Second Amendment is pretty much the only thing standing between them and open tyranny.
Amen – this argument isn’t about gun control – its about people control. An unarmed populace is an easy mark. Not so with an armed populace. The Founding Fathers knew a time would come when the American people would be shoved around by the ‘of the government and by the government’.
Keep your powder dry.
He who controls the meaning of words controls the outcome of any debate. This is never more true than when a person who opposes something that a liberal proposes and the liberal media (redundant) support carelessly starts to use the words the liberals get to define. Like “assault”.
Any murder that starts with the perp shooting his own mother four times in the head while she lay in bed and as he steals her firearms starts outside not only the secular law, but all laws of morality and any human concern for others. Fast forward to the school and the government, in all its power and presumptive glory was utterly worthless to stop the murder of so many innocent people. And it would not have mattered if the perp had used a tire iron or baseball bat. He had a room full of people who could not resist. We are dealing with such evil here that he shot each victim from 3 to 11 times.
With all my grief that this incident overwhelms me with, I now get to endure mindless media (redundant) and opportunistic politicians who are looking for any excuse to do what they have longed to do, which is to diminish the right to keep and bear arms as much as this incident will allow. But any restrictions being proposed will not be the last. In fact, even after guns were almost entirely banned in the UK by people of similar mindset, they banned knives and they banned using deadly force to defend your property and life. There are now people in UK prison for the act of killing a person who broke into their homes.
Politicians that want to go down this road all the way to the end are JUST AS EVIL as Adam Lanza, but in a different way. In time such politicians may in fact be responsible for more deaths than was Adam Lanza, but it will be because of how many people were unable to defend themselves at the hands of violent criminals because they were denied an effective means of self defense. We can also be guaranteed that the more gun-free zones we have the more people who will be murdered in those zones by people those zones were supposed to magically stop.
“Over the last fifty years, with only one single exception (Gabby Giffords), every single mass shooting event with more than four casualties has taken place in a place where guns were supposedly not allowed.”
see:
http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-gun-control/
“Politicians that want to go down this road all the way to the end are JUST AS EVIL as Adam Lanza”
Amen to that. I know I’m not the only one more disgusted by the response to the shooting than the shooting itself. The gunman was obviously deranged, suffering from some sort of mental illness. That does not excuse him, but I think we can safely say that he was deeply troubled. Those execrable individuals (both in the media and politics) outright pimping the bodies of his victims to push their agenda on the other hand are fully and consciously aware of what they’re doing. No question. They’re willingly, deliberately, exploiting these deaths to push an agenda that they know is otherwise unpopular. They are desecrating the graves of innocent victims for the purpose of emotional blackmail to push a cause that serves only to increase their power. If that isn’t the very definition of evil I don’t know what is.
There have been no spree killings with baseball bats.
Let’s be real here.
We want to defend the right of gun ownership.
But let’s acknowledge the facts: In America, guns are the method of choice for spree killers. The number of such incidents far exceeds the number of spree killings with any other type of weapon.
That doesn’t change the right to own guns. But it’s still a fact we have to acknowledge.
Once firearms are not present, “spree killers” will use another weapon: Explosives, gas, whatever they need to use and can get. The disappearance of guns would not change the existence of deranged killers, and would not stop them from being able to kill in numbers. It would just make it harder to stop them, while also making personal self-defensive use of guns impossible.
You are correct in the narrow sense that there have not been any mass killings with ball bats. My wider point was that in the seven minutes it took the government monopoly police to respond to calls of help from the school, someone with a ball bat, tire iron, hockey stick, ice pick or steak knife could have killed and injured enough small children and their helpless teachers to classify the crime scene as a mass murder.
Apart from the box cutters used on 9/11, the largest number of people murdered in one incident was the fire at the Happy Land social club in New York City, where the angry boy friend of a female club employee threw gasoline in the entrance stairwell and 87 people died in the fire.
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_fire
Read my post again where it says “…far exceeds…”
It’s not clear that the same number of spree killings would take place with other types of weapons.
We do know that the Australian experience has been that after the availability of weapons like the AR-15 was reduced, the nutcases did NOT suddenly switch over to spree killings with baseball bats or knives. Rather, spree killings decreased significantly.
If gun ownership is a constitutional right, then it’s neither necessary nor sufficient to try to prove that gun control doesn’t work.
The argument against government censorship of freedom of speech is not that it doesn’t work. The argument against it is that it’s unconstitutional.
And that’s the only argument that counts here.
Because even if you thought that we could reduce spree killings by gun control, you would still oppose gun control. Correct?
“It’s not clear that the same number of spree killings would take place with other types of weapons.”
If Hollywood and the Video Game industry supply the training resources as they have with guns, then watch the sprees with alternate weapons increase.
We still have the problem that the largest mass killing spree in the U.S was carried out with box cutters and fear. No other single event has come close. Nor has the sum total of all killings sprees by guns over the entire history of the U.S come close.
Because even if you thought that we could reduce spree killings by gun control, you would still oppose gun control. Correct?
Yes. Primarily, because there are a large number of reasons for wanting, even encouraging, the right of gun ownership, all of which have been discussed: hunting (the ability to feed your family), defense of family/self, early training for participation in the militia (the stated Constitutional reason (and, as someone else pointed out in another post, if this reason is valid, then we should be encouraging “assault rifles”, shouldn’t we?), and the potential armed struggle against tyranny.
Secondly, because there are better ways to fight spree killers. Certainly guns are the weapon of choice, but they are not exclusive. On the same day as the Newtown massacre a Chinese man killed 22 students using knives. Every spree killing since 1950 in the US, except one, involving more than 3 people took place in a “gun free zone”. On the flip side, the American Rifleman publication from the NRA chronicles hundreds of cases each year where the mere presentation of a firearm by a homeowner scares off a home intruder or other assailant. Examine every one of the recent spree killings in the U.S.: Columbine, Fort Hood, Newtown, and ask “what if one person in the area, whether a student (for the universities), a teacher, an administrator had been carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense.
“The number of such incidents far exceeds the number of spree killings with any other type of weapon.”
Meaningless, as the body count for non-firearm mass murders exceeds that of firearm-related ones.
Why not just make murder illegal?
Guns are also the choice for spree killers in Germany and Norway. Keep on lying, sinz54 the liar.
I can’t wait until the rest of the MSM is defunct like Newsweek. Incompetent ignoramuses shouldn’t be ordering others what to do on things the malevolent ignoramuses know nothing about.
Same here.
What can we do to help bring about the demise of Reuters and the rest of that anti-American journalistic cabal? I’m already refusing to subscribe to newspapers that carry the Reuters drivel and I won’t sign up for any of the network feeds off of the satellite TV that I get, but is there anything more that remains within the realm of civil behavior that I can do? I’m open for suggestions.
I haven’t watched TV “news” for years (thanks internet) but the business model for the MSM is failing. The only way they can survive is to use force to make us pay for them through govt subsidies. We must prevent that as much as possible. Make them fail.
Reuters is British/Euro.
Uh, yes, I know that Reuters is British, a fact that has no bearing on what I previously wrote. It doesn’t change the fact that American news organizations use their work, nor is it going to change my desire to see American news organizations drop them.
I want those lowlifes to feel some serious financial pain for abandoning journalistic standards, like they did in the story being quoted here, and what nationality they are is irrelevant. I want a message sent to future journalists about how they had better take their responsibilities seriously, and if they don’t, then they’ll suffer for it.
“Future Journalists”? Those two words don’t belong together.
Where can you get the Hello Kitty and Barbie models of AR-15s?
I’ve seen the Hello Kitty AR-15, and I’m afraid to ask, but what makes the Barbie rifle, Barbie?
Here’s the Barbie version….
http://tacticalbarbie.com/images/TB_rifle1.jpg
No idea if it clips onto your Corvette or Dream House, but it probably scares the hell out of Ken.
(I love the Hello Kitty one, but my little one loves that character, so no go here.)
Pink and black oil spill stripe camo.
Hmm.
I anticipated worse, actually.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIdBuK7_g3M
Where to start …
So, the avoidance of background checks is not a problem? I sort of get the impression that the absolute most that the US right is willing to do is to agree to keep guns out of the hands of convicted criminals, and the mentally deranged … and yet none of that works at all if there’s no check on who’s doing the purchasing. So exactly where DO you stand? Do you think previously convicted murderers should be allowed to buy guns, or not? Should somebody who is demonstrably psychotic, with known violent urges, by allowed to buy an AR-15?
That said, the overwhelming majority of weapons used in mass shootings in the US were purchased legally … which kind of undermines the “only criminals will be armed” argument somewhat.
As for the “assault rifle/weapons” term, I agree. There are terms which mean something quite specific in a professional context (e.g. “machine gun”) but have a quite different meaning colloquially. I don’t think there’s any confusion about what the press is referring to, even if you want to nit-pick about their terminology.
The colloquial use of “assault rifle” is a short-barreled rifle with semi-automatic firing and quickly-interchangable magazines, possibly with large capacities.
A hunting rifle is designed for accuracy, range and (potentially) heavier rounds for bringing down large animals. That’s not an assault rifle. An assault rifle is a gun designed for short-range fighting, against people. An AK-47 or AR-15 is not a particularly good hunting weapon, but they ARE very good at killing people. You don’t need a lot of kick to kill a child, and if you’ve got a particularly tough one, you can just fire a few rounds quickly.
And that’s the problem. The case against semi-automatic handguns and assault rifles jumps off the page when looking at the statistics on mass shootings. Yes, you COULD do a lot of damage with a revolver, a breech-loaded rifle or a double-barreled shotgun … but you’d have to be a lot quicker on your feet not to be rushed by somebody, and your rate of fire would be way, way lower even if you weren’t challenged. Semi-automatic weapons make it easy.
As for the “assault weapons ban”, yes. It was pointless. Mostly because it didn’t actually ban anything, least of all assault weapons. I’m a bit surprised that the NRA didn’t propose last week that it be re-introduced, given that it wouldn’t inconvenience anybody in the slightest, and it would create the appearance of “doing something”
An actual ban would be a federal law against possessing, manufacturing, transferring, importing or exporting any semi-automatic rifle or handgun without written authorization from state law enforcement (sometimes there is a legitimate need for these things). It would be backed up with an amnesty and gun buy-back program to remove those weapons from the streets. It’s what australia did, and it was successful – our violent crime rate has been dropping ever since.
As for self-defense – against a bad guy who is not keen on dying, a revolver is every bit as effective as a glock semiautomatic. It leaves enough rounds for a couple of warning shots, and you can cover a few people with it. The only difference is that it’s harder to go on a rampage after stealing one from your mum’s lockup.
As for a citizen militia (an entertaining concept in the context of the US), let’s try to remember that the mujahideen kept the russians at bay with WWI bolt-action .303 rifles. Range and accuracy, with a kick.
Your violent crime rate wasn’t dropping. Stop lying. Besides, 3d printers will put an end to your movement. Good riddance.
I actually own a 3D printer. The company’s website for downloading part designs recently removed all gun parts, and I was so disappointed in them I considered removing my own contributions (and they are significant, upgrade parts to the printer itself and so on) from their website. That being said, current mainstream printing technologies produce parts that are far too fragile to serve in any of the load bearing parts of a firearm. Only something that can work in high grade metals will overcome that, and those machines (look up electron beam sintering) are over $1M each, mostly used to make custom medical implants.
That being said, commonly available 3D printers (plus a cheap spring) do work rather nicely for making dirt cheap (<$0.05) reliable 30+ round magazines.
I would say, give it 10-20 years. Then the whole debate would be over. Of course with current technology it is already effectively over (see Waziristan, illegal gun fabs in LA). It’s ironic that people like Zeke say gun bans are the wave of the future when future technological trends are very bad for gun ban supporters.
The plastic only 3D printers can make close to final finish investment casting molds, and the metal had from that will do just fine.
I expect hackers have already opened up the OS of the 3D printers, or will.
The printer makers can take gun parts off their website, but it won’t do a damn thing to stop it.
You don’t need to hack the software. The printer will print any shape you give it, so long as it’s in the appropriate file format and within the machine’s tolerance limitations. I can design and print any shape using 3D CAD software, that’s what the printer’s designed to do. The whole gun parts thing was just that they were removing pre-made files that people had uploaded that could be downloaded and printed without any further design. I can still design my own. Check out the website “thingiverse” to see what I mean, just downloading and printing saves a lot of time but removing those designs presents no real barrier to someone with the time and inclination.
I have tried to do investment casting from 3D printed parts and can safely say that any part for a precision machine like a firearm would need to be carefully machined down to tolerance after casting. For example you’ll never accurately reproduce the rifling in a barrel from investment casting using these parts, you’ll still need a decent machine shop. anything non load or heat bearing like rail mounted accessories, clips, grips, etc can be made and used as-is now though.
What I’m getting at is, if you “root” the thing, their are no backdoors recording what you are doing.
Or if they’ve gone full Apple, then you might need to root it to do work not passed through their site. Maybe they haven’t gone Apple now, but they might.
I never meant to imply that they’d actually done anything to stop people from using their printers to make gun parts, just that they stopped offering the CAD files for free download. It was a political statement, nothing more.
The printer itself is totally open source. I built mine by hand from online instructions and a box of parts costing ~$1500. The software that drives the printer is free, open source, and easy to customize.
Think of it this way, the printer prints whatever you give it, always has, always will. The analogy to a regular printer would be if the company offering the printer had a website with a bunch of photos you could download and print, then they took the pictures of guns off that website. You’re not limited to what’s on that website, nothing would stop you from taking your own picture of a gun and printing it out. This is the same idea, they stopped offering certain user-uploaded content for free download, but the printer will always print whatever instruction set it’s given and anybody with calipers and CAD software can generate their own content. In fact the company is likely coming out with a 3D scanner too soon. Then you can just take your gun piece by piece, place it on the scanner, and duplicate it (in plastic of course). It is still easy to do now though, no hacking required. If you know how to design an object for the printer, as everyone who owns one can, then you can design a gun.
Hello TPM,
Yes, if you build yourself and use open source code, that’s pretty much bulletproof, no pun intended. There are commercial units out there of increasingly low cost, and Staples is going to offer such a service, and I don’t know that I’d take a Maker Faire approach to firearms with those commercial machines.
As an aside, consider this.
Make a full skeleton of the part in the 3d printer out of plastic, full planform but sub-dimensional with respect to thickness, and obviously not of acceptable surface roughness and porosity, let alone strength or hardness. Vacuum impregnate that scaffolding with wax, building it up to zero porosity and at least full thickness. Run it through the CNC machinery once to reduce it to desired thickness and good surface finish. You then enmold it, and burn out the mold. Centrifuge the investment with a tall sprue or vacuum cast it to get the bubbles out.
The casting requires only finish work, lapping.
And aluminum bronze should work for any receiver applications…
The days when any sort of “gun control” has any plausibility absent an abjectly and continually intrusive police state are over.
the parts you need are a torrent away
It is such an irony that the gun grabbers claim to be the wave of the future. In fact they are a thing of the past.
In Australia and the UK you had a buyback that people complied with because guns are not ingrained in your culture, not guaranteed as your second most important civil right, and you’re not taught from a young age that one day you may be required to take up your arms against tyranny as many in America are.
There your program may have disgruntled a few people, here you would have a civil war. I guarantee that if they started sending armed men door-to-door to collect guns on a mass scale there would be several million people dead by the time the dust settled and the US may no longer be one nation. Why do you think the Clinton era ban only prohibited selling newly manufactured weapons? Why didn’t they demand everyone turn in the prohibited items they already possessed, like your governments did, instead of just grandfathering them in and hoping for them to fade with time? The answer is that the government really is afraid of the people, at least a little. Further, our soldiers take an oath to uphold the constitution, not serve the politicians. If they were ordered to go door to door violating the 2nd amendment to that constitution, a good number would consider those politicians the “domestic enemies of the constitution” that they swore to defend the country against. I don’t know who would win in the end, but it would be a bloodbath.
Indeed, I agree perfectly. Also, the fed govt is $16T in debt (and rapidly rising) with $55T in unfunded liabilities. Such a civil war would be the end of central control from Washington, DC. It would be a very bad day for the antigun people in America.
Try to consider the other side – what is all that gun violence costing america?
Police forces need to be kitted out to deal with threats they rarely face elsewhere in the developed world. People are shot and killed at a multiple of the rates in other developed countries. All of that does actually cost the taxpayer. I’ve heard a figure of $100bn PA, but I have no idea whether that’s credible.
According to the FBI approximatly One Million crimes of some sort are committed by Criminals with Guns every year.
Regardless of what that costs, we’ll call it X…
According to the FBI approsimatly Sixteen Million crimes of some sort are Prevented by Armed Citizens with Guns every year.
Now take X and multiply it by sixteen and tell me what the cost is!
The homicide rate is comparable or less than other countries on a race by race comparison. Violence is violence whether perpetrated by guns or hands and feet.
Likewise, your guns as causation has already been debunked here based on the fact alone that whites in the USA own the vast majority of arms, yet have homicide rates as low or lower than any of the anti-gun, gun restrictive countries you praise.
What is it costing America? Recently two FBI SWAT teams in 300K armored cars, the Maryland State Police SWAT team, a helicopter, a dozen Sheriff’s deputies swarmed on a Maryland house because his neighbor said “he was acting crazy and had guns”. They recovered a .22, a shotgun, and a bolt action hunting rifle from his estate. All the tactical dressed Police that showed up at Sandy Hook were completely unnecessary. Andy Griffith could have shown up unarmed with his police siren wailing because the coward killer shot himself the second he heard the police coming. All day parents were forced to endure the police state environment, and were separated from their children by law enforcement while they earned their money and played with their toys.
“Try to consider the other side – what is all that gun violence costing america?”
The private ownership of firearms plainly prevents entirely or makes unsuccessful when attempted, far more criminal violence than it in any way permits.
“According to the FBI approsimatly Sixteen Million crimes of some sort are Prevented by Armed Citizens with Guns every year.”
Reference please? Are you sure you’re not confusing “FBI” with “John Lott”?
I did looked at the other side, Techno. Many others and I caught you people lying through your teeth, making up stuff out of thin air, faking demonstrations of weapons, and showing willful ignorance. The only solution to deal with your side is to completely destroy it.
One doesn’t argue with liars, one destroys them. One discredits them and throws them in the dustbin of history.
The 21st century doesn’t favor your side at all. The MSM is getting weaker because of the Internet. Any tiny remaining shred of feasibility of gun bans is getting eliminated 100% by the prospect of 3d printers printing out guns (not that gun bans were feasible anyway, see Waziristan).
Dear Tecno
Since John Lott is using the FBI statistics as well, it’s no coincidence that we come to the same numbers.
BTW Fool, my source is the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the FBI as I noted in my post. Or are you too imbecillic to figure that out?
“Many others and I caught you people lying through your teeth, making up stuff out of thin air, faking demonstrations of weapons, and showing willful ignorance. The only solution to deal with your side is to completely destroy it”
Oh, thank goodness. I thought you were going to SHOOT me. Get a grip – leave out the ad hominem rubbish. And what the heck does “faking demonstrations of weapons” mean? And knock it off with the “lying” claims, please. I’ve resisted it thus far – read on for one example where I could very easily apply the L word and haven’t.
“One doesn’t argue with liars, one destroys them”
Destroys. Right. Are we talking complete vaporisation, or just normal cremation? Maybe that new liquefaction thing?
“The 21st century doesn’t favor your side at all. The MSM is getting weaker because of the Internet”
It’s certainly getting less profitable. But the internet’s record on investigation and accuracy has been mixed, to say the least. Watergate would not have been broken by the internet. The internet seems to be mostly good for people just shouting their theories at each other without doing any real investigation at all. You know, like Fox.
“Any tiny remaining shred of feasibility of gun bans is getting eliminated 100% by the prospect of 3d printers printing out guns”
Oh, for pete’s sake. It was already possible to make a gun at home – all you need is some appropriate steel and bronze (I’m willing to negotiate on the bronze, but I’m pretty sure it’s gotta be useful somewhere), a small mill, a small lathe and few hand tools (my dad has all of those, as does a coworker).
So some guy’s upgraded the process to make worse guns for people without the practical skills to drill a hole – and where are these incompetent basement-geeks going to get all the metal bits they’ll still be needing like, say, a rifled barrel? It’s hardly the technological revolution it’s made out to be. If you want a really crap gun, you can make one from a length of steel tubing and a few bits to form a firing pin. So somebody’s come up with a way to make a similarly crap gun, but with the fancy plastic housing to make it look real. I’m underwhelmed.
10 years from now, everyone will have forgotten about the world-changing effects of printable guns. Really. Wait and see.
“Since John Lott is using the FBI statistics as well, it’s no coincidence that we come to the same numbers”
Sure – so just tell me where he got them. Because the absolute highest interpretation I’ve been able to find based on FBI figures is 1 – 1.5 million self-defensive uses of guns annually (admittedly from the 90′s).
You quoted 15 million, show me where that number is. You believe it to be true, so you must have checked it, so you know where to find it. Give me a page name, or a document name. I’ll go check it, and I’ll admit I was wrong if I need to. Over to you.
“BTW Fool”
Gee, I hope you have a big collection of gold chains around your neck, or that would look pretty silly.
“Federal Bureau of Investigation or the FBI as I noted in my post. Or are you too imbecillic to figure that out?”
We’ll know who’s imbecillic when you supply that reference – whether it be the feds, john lott or the pixies at the bottom of the garden.
techno said:
So you admit gun bans won’t stop criminals from getting guns.
I rest my case.
The entire universe of gun laws and definitions are controlled by the NRA and their lobbyists…PERIOD!
Getting society back to the world of reality and common sense will come after only a couple more slaughters of children or mass killings of anybody with military style and or classes of weapons. There are NO ways of pre-determining ones mental capcities that has not already been adjudicated or already in the mental health systems at some level which, could include simply, your primary healthcare provider. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, visit some level of mental heath systems for reason that would rarely culminate into a disqualifying weapon purchase. Now what? Everybody has to turn over their statutorily protected privacy of health records to purchase a weapon? As if even that would stop mass killings by legal owners of weapons.
The choices ahead are likely to be few and narrow when ‘forced’ into the hands of the government with more mass killings with military style weapons. Irresponsibility that inflames the conscience of society at-large can have grave consequences once forced into the realm of enacting laws.
What the hell do you mean by “military style weapons”. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t belong in the 21st Century.
“The entire universe of gun laws and definitions are controlled by the NRA and their lobbyists…PERIOD!”
That’s almost true, and almost good. The NRA isn’t really serious about the 2nd amendment, they think it’s about guns.
It’s about items of military utility, and how the government is in fact not supposed to have a monopoly on the use of force here, that is supposed to be exercised by the whole citizenry, until and unless in an individual case they show they must be deprived of such a human right.
It’s all part and parcel with, “I was just following orders”, not cutting it in this country.
Special interest groups and their lobbyist are never ‘honestly’ concerned with the constitution, the common good of the nation — only for the benefit of a few.
The NRA looks out for the interests of its real backers – the firearm industry. And it shows in everything that they do.
Last week, they had the option of taking the mickey and proposing a return to the so-called “assault weapons ban”. I wouldn’t have cost anyone anything, would have been easy for congress to vote up, wouldn’t have inconvenienced the law-abiding (or otherwise) on jot.
Instead they called for the creation of another police force, armed with lots of lovely new guns (american made, one presumes).
@ Techno
Maybe they didn’t come out in support of the so called “assault weapon’s ban” because they recognize that it was totally worthless at doing anything other than making certain liberals feel good about themselves? Take some time to see what that bill actually banned. Mostly just cosmetic features that ignorant liberals thought looked scary like bayonet lugs that had no impact on function. “High capacity” (standard capacity) magazines were only banned if manufactured after a certain date, so in reality just a little more expensive for someone who wanted them. Further, it did nothing to prevent school shootings like Columbine. It was nothing but a feel-good POS legislation that had the effect of driving interest in the very weapons it tried to ban. No sh*t the NRA didn’t come out supporting it, they’re not retarded.
I am a member of the NRA, but you better believe I would’ve been pissed at them if they’d come out supporting gun control, I don’t donate money to them to do that, I donate to them to oppose gun control, all of it.
Of course they are concerned with the constitution honestly, they are in fact the oldest civil rights organization concerned with lobbying for the respect in law of that document.
“The population of 360 + million people compose our society and live with the hopes that the american precept of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness pertains to all. Guns and gun owners through irresponsibility are increasingly altering the possibility of such an american dream — I like to refer to it as a right — a constitutionally protected right.”
There is nothing irresponsible in the private ownership of fire arms, or in their being carried concealed or openly. Only in negligently firing them can there be “irresponsibility”, or leaving them unattended in reach of small children who are lawfully present.
“as gun ownership is and has been regulated already for a very long time.”
And generally unlawfully so, as past and recent SCOTUS holdings make plain.
“Yes, lots of people including children are killed in or by automobiles. How many in that isntance are killed by premeditation?”
Few, what’s your point? Is that smaller number less tragic individually? I suppose you are someone who would rather they were pushed out of windows, as opposed to somehow more evilly killed by means of a gun. The question clearly becomes, do you buy clown shoes and replacement round red noses wholesale or retail.
“You mentioned acceptable risk. By the same token, as a society we have a responsiblity to do what is best for the common good in reducing those risks.”
And the plain facts are that both in constitutional theory and in example–nationwide CCW, no “gun free zones”, and the respect of the private ownership of items of military utility as guaranteed in the 2nd amendment–these are what reduce those risks. There are no examples to the contrary.
“So, you claim that innocent death is just some collateral damage in protecting against some ‘potential’ tyrant government leader.”
The death of the innocent at the hands of the criminal are an inevitability best prevented by the respect of the 2nd amendment as written.
“May I respectfully suggest you study up on the framing of our government. Any president or another proclaiming absolute power would, lets say — disappear rather quickly and without any help from any unregulated militia’s. We are not Eygpt, North Korea, Iran, Venzuela or their like — we have a very unique system of checks and balances and I’ll leave it at that.”
That is not at all apparent, as this administration is taking seriously the notion that the “validity of public debt” clause permits it to spend money without it’s being appropriated by Congress, we haven’t had a budget for years and have no hope of one being passed, and some currently unconstitutional gun laws are still enforced. Past indications the rule of law is more in name only than actual are that Clinton got his gun bans and wasn’t shot for it, he lied in court of law to cover his own backside and wasn’t removed from office for it, LBJ abrogated the New/Raw Deal with regard to Social Security vs. unitary budgeting, FDR confiscated gold (nevermind the whole of the New Deal), the ’34 NFA, Palmer raids, Alien and Sedition Act, general abrogation of the right to trial by inherent to invalid orders to follow a judge’s instruction in violation of their conscience, etc.
Any of these have had or may yet have a political reversal, but any of them in and of themselves justify violent opposition to crimes by government, with only the overarching civilization rules of war to the effect that it is wrong to start a war you will not win being a moral controlling factors against such action.
“You’re only in your 20s, so I offer my comments with all due respect.”
As you’ve sadly demonstrated, age confers no ability to research or to reason.
Gun control, the idea that the 1% should disarm the 99%.
And who exactly do you think makes up the NRA?
Here’s a hint, it’s not some evil hollywood villain twirling his mustache, but common concerned citizens (some 4 million +) who donate their time, money and votes for the cause the NRA represents. I’m in my early 20s and have contributes hundreds of dollars to the NRA, and there are many like me who would never vote for a politician who infringed on my rights in any way. Politicians are not “cowards” for not standing up to the NRA, rather most are expressing the will of their constituents as they were elected to do. These mass killings are a statistical blip, I’ll bet more children died in car accidents that day then in school shootings, but we don’t demand everyone give up their cars do we? There is such a thing as acceptable risk in society. It is true that you will never keep guns from the hands of deranged individuals, but the alternative of a bloody civil war or total extinguishment of our rights is far worse. Our gun rights really are more important than the lives of those children. They’re more important than your life, my life, my family’s life, or any other person’s life. The rights of 350+ million people outweigh the lives lost. I’m sorry if you don’t like that, but if you try and come after those rights there will be many many more lives lost on all sides in the ensuing war.
The population of 360 + million people compose our society and live with the hopes that the american precept of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness pertains to all. Guns and gun owners through irresponsibility are increasingly altering the possibility of such an american dream — I like to refer to it as a right — a constitutionally protected right. Irresponsiblity of a minority can and does cause the enactment of laws for all. Gun ownership will not be disposed of but rest assurd the regulation of gun ownership and uses can be severely altered constitutionally as gun ownership is and has been regulated already for a very long time.
Yes, lots of people including children are killed in or by automobiles. How many in that isntance are killed by premeditation?
You mentioned acceptable risk. By the same token, as a society we have a responsiblity to do what is best for the common good in reducing those risks. That just may be what was in the minds of the founders when they charged the congress with enacting laws for the common wellfare of the citizens.
So, you claim that innocent death is just some collateral damage in protecting against some ‘potential’ tyrant government leader. May I respectfully suggest you study up on the framing of our government. Any president or another proclaiming absolute power would, lets say — disappear rather quickly and without any help from any unregulated militia’s. We are not Eygpt, North Korea, Iran, Venzuela or their like — we have a very unique system of checks and balances and I’ll leave it at that.
You’re only in your 20s, so I offer my comments with all due respect.
“Guns and gun owners through irresponsibility are increasingly altering the possibility of such an american dream”
It’s worse than that. They’re making your life more dangerous by putting guns in the hands of the wrong people (usually legally), and trying to console you by telling you you have the right to have a gun yourself – presumably so that you can shoot it out with some kid who broke into his mum’s gun cabinet.
What if you don’t WANT to have to take those odds? What if you’d simply prefer that lunatics, or drunks, or people with a bad temper (or simply people who can’t hit what they’re shooting at) don’t quite so easily get hold of weapons that can kill you as you walk down the street? It would seem to me that nobody here has anything to offer. You’re on your own. The second half of the second amendment determines your fate – screw that whole “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness” thing – you better load up, or you’re at a distinct disadvantage.
Here’s something to look forward to, though – the fraction of the american population that reports to owning a gun personally, or having one in the house, is falling. It has been (in fits and starts) for years. Eventually, the gun nuts will be in the minority. Let’s see how they deal with that minority status, and whether they’ll be willing to accept the will of the people. The right has a bad track record on that one.
“But,but, but, It could never happen Here!”
-German Jew, Ca 1939
And actually, as a group, legal gun owners tend to have far lower rates of crime than the general population (look it up).
Lets make an analogy with your eagerness to sacrifice rights because you think it might save a few lives. Whenever someone says something the Muslims find offensive, they tend to riot and kill people. Thus a knee-jerk reactionary’s approach would be to severely limit the first amendment to “save lives”. Even if this approach worked (it wouldn’t, they’d still find reasons to kill people) the tradeoff of liberty of the whole for the lives of a few simply wouldn’t be worth it. Furthermore, who are you to say that the lives of those children are more valuable than the lives of the children saved because their mother shot and killed the home invader? Who are you to say that the handfull killed by the odd gunman are worth more than the shop owner who uses an AR-15 to fend off a hoard of looters during a riot? I would much rather take my chances having the means to defend myself then relying on the likes of the cabal in DC to make my decisions for me. Try reading the “armed citizen” section of the America’s 1t Freedom Magazine, every week you’ll see pages of verified stories where armed citizens used a firearm to save their lives and potentially those around them. But the media doesn’t publicize those stories, because they don’t further the desired narrative. Please look at the big picture and don’t be a tool, sold a bill of lies and tyranny by the media pimping out the bodies of 20 kids.
@ Techno
Actually public opinion has turned against gun control in the last couple decades, dramatically so. Lots of people who don’t own guns themselves still support others right to, and hope to be able to exercise it themselves some day. Try and keep up. Further, unless they can find 2/3 of the states to ratify an amendment to overturn the 2nd they can’t legally infringe on our rights. The “will of the people” is subject to the supreme law of the land. The number of guns has been going up rapidly thanks to Obozo too, best gun salesman to ever live. Ironically if past trends hold true it’ll actually have the effect of lowering overall crime. So maybe we should thank him for making our streets safer by scaring people into buying more guns.
Finally, as for your comment on self defense, let me explain it to you this way:
A gun is the only weapon that will put a 90lb woman on equal footing with a 200lb rapist. I thought you liberals favored equality and women’s rights?
Mull that over for a while and consider one further thing:
Several people armed with knives/bats will eagerly attack 1 person armed with the same. They know they can overwhelm him easily with little to no risk of injury. Several thugs, even if armed with guns, will still think twice about attacking a person holed up with an AR-15, because the odds are decent he can kill at least 1 of them before he’s killed. See the Rodney King riots for more info on how an “assault weapon” can be used to fend off a vicious mob. Criminals in the US case a house they are intending to rob for 3 times longer than one in the UK, because they want to make sure nobody’s home before they break in so they don’t get shot. In the UK having people home when you break in just adds to the fun (you get to rape, torture, and rob!).
*sigh*
I have to go to bed soon. Time zones and wot. But let’s bat on …
“Actually public opinion has turned against gun control in the last couple decades, dramatically so. Lots of people who don’t own guns themselves still support others right to, and hope to be able to exercise it themselves some day”
Let the current trend in high-profile shootings continue and let’s see how that pans out.
“Further, unless they can find 2/3 of the states to ratify an amendment to overturn the 2nd they can’t legally infringe on our rights. The “will of the people” is subject to the supreme law of the land”
2/3 of the states eventually barred slavery. Don’t joke about it – it’ll bite.
“The number of guns has been going up rapidly thanks to Obozo too, best gun salesman to ever live. Ironically if past trends hold true it’ll actually have the effect of lowering overall crime”
Let’s see about that. I think you’re wrong. But let’s see. The great reduction in crime in the mid-90′s was attributed to any, let’s say, intelligent person as a result of (a) economic improvements, (b) increased/improved policing. But I don’t think it’ll last – particularly if another republican wins the whitehouse. Wait and see.
“Finally, as for your comment on self defense, let me explain it to you this way:
A gun is the only weapon that will put a 90lb woman on equal footing with a 200lb rapist”
Well, no. Because you gave the rapist a gun.
“Several people armed with knives/bats will eagerly attack 1 person armed with the same. They know they can overwhelm him easily with little to no risk of injury. Several thugs, even if armed with guns, will still think twice about attacking a person holed up with an AR-15″
Well, no. Because you have the thugs an AR-15. And this is the problem with your reasoning – you’re so utterly focused on what the good guys would do if they were all armed, that you forget that the same policies are what armed the bad guys in the first place.
“because the odds are decent he can kill at least 1 of them before he’s killed. See the Rodney King riots for more info on how an “assault weapon” can be used to fend off a vicious mob”
Until the vicious mob goes and gets themselves assault weapons. See how this works?
“Criminals in the US case a house they are intending to rob for 3 times longer than one in the UK, because they want to make sure nobody’s home before they break in so they don’t get shot”
I assume you have some sort of statistics to back that up?
@ Techno
“2/3 of the states eventually barred slavery. Don’t joke about it – it’ll bite.”
We’ll see, but the media will have their work cut out for them. As I posted above, the polls of support for gun rights are all taken DIRECTLY in the hysteria following a mass shooting, and they can barely find 50% wanting more restrictions. Most of those 50% live in a few coastal states, geographically the 2nd is much more secure than you think.
“Well, no. Because you gave the rapist a gun. ”
Actually yes. Let’s assume for the purpose of any comparison that both sides are armed equally. I assumed that in my original post but I guess that wasn’t apparent.
90lb woman armed with fists vs 200lb rapist armed with fists
Result: he rapes her and does what he likes with her after
90lb woman armed with bat vs 200lb rapist armed with bat
Result: he laughs, rapes her, and does what he likes with her after
90lb woman armed with gun vs 200lb rapist armed with gun
Result: Either she kills him or he kills her. All other things being equal his odds of living are closer to 50/50 than the 100 they were before. If she gets her shot off first he dies. In no other scenario was this a plausible outcome. Ask yourself: if you were the rapist would you rather confront a victim who’s unarmed (when you are as well) or one who has a gun (if you do as well)? Your odds of death go way up in scenario 2.
“Well, no. Because you have the thugs an AR-15. And this is the problem with your reasoning – you’re so utterly focused on what the good guys would do if they were all armed, that you forget that the same policies are what armed the bad guys in the first place.”
Actually my logic above applies in this instance too. A mob of looters is not generally going to have the discipline and resolve to storm a fortified position. The home/shop owner has a bit of an advantage here in that he can barricade himself in and exchange fire from a more sheltered position. Most looters will simply move on to the guy next door who didn’t buy a gun instead of taking the risk of death.
Apply this to nature: predators do not like to go after dangerous prey. They go after prey they can overpower with little risk. Guns put you on EQUAL footing with the human predator. They do not turn you into superman, do not make you invulnerable, but make you equal. This is still a huge advantage over the alternative where the attacker uses either his physical size or numbers to overwhelm you with little risk to himself. A pride of lions can probably kill a cape buffalo, but they rarely hunt healthy cape buffalo if they have a choice. Why? Because the horns on a cape buffalo can kill a lion, even if that buffalo eventually dies the lions don’t want to risk their lives. They’d much rather go after defenseless gazelles.
As for the stat, I’ll try posting the link in a separate comment because I think links have been getting held up in moderation, may take me awhile to find, I lost the link from before.
Forgot to add:
The issue of slavery wasn’t resolved until after a civil war. Likewise gun rights are an issue provoking strong enough emotions in a large enough portion of the population that an effort at completely ending them (through amendment or otherwise) would likely provoke another civil war with several states succeeding. The difference is that this time both sides would have nukes so instead of a union victory, you’d either have a cold-war standoff or annihilation. Obviously I can’t predict what will happen in 100 years, but I do know that they’re still too scared to send people door-to-door grabbing guns. Other nations implemented gun bans by ordering people to turn theirs in, Clinton’s ban was just on future manufacture, people could keep what they had. They surely knew that the items already in civilian possession would be around for quite some time and undermine the whole purpose of the bill, the only reason I can think of why they didn’t demand a UK style surrender is because of how horribly bloodily it could’ve turned out, and this was back in the early 90s when public opinion favored gun control much more so than today.
To many Americans, turning in all the guns, banning guns, except perhaps for a few shotguns, is basically a political act. It would be all but declaring the beginning of a tyranny or dictatorship. They would see one “check and balance” on the government being removed, much like the President dissolving Congress or Congress closing the Supreme Court. It would not take much for such a perception to turn into war.
Where to start–
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
In 18th century America, hunting was ubiquitous and taken for granted. The founding Fathers were concerned with “the security of a free State”, and didn’t mention putting venison on the table. Shooting to defend one’s liberty might indeed involve “short-range fighting, against people”. In fact when the 2nd amendment is considered alongside the Declaration of Independence, to wit: “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” and later: “…when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”, I am driven to the conclusion that gun ownership by the populace was intended to frustrate the designs of tyrants and central planners.
Techno said:
“It’s what australia (sic) did, and it was successful – our violent crime rate has been dropping ever since.” A three and a half minute Google search yielded a page of links giving the lie to that assertion. I call bullish*t on you, Techno.
Techno opined:
“As for a citizen militia (an entertaining concept in the context of the US), let’s try to remember that the mujahideen kept the russians (sic) at bay with WWI bolt-action .303 rifles. Range and accuracy, with a kick.” Techno is so full of it that his eyes have to be brown. Bolt-action .303′s were ineffective against air-mobile infantry. Stinger missiles turned the tide against Russian helicopters, and made possible the forced withdrawal of the Russian invaders.
It is also useful to note that in June of this year the FBI reported, in its Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report that violent crime rates in the U.S. are reaching historic lows, and that instances of murder (involving methods of all types) declined 1.9% from 2010 figures, which were 4.8 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Techno and the rest of the Socialist Drones are doing their best to avoid wasting a good tragedy.
“Techno is so full of it that his eyes have to be brown. Bolt-action .303′s were ineffective against air-mobile infantry. Stinger missiles turned the tide against Russian helicopters, and made possible the forced withdrawal of the Russian invaders.”
Stinger missiles didn’t start arriving until ’86. What were the afghanis doing for the previous seven years?
And you’re mostly right about my “violent crime” claim. I over-egged that. I should have posted “homicides”. You can go have a look at the AIC stats, or you can google the title I recommended below: “Bogus Australian Post-Gun Ban Crime Info floating around the Internet and on Facebook”
Rather entertianing reading this string!
In Korea they didn’t have enough shoes to go around and most didn’t have helmets and it got down to where ammo wasn’t available on the lines and they recovered what they could from U.S. forces — and yet we didn’t defeat them.
In Vietnam after operations starlite and piranha the NVA converted large amounts of operations to guerrilla warfare and used all kinds of non conventional means and weapons — we left there after more than 10 years (counting military advisors and trainers in country since the 50s) not defeating them.
How many casuatlies and debilitating injusries was sustain in Iraq who has no air force operable and virtually no tanks left operable and certainly not the advanced weaponry of the U.S. and its allies.
The same applies to Afghanistan. Casualties and debilitating injuries in high number against a bunch that certainly hasn’t even a remote equality of weaponry to include no aviation, no tanks, no cannons, laser guided munitions and guess what — we’re leaving there after ten years not defeating the enemy on the ground.
In 9/11/01 a non governmental enemy wiped out 3,000 people with three airplanes and a fourth that didn’t make it to target hijacked with box knives but brought down without guns even though the landing turned out not so pretty..
Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City Bombing used common agri fertilizer to create his human carnage.
The list goes on in NYC and embassies around the world.
Guns are no warranty for public safety much less in warfare success of the past. Furthermore, its rather doubtful that the military would overwhelmingly release its military might on the general public in the U.S. All military units are comprised of people from many states and for certain share all the common core values of the general population.
“All military units are comprised of people from many states and for certain share all the common core values of the general population.”
That didn’t prevent the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion; or the burning of Atlanta or the siege of Vicksburg during the Civil War.
The military is pledged to support the legitimate constitutional government of the United States.
If you were right, civil wars would never happen. But they happen.
Your inability to draw a correct conclusion from history is staggering and telling. You regurgitate the leftist view of history instead of reality, and this as if it were your own.
“In Korea they didn’t have enough shoes to go around and most didn’t have helmets and it got down to where ammo wasn’t available on the lines and they recovered what they could from U.S. forces — and yet we didn’t defeat them.”
We decided not to defeat the Chinese after having driven them back from their advance from Chosin, after having destroyed the Nork to the Yalu, for reasons of nuclear strategy, and not any tactical or strategic facts on the the ground. They were ours if we wanted them, insofar as the conflict was confined to the Korean peninsula and invirons.
“In Vietnam after operations starlite and piranha the NVA converted large amounts of operations to guerrilla warfare and used all kinds of non conventional means and weapons — we left there after more than 10 years (counting military advisors and trainers in country since the 50s) not defeating them.”
We did in fact defeat the Viet Cong and NVA, to the point the ’72 invasion of the South was crushed with minimal US support. That success could have been repeated ad nauseum. There is no good justification for the Democrat controlled Congress defunding the South Vietnamese–it is among the greatest crimes against humanity to be laid at the feet of the Jefferson’s Party for Slavery.
“Iraq” Once the people generally in Iraq had had enough of AlQaeda and its rule, they turned decisively against them. If Iraq retains the pluralistic balance of power government it now has, it will not become an Iranian fiefdom, and will gradually assume a more liberal character, as did Taiwan.
“Afghanistan” We ceratinly can defeat them if we undertake that, as it is, owing to the domestic political situation, we are constrained by the Democrats to not offend them–and under those circumstances may as well leave for now and go back in when warranted. Given the idiots there sponsored the 9/11 assault, it will be necessary.
“9/11/01″ It should be instructive to you that gun control did nothing to help that situation, and given the passengers were disarmed by law, gun control favored the terrorists immensely.
“Oklahoma City” Also an instance of gun control being of no use, and given McVeigh’s peripheral motivation being the Waco and Ruby Ridge crimes by government–and those were in part motivated by attempts to enforce unconstitutional gun control laws–you’d have to admit gun control in part caused those tragic crimes, being foundational to the context of them.
“The list goes on in NYC and embassies around the world.”
Yep, unarmed embassy guards don’t do much for you, do they?
“Guns are no warranty for public safety much less in warfare success of the past.”
Guns are a requirement for the same, and there are no such things as a guarantee of safety–so I’m not troubled the constitutional ownership of firearms doesn’t provide an impossibility. They do however, provide improvement.
“Furthermore, its rather doubtful that the military would overwhelmingly release its military might on the general public in the U.S.”
I have no doubt this administration would if it thought it could succeed at it.
“Stinger missiles didn’t start arriving until ’86. What were the afghanis doing for the previous seven years?”
Under Soviet air attack, the Afghans were losing nearly all of the battles they had been fighting against the Soviets.
The Soviets had no compunctions against genocide if that is what it took to win the war. They were prepared to inflict hundreds of thousands of casualties if necessary.
The Afghans would have lost just as the Taliban lost to America: They would have retreated into the mountains and continued to fight as scattered guerrilla bands. But the Soviets would have controlled most of the country.
The Afghans could not win until the Soviets’ air advantage was neutralized.
Techno, my fiend. You’re full of crap. I happen to own a beautiful French walnut stocked Model 8 Remington take-down semi-automatic in .35 Remington ca. 1915 that is the same as the Model 8 that blew Clyde Barrow’s (as in Bonnie and Clyde) brains out. That nearly 100 year-old rifle has the same functionality as what the uninformed today call an “assault rifle”. In the case of my rifle the original owner used it to successfully hunt antelope. Seems that your “assault rifles” have been around for a very long time and provided a good 150 yard hunting platform just as today‘s AR platform may also. But my “assault rifle” doesn’t look scary (remember, it has a beautiful French walnut stock and forearm) so nobody has proposed to ban it…yet.
“I happen to own a beautiful French walnut stocked Model 8 Remington take-down semi-automatic in .35 Remington ca. 1915″
Are people not using it in mass shootings because (a) it’s not an appropriate weapon, or (b) it’s either just rare or otherwise hard to come by?
Point being, as you say – it fits the bill.
I think his point flew right over your head. His point was that virtually any gun invented in the last 100 years has a similar rate of fire and lethality to what was used in the school shooting. The shooter used what he did because it was available, ban it and he’d move on to an equally lethal antique like the one described. The “assault weapon” ban they’re pushing today was basically cosmetic, written by liberals with little knowledge of firearms, and with no overall effect on crime.
I have an old bolt action rifle that can produce a greater rate of accurate fire than that of the Connecticut shooter. It also has far more power than most of the so called assault rifles. But it just looks like an ordinary 70 year old hunting rifle…
“I think his point flew right over your head”
Not really. My point is that the name of the gun shouldn’t be the criteria for exclusion. If congress bans 100 types of gun by name, then the manufacturers will simply change the name (watch and see).
“His point was that virtually any gun invented in the last 100 years has a similar rate of fire and lethality to what was used in the school shooting.”
Here in australia, we have a term (probably quaint) called “self-loading”. It’s widely used because the australian army standard-issue weapon was colloquially called an SLR. The terms “self-loading” and “pump action” (in the case of shotguns) were defined in legislation and used to ban all weapons meeting those definitions.
“The shooter used what he did because it was available, ban it and he’d move on to an equally lethal antique like the one described”
I agree.
John F. Kennedy was killed by three shots fired very rapidly from an old bolt action rifle.
Or so the myth goes.
You forgot to add by a poor shot who barley scored the minimum to be a marksman (third tier) and missed a stationary target, a week earlier, with the same bolt action rifle from less than 100 feet away.
A poor shot who passed up a straight on shot as the motorcade headed toward him, making gravity work with his shot, to take a shot as the motorcade moved away from him, down hill, and shifting to his left, and a window frame to interfear with his right hand as he worked the bolt action, that wouln’t have been there had he taken the easy shot as the motorcade headed toward him.
Other than that, yeah, he fired faster than any of the six NRA Experts could and a target moving twice as fast and from higher position than any of the simulations were done at.
Lee Harvey Oswald was a Patsy, following orders as to when to shoot so they could be sure the job got done right by a real shooter!
There probably aren’t a lot of things that the other posters here and I are likely to agree on, but … seriously, oswald did it, let it go. Even his missus reckons he did it.
There were some truly bizarre things that happened in the aftermath (not least of which, the US constabulary learned nothing at all about the dangers of “perp walks”). But these things have kind of been argued over for a long time, and the best anyone can come up with is speculation sans evidence.
Maybe the police were a bunch of bozos, maybe the FBI was a bit ham fisted in the first few days, maybe the media was up to its eyeballs in putting about dodgy information (same as it ever was). But there is a considerable amount of evidence that oswald did in fact own and use the gun that fired those shots. He also owned the revolver that was used to shoot a cop later that afternoon. So … was he just really unlucky with guns that day?
And let’s not forget that the man was in the marine corps, and using his own rifle that day, he didn’t hit with all three shots, and the length of time available for those three shots is up for debate anyhow.
There might have been a second shooter, but we’re lacking (a) evidence to support it, and (b) a reason why one was needed.
I understand where you’re coming from.
But facts are facts: America is *unique* among all Western nations (including yours) in making gun ownership a basic Constitutional right, co-equal with freedom of speech and freedom of the press and freedom of religion. In America, freedom of gun ownership is co-equal with those other freedoms.
That means we can’t just copy what you Aussies did. For us Americans there are serious constitutional issues involved.
“in making gun ownership a basic Constitutional right”
should read
“in recognizing gun ownership as a basic individual human right in the constitution”
You just can’t get it right, can you? The constitution creates no rights.
You just can’t seem to get it right.
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were created by *men*–politicians–through the usual process of political sausage-making.
During the debate over the Constitution, there was considerable debate about such amendments as the Tenth.
The Constitution is a wonderful document. It’s not the Word of God. It’s been amended 17 more times since 1789.
And almost invariably for the worse. Only the 21st amendment repealing the 18th amendment was beneficial.
Yeah that 1st amendment is so outdated, after all, hate speech led Anders Breivik to kill 77 people in Norway (can’t blame guns that time since it’s gun control Norway).
/sarc
Please call attention to the part of the post this is a reply to, with what you think is a counterpoint or reply to my post here:
http://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/2012/12/22/assault-the-democrat-media-complex-strikes-again/#comment-10492
The US Constitution is also unique among Western nations to have a 1st amendment. Bans on so-called “hate speech” are unconstitutional in the US.
Sheesh, it’s like debating a broken record that spews the same easily debunked points over and over again. I’m just glad that technological trends in the 21st century don’t favor people like sinz54.
“The case against semi-automatic handguns and assault rifles jumps off the page when looking at the statistics on mass shootings.”
Statistically, you (and the media) are cherry picking data.
Since 1999, there have been 8 highly publicized “mass shootings,” killing about 100 people. Shooters were young men with known mentally illnesses. Seven were in gun free zones, where victims could not defend themselves. When confronted, all of these cowards either surrendered or committed suicide.
In the US there are 8,000 firearm murders annually, most in black inner cities where, ironically, guns are banned. Rather than going after Mayor Rahm Emanuel who had presided over 600 gun murders in Chicago this year, the media concentrates on disarming the law abiding public.
The city dwellers fail to understand that many Americans live an hour or more from the nearest law enforcement if they respond promptly. There are areas larger than many European countries in the Western U.S. that have only one or two policemen for the whole area. A person has to be is own law enforcement and animal control under common law in those areas. And yes, there is work and jobs useful to the nation and citizenry out in some of these remote areas.
Interesting! An AK47 isn’t a hunting weapon. Have to tell that to my neighbors who use them when they hunt feral pigs in heavy brush.
“So, the avoidance of background checks is not a problem? I sort of get the impression that the absolute most that the US right is willing to do is to agree to keep guns out of the hands of convicted criminals, and the mentally deranged … and yet none of that works at all if there’s no check on who’s doing the purchasing. ”
Ignorant, much? Every licensed dealer has to run background checks, regardless of where they make the sale.
“Ignorant, much? Every licensed dealer has to run background checks, regardless of where they make the sale”
PPpttht. Nice try. Dissembling much?
So the same bad guy goes to the same gun show and buys his firearms from the unlicensed seller at the next table over.
Techno is fibbing about Australia….Australian violent crime has increased substantialy.
While the impression is that media report violent crime, the pattern emerges that if anything the media suppress reports. We learn of the fantastic # of shootings etc in Chicago…after the fact…that the media….criquets…
Here in Canada, I was a vicitim of an armed home invasion 5-6 years back. One of the perps was armed with what in Canada is a PROHIBITED WEAPON….These critters also had a detailed knowledge of my firearm assets…thanks to Canada’s Firearms Registry. Thanks to Canada’s firearms laws I was in practice disarmed…while the perps used a “prohibited weapon”…according to Bill C68.
In the days that followed I was flabergasted to learn that this was not an isolated incident….with many many incidents unreported in out media, even locally….semi-rural area.
In fact, when one of the perps, in a fit of born again, religous enthusiasm confessed, it was to 8 violent home invasions. That hardy had a effect of the # of unsolved home invasions.
Odd isn’t it. It seems that the gun control laws proposed by the left are designed to help the ghetto slime (the foot soldiers of the left), not provide public safety. Oh well, the technological trends of the 21st century will put an end to their efforts.
I can’t post links, or the post will just stay in moderating.
So google the phrase “Bogus Australian Post-Gun Ban Crime Info floating around the Internet and on Facebook”
Single links go through.
Multiple link posts don’t go through until and unless a moderator bothers to look at it.
From the cited Reuters article……”From 1994 to 2004 certain assault weapons and ammunition clips of more than 10 bullets were illegal.”
Proper nomenclature lesson for the benefit of the uninformed moron who wrote the Reuters piece…..”From 1994 to 2004 certain semi-automatic rifles and ammunition magazines of more than 10 cartridges were illegal”. Only three gross errors in a single sentence. Great journalism, Reuters!
What can you expect, the reporter who wrote that article was credentialed, not educated.
Talk about worthless degrees. The J-school degree is an obsolete credential in the 21st century.
I already have all the machine guns, grenades, rockets, box cutters, and potato peelers that I want or need. Does that make me a bad person? or a prepared person.. ?
Hey how about this special sign for you libs, and you can probably get your lazy ass kid out of the basement to make a few bucks making these and selling them to your lib friends who have stores, the few that are smart enough to make change:
ATTENTION: It is AGAINST THE LAW to BREAK THE LAW in this ESTABLISHMENT. VIOLATORS MAY BE PERSECUTED AND SUED BY SOME LAWYER.
That should prevent all future crime.. !! Weeeee ain’t we libs smart?? Just ask Barry.
Jew lawyer?
Nice. And I thought the left was supposed to be the home of anti-semitism now.
No place for ethnic or religious insults here — I have edited it out.
So words do matter? Apparently only sensitive words of distraction such as Jew, White, Black, Catholic, Christian, etc.. raise the attention of some people whereas the issues at hand are diminished by them. My race, my religion, my country, my gender is slandered everywhere, everyday by the MSM, the idiot in the whitehouse, the demorats in office, and the check out clerks at Target, yes I can’t even shop and checkout at Target without having to take a rash of crap from the clerks about our wonderful president protecting us from the ‘right wing gun nuts..’ but my response? Just grin and bear it. For me to randomly pick the word ‘Jew’ as a qualifier to ‘lawyer’ and see your responses has educated me to make this the last post, the last waste of time in reading this PJ site. Thankyou in advance for saving me perhaps 15 mins per day * 365 = 91 hours a year.. I am now better for it. Have a nice day.
Hi Michael.
I don’t think it was a reflection on you. I was just surprised to see anyone actually _post_ that.
Joe Gun – Not all insults are alike. I’m sure nobody here needs to explain the history.
Omigod, it can “spray” bullets “as fast as you can pull the trigger”! (Um, that would be a .38 revolver.)
I’m thinking old cowboy movies…
I have a modest proposal. Since the point of all this “gun control” is to eliminate evil acts, why don’t we just make evil against the law? We could let highly educated judges determine what evil is, sort of like the EPA determines what is environmentally improper. Wouldn’t that solve all our problems? No?
I want one of those assault rifles that can fire multiple bullets. My AR will only fire those regular single bullets. What the hell is a multiple bullet anyway?
If guns were the problem… then the 200+million guns in America would have reduced the population of this country to less than 100 million. Those evil guns would be loading themselves, aiming themselves, firing themselves, reloading themselves and on occasion cleaning themselves. Unless they are self propelled they would have to wait for some unsuspecting victim to walk by at just the right moment.
Zeke blathered:
“Guns are no warranty for public safety much less in warfare success of the past. Furthermore, its rather doubtful that the military would overwhelmingly release its military might on the general public in the U.S. All military units are comprised of people from many states and for certain share all the common core values of the general population.”
Zeke, you are a bloody idiot. In fact you must have ‘Idiot’ written on your forehead in glitter. Ever heard of the Bonus March, the Bonus Army and what was done to them? Huh? Two babies were killed, tanks were used…
Ever heard of Ruby Ridge? Those people work for the same people that the military work for.
How about Waco?
If you think that the FBI is the only government entity to have a SWAT team, think again. If you can think.
The EPA and the department of education has SWAT teams.
That’s right. Those overdue library books are a real problem.
My gosh, even a slide action pump can spray bullets fast.
I recall hunting as a kid with my first .22 semi when a bunny jumped up , I unloaded my entire gun as fast as I could on it–only to see it stop and sit, whereby by friend raised his little 20 ga. and turned it into potential Hasenpheiffer. I learned then a great big lesson. You do have to stop and aim those semi-automatic repeating guns if you wish to hit your target–which then makes them no faster than most other guns.
The fastest gun is a side by side or over and under if you pull both triggers at once.
Don’t laugh at the hysterical media. It works. The knee-jerk voters who re-elected this guy fully respond to such illogical propaganda. So much for democracy.
Ordinary citizens should give up their guns when the President, other politicians and celebrities give up their armed guards. Many who have the clout or money to have armed security guards for protection (e.g., Obama, Congress and the Hollywood left) think it is déclassé for the non-rich to be able to own guns for their own protection. They were outraged at the NRA’s idea that school children receive the kind of protection many of them take for granted.
As I’ve asked on Twitter, why do the same Beverly Hills lefties who want to ban guns have signs in front of their houses that say “Armed Response”?
@Techno: Molon labe, friend. Molon labe.
….I drove my (assault) SUV to (Assault Central) Walmart, where I bought an (assault) bb gun for my son. On the way home, I stopped at (assault) McDonalds and picked up an (assault) Big Mac and fries for myself, and an (un)happy meal for the 4 year old……….Shame on me……
I went to the beach to get some (assault) rocks by painting them black. Thus they became high capacity repeating rocks. Then I put the (assault) rocks in my (assault) bag. Then drove off in my assault car (it’s full auto transmission).
I haven’t seen or heard any logic based discussion about this shooting anywhere. Since the Adam Lanza kid evidently broke a couple dozen laws murdering those kids, how is another law going to stop a similar tragedy from happening? What actually could have stopped him? Perhaps more physical security at the school, or better “active shooter” training for the school administrators? Nothing presented in the media that I’ve seen makes any attempt to define and address the actual problem. You could make all guns and other dangerous weapons magically disappear from the face of the earth, or magically turn everyone into perfect angels, but I don’t see that happening, but this seems to be the lefts solution, with them in charge of course.
What could have stopped Mr. Lanza, would have been laws that would have required his mom to keep her guns (they were hers) locked away out of reach of her wacko son. On the one hand, she suspected he was so wacko she wanted to get him psychiatric treatment; on the other hand, she decided to teach him how to shoot a rifle!
She may have been eccentric, but she wasn’t a criminal. She taught her sons how to fire her own guns, because there’s no law that says she couldn’t.
Many states have laws that stipulate that you can’t give your car keys to your child to drive your car by himself alone–even if he has a learner’s permit. We don’t have any law like that for guns.
Any lock can be broken given enough time, and this guy wasn’t stupid. So suppose the mom has the guns locked up, he could kill her with a kitchen knife in her sleep, then spend the next several days breaking the locks if he needed to. Hell, even if the mom didn’t have guns he could’ve just smashed the window in a parked cop car and had himself a full auto (like a guy in my hometown did).
Did mandatory gun locks stop Anders Behring Breivik? Did any gun ban? I rest my case.
The fed govt is $16T in debt, gun grabber. You’re finished.
“Clips”…”Clips of more than ten rounds”
To quote Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
The only clip I am familiar with holds eight rounds of 30.06 ammunition. I used them when I qualified with an M1 back in 1961.
adam lanza projected his misery onto his family and the school children. he tried to implicate his brother who he probably would have shot, if he had been at home. the fast and furious debacle isn’t mentioned at all. the best gun law would be to keep ignorant people from making decisions, even if it makes them feel good. remember if a frog had wings he wouldn’t bump his butt, so in order to feel good lets legislate wings for all the frogs. that tear in his eye was a oscar moment were he showed how much he cared, where was the tear for the four in Bengazi they were only bumps in the road.where was the tear for the beauty queen that was murdered by the guns he put in the hands of the cartels. in my neighborhood we call people like that liars and hypocrites.
““Rapid firing of multiples bullets” sounds pretty scary until you realize that rapid fire is, along with accuracy, one of the points of shooting… ”
It sounds pretty scary after one knows it too. Why would one want to fire multiple bullets rapidly, other than killing as many people as possible in a short time? And how often does a civilian fight in USA with many armed people? Most of times, unarmed people would be the likely target of this rapid fire.
I do not think I know people with assault guns. If I knew, I would stay away from them.
“Why would one want to fire multiple bullets rapidly, other than killing as many people as possible in a short time?”
That’s exactly the intended purpose. Look up the Korean shop owners in the LA Rodney King riots for examples where killing large numbers of attackers quickly can be very useful. Further, “assault weapon” is a made up term by ignorant liberals to describe guns with certain cosmetic features. Virtually any gun designed in the last 100 years has a similar rate of fire to the one used, hell you could even achieve similar burst rates with a revolver. If you know anyone with his grandfather’s WWII rifle, you know someone with a weapon every bit as powerful as the one used in Newton.
Despite what you think happens ala Hollywood, people do not just fall over when hit by gunfire. There are an abundance of werified reports of criminals being hit (torso) 10 or more times before giving up the fight. The infamous FBI Miami shootout is one; another is a running gunfight in New York City where the criminal was hit 19 times before he was stopped by a member of NYPDs’ ESU with a shotgun. Fact is a handgun is not all that powerful a firearm, so it may take multiple hits to stop an attack.
” Why would one want to fire multiple bullets rapidly, other than killing as many people as possible in a short time? ”
Because it’s one of the courses of fire in standard target shooting competitions.
The proposed ban on large capacity magazines by Shumer and Feinstein is analogous to this:
“I’m sorry to hear your child and others died in a car crash that may have been the result of alcohol use, so my esteemed colleague and I have proposed reducing the size of gas tanks in all cars to one-third of their current capacity.”…Diane
“We’ll need to move quickly while emotions run high or risk the possibility that people will realize our legislation accomplishes absolutely nothing.”…Chuckie
Cars are not designed to kill as many people as possible. Assault guns are. The guns are designed to make mass killing easy, fast, painless, cheap and harmless for the shooter. This is the big difference between cars and guns. Once a person decides he/she need an arsenal sufficient for a mass killing spree, he/she is morally ready for it, in my view.
I have a library too. Gotta ban books, the writings of Marx and Engels are almost as bad as the koran for causing real mass murder. So having such in your library , to use your logic… or lack of, means you are a stalin/mao or willing to fly jets into skyscrapers.
Whatever. LOL …Maybe free speach/press should be limited to printing presses which can only print one page at a time. And they can only have one of those because modern printing turns them into mass murderers ala’ Pol Pot/Stalin.
BTW, it was “harmless” for the Sandy hook killer because such as yourself, wrapped in unreason and unreasonable fear of an armed free People decided to make it a killing field.
MarinaMaine:Define what an ‘assault gun’ is.. And how it differs from a firearm used for defense.
Assault gun, in my view, is the gun designed to kill many people fast. I, personally, never saw a gun. And I am quite happy about it.
NON ANSWER!!! You opine on a item you proclaim you have never seen, and in addition are quite happy with it. Again; your ‘a gun designed to kill many people fast’ is a perfect description of a defensive weapon utilized to defeat and repulse an attack. Still don’t have d definition from you as to what an exclusively ‘assault gun ‘ is…
“assault Gun” “never saw a gun”, but thinks she can use state violence on gun owners based on her own ignorance.
The fed govt is $16T in debt. 3d printers are already printing some gun parts. The future doesn’t look good for low information voters like you.
Further proving my contention that most gun banners, whether individuals, press, or politicians, are not only completely ignorant but willingly ignorant, deliberately ignorant, proud of their ignorance. This is not 1984 (yet), ignorance is neither virtue nor strength, yet when it comes to guns (and many other things) the left proudly sticks their head in the sand and proclaims the moral virtue of their ignorance. It’s not a good way to win arguments.
Of course, no one has *EVER* committed a mass murder with a car!
You having books is not a hazard for other people. Especially, if you read various kinds of books. On another hand, your guns are. You buy them to kill people.
No, I buy guns because I like to shoot them. I buy books, because I like to read them. A gun is used to defend myself from those who would harm me or my loved ones or my People. Books contain ideas, some of which have murdered millions, hundreds of millions of people.
Guns are only able to be used to kill many people when those people are unarmed. Ideas are far more deadly. Ideas disarm people and let them be slaughtered.
Now for some ideas which do not render mass murder easy to do. Nor enslavement by government.
“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.”
Richard Henry Lee
American Statesman, 1788
…………………..
“The great object is that every man be armed.” and “Everyone who is able may have a gun.”
Patrick Henry
American Patriot
………………..
“Those who hammer their guns into plowshares will plow for those who do not.”
Thomas Jefferson
Third President of the United States
………………
“The best we can help for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”
Alexander Hamilton
The Federalist Papers at 184-8
……………
“Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence … from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable … the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.”
George Washington
First President of the United States
…………………..
“You having books is not a hazard for other people. Especially, if you read various kinds of books. On another hand, your guns are. You buy them to kill people.”
You have no idea how many books I have, nor how I store them.
And I most certainly do NOT buy guns to “kill people”. I buy them because I enjoy shooting them and in order to defend myself.
Why are you so intent on rendering innocent people defenseless? What are your intentions?
I bet the intentions are to protect the predatory ghetto slime from the armed taxpayer.
A gun is designed for defensive use unless the intent is to harm others for reasons indefensible. The same with a car- driving defensively is what most people do, however, when you go beyond .08 BAC, you’re now driving ‘offensively’.
Feinstein’s answer is to shrink the gas tank by one third on all cars because it is assumed (by this clown Senator) that cars will be used offensively more often than not, and that only repeated stops at the gas station will save us all.
Let’s be perfectly clear: Guns don’t kill people. Democrats with guns kill people. The overwhelming majority of Gun violence in America is perpetrated by Democrats or demographics that overwhelmingly vote Democrat. Clean your own house, fellas, and then you can think about lecturing us civilized people.
Gun grabbers like zeke and sinz54 are intent on protecting the ghetto slime from the taxpaying would be victims of such ghetto slime.
The left gotta protect its foot soldiers dontcha know!
**sinz54**
The population you speak of was not connected as is our society today. Most everybody today has family, relatives, friends, business associates, etc all over the country who share close relationships — same for our military!
Regardless of ones political or religious affiliations the entire nations conscience was inflamed with the shooting at Kent State.
Both police and the military services are all about preserving life unless faced with threats that allows no other options but to engaged deadly actions.
The only time there will be any military action against any citizen in modern america will be when the military has no other option to defend against some idiots threats.
“Regardless of ones political or religious affiliations the entire nations conscience was inflamed with the shooting at Kent State”
You believe that?
Zeke, your a fool and a self-absorbed one at that.
Obviously yours wasn’t. Some people are void of such kinds of compassion for others even when the lives of innocent people, sometimes their own family members, are taken away.
Funny, zeke doesn’t want innocent people to defend themselves. Gotta protect that ghetto slime from those nasty armed taxpayers right zeke!
**Tom Perkins**
“Your inability to draw a correct conclusion from history is staggering and telling.”
Sure glad you were in Korea and Vietnam and have first hand ‘real’ facts to report. What units did you serve in either of them? Please tell me its not possible that you didn’t serve in them and only rely upon the written opinions of literary geniuses. Remember that the Gospels were written by people who neither knew Jesus nor lived in His time and has since, been endlessly re-interpreted for all kinds of self serving devious motives. Kinda like lawyers and judges do to the words of the english language.
Now I’m going to wrap up a closing here. Let me start by asking a simple question for you to ponder. Should people who live in the worlds of anxiety/dilusion/paranoia be granted the right to bear arms?
Okay, lets move on from the simple question to matters of ‘clinical’ observation and diagnosis as it might pertain to gun ownership. Conclusively the pro gun responders claim that its only the mentally flawed who commit heinous crimes and therefore it is only those who should not be allowed gun ownership. Of course these same responders self adjudicate themselves as the responsible, mentally unflawed persons.
Lets disect that premise and analyze it a bit in the context of fear/anxiety and dilusion. There are 183 common known causes of anxiety disorder or delusions. More important however, is the question of WHO suffers from this clinical disorder. I will contend that the answer to that question is simply; most everybody to varying degrees.
Now, lets do associate this clinical disorder to gun ownership. Lets associate by the question of why do you desire to own guns. Lets use the pro gun respondents as represented on this topic on PJM.
1. God said I have the right to own guns.
2. I ‘fear’ a tyrannical government is coming.
3. I ‘fear’ that sombody is coming to harm me.
4. Being an able bodied male over the age of 18, a literatry author of the past told me to own guns.
Do any of those common responses or inferences fall into the clinical realm of anxiety, dilusion and paranoia? Of course! Maybe the best solution for gun control is a psychological personality test and interview and further holding the evaluator liable for the actions of those they clear for gun ownership. I will take leave at this point and let the PJM in-house psychologist intervene if she so desires.
“Should people who live in the worlds of anxiety/dilusion/paranoia be granted the right to bear arms?”
Has a court made a ruling to remove their rights? If not, why should someone with a psych degree have unilateral power to remove the rights of innocent people?
Didn’t the Soviet Union use psychiatry as an excuse to put political dissidents away in “psychiatric hospitals”?
Hey you opened my eyes. Thanks!
The James Holmes of the world who sought or was referred for psychological/psychiatric evaluation/couselling during which time he was purchasing guns from online or wherever, is just the kind of citizens we want purchasing and or owning guns and munitions. Afterall, he and hundreds of thousand of others who voluntarily seek or commit for psychological help was never adjudicated as having mental defect.
I would like to see the data for gun crimes and gun deaths by legal owners vs illegal owners.
By the way Rob, you and yours have a very Merry Christmas!
So when a gun owner deters an attack with his gun but doesn’t fire it, it doesn’t count? Merry christmas liar!
I would feel anxiety if people in state power threaten me with violence and use lies and fakery to justify the state violence.
I would feel anxiety if people in state power threaten me with violence
People do feel threatened by state power and their attempts to further it by exploiting any event where an ‘individual’ goes deliberately rogue with a weapon. Whether a car or a gun, used offensively, neither results in a positive outcome. Driving a car defensively or doing the same as an AR-15 owner matters not to the liberal, it’s about ‘control’ and they will accept nothing but their assignment as our Masters.
Face it, our founders never intended for us to be beholden to Masters and this alone is what chaps their ass. The gun is the Great Equalizer, thus, it must be taken from the stupid masses lest they forget who is boss. But wait! Aren’t these the same people who want everyone equal? Fair shares, egalitarianism, equal outcomes, level playing fields, what gives? “God made man, Samuel Colt made man equal”. What is there not to like here as a liberal? Such dissonance suggests that “liberalism is a mental disorder” may be correct.
You know, this post kind of reminds me of those liberals who scornfully sneer at the guy who buys a generator, or stocks a week’s worth of food and water in his basement. They proudly call him a paranoid crackpot and feel morally aloof and enlightened. They say he’s an idiot for thinking that the government won’t always be there to keep the lights working, the water flowing, or the food trucks coming. Then a Sandy or Katrina happens and they’re the first ones knocking on their neighbor’s door demanding to run an extension cord over to his generator, or asking to “borrow” some food and water.
Zeke should have written:
“Now, lets do associate this clinical disorder to gun ownership. Lets associate by the question of why do you desire to own guns. Lets use the pro gun respondents as represented on this topic on PJM.
1. …all men are created equal, [and] they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
2. Historically, government has tended toward tyranny.
3. Thanks to the Lefties’ deconstruction of our criminal justice system (among many other foolish and tragic contributions), violent crime is rampant.
4. Our Founding Fathers considered an armed populace to be essential to liberty.”
Fixed it for you.
CHINESE JOIN DEMOCRATS IN CALLING FOR GUN CONFISCATION
If you’re reading this, I’m not dead and neither are you. That means Doomsday didn’t … READ MORE: http://bwcentral.org/2012/12/chinese-join-democrats-in-calling-for-gun-confiscation/
Didn’t Beijing send multiple full auto weapons to our ghetto slime in LA, about 2,000?
“Sure glad you were in Korea and Vietnam and have first hand ‘real’ facts to report. What units did you serve in either of them? Please tell me its not possible that you didn’t serve in them and only rely upon the written opinions of literary geniuses.”
Why do you pretend I need to have been there myself at the time to know facts? I simply read a great many histories that have verifiable scholarship behind them, and ignore the works of the sort produced by Zinn, Bellisle, Chomsky, etc.–you know, people who are verified geniuses at deceiving by omission, obfuscation, and distraction. Why do you argue? Do you pretend, for example, that North Vietnam’s advance into the South in 1972 was successful?
Who do you think you are kidding besides yourself?
“Remember that the Gospels were written by people who neither knew Jesus nor lived in His time and has since, been endlessly re-interpreted for all kinds of self serving devious motives. Kinda like lawyers and judges do to the words of the english language.”
I’m very well aware of that. You might want to look up the thread by Christian Adams about how the source of the Newtown shooting was amorphous evil, and my comments there, before you stupidly assume more on my part. Not that you’ll be able to help the stupid on your part. I also note you were setting great store by all those lawyers and judges words except those which refute you.
“Should people who live in the worlds of anxiety/dilusion/paranoia be granted the right to bear arms?”
People who live in the real world are already in possession of the right to arms, similarly, they are in possession of a right to buy fire extinguishers.
“Conclusively the pro gun responders claim that its only the mentally flawed who commit heinous crimes and therefore it is only those who should not be allowed gun ownership. Of course these same responders self adjudicate themselves as the responsible, mentally unflawed persons.”
And to go by the results of most gun owners owning guns, never mind the more select subset who carry daily, they are all but universally correct in that self assessment. Of course most people are, that’s why civil commitment should require the judgement of a jury.
” I will contend that the answer to that question is simply; most everybody to varying degrees.”
A distinction without valence. Anyone must have an obvious, not a mild personality quirk, before they are handed over to the butterfly net men…and by a jury at that.
“1. God said I have the right to own guns.”
A perfectly sane reasoning, and one which has served us very well for hundreds of years. On the basis of what do you dismiss it? Oh yes, your own bigotry.
“2. I ‘fear’ a tyrannical government is coming.”
Like government debasing the currency to a hyperbolic degree and making manifold promises–to keep people from starving at that–which it cannot keep have never brought such about before. Of course, you lefties have your own secret histories you whisper in reassurance to each other where the likes of Krugman and Keynes (and Marx, and Rousseau) have ideas which actually work, not that there’s any evidence of that in the real world. In the real world, the American Revolution was the one that worked, the one inspired by the Enlightenment. The French all those following were inspired by the Endarkenment, and have not had such success.
The chief distinction is the Enlightenment proclaimed equality of opportunity, where the Endarkenment proclaims the egalitarianism of outcomes. One can enable a person to be prosper and be free, the other breeds discontent and starvation.
“I ‘fear’ that sombody is coming to harm me.”
It is a statistical certainty that will happen to someone, they should they not be properly prepared for it when it happens? Similarly, most people do not have fires, but it would be wise for all to have smoke detectors and fire extinguishers.
“4. Being an able bodied male over the age of 18, a literatry author of the past told me to own guns.”
Yeah, those Founding Fathers are of no account to the likes you, you know better…
“Do any of those common responses or inferences fall into the clinical realm of anxiety, dilusion and paranoia? Of course!”
Not one of the in the context of this debate.
It is satisfying, however you have been driven to reveal your mindless, base prejudices fully.
” I will take leave at this point”
We can only hope you have fresh material at the point you return, you are stinking up the place.
Tom Perkins – NEW MATERIAL
Heres the problem with so many. Everything you write is done with a central underpinned motive — a devious motive. You set about to perpetuate social division and hate using politics and religion. A divsion of we the arrogant intellectual and informed elite with our rigid philosophies and everybody else who may have some differing opinions are the enemy. The sadest part of it all is that you’re applying this demented motive to your fellow american citizens most of whom, you have no personal acquaintance. If they happen to be democrat they’re automatically enshrined as low life anti religion, anti gun ownership, anti everything that is good an just according to the dictates of the tyrannical wannabe’s whose words and judgements supercedes all others.
Even more sad, is that these kinds of people, most, cling to their bibles, guns and the constitution as their foundation of supreme righteousness and authority. In instances of their bibles and the constitution, each and every one of them are the living definition of hypocracy. In the first instance, they sin by day – sin by night (except for you the puritan) and go to their Christain churches on Wednesday and or Sunday. They define and cherry pick scripture to suit their own justifications. In the second instance, they cherry pick through the constitution, its amendments, the Declaration of Independence and the federalist papers and interpret according to their own justifications.
Last I checked, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances — still stands. Yet the social conservative moment of the GOP all to often claim and strive for Christianity to be the single controlling foundation of the constitution, its amendments, the government and statutory law. Likewise, this amendment grants/directs that the people petition the government for a redress of grievances rather than effect the perpetuation of social division and declaring one ‘side’ an enemy as a means to an end of settling governmental grievances.
Next, the constitution precisely defines the process for which the elected of government is to be carried out. That is a constitutional protected right giving the people a “voice” in the government. District by district across the land people by a majority vote decide the elected for congress and the presidency. Sometimes their majority vote bring to office a democrat, sometimes a republican and sometimes an independent. By constitutional design they govern representing the people of districts who voted them into office. Sometimes there is consensus among the elected and sometimes not. In the latter instance they are required to govern through eventual compromise. Yet, the self proclaimed righteous authority types who claim the constitution as their bible companion, have total disregard for this constitutional process.
Next comes Article I, Section 8 of the constitution: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States – To borrow money on the credit of the United States – among others. To date the congress has provided according for their constitutional charge. YET the righteous authority folks declare them to be outside their constitutional bounds and some even consider them to be treasonous. The same holds true for the righteous authority folks concerning the Executive Branch and the President.
If anybody is out of step with the constitution and Christianity, it is these self righteous, self annoited, hypocritical authoritarians trying to effect social division over their shallow but rigid poilitical and religious positions -in fact declaring those who don’t submit to them and their authoritarian political and religious views as an enemy. Now that there is a real constitutional precept!
By the way! When some of you who see yourselves as intellectual elites, reduce yourselves and your repsonses to others, down to name calling and personal insults, may I suggest you need a little revival meetin with Jesus before you lose all respect and dignity.
I hope ya’ll can put aside the internet and all your radicalism and authoritianism long enough to enjoy a very Merry Christmas.
Good times for all will return so we don’t need a civil war over any potential for more gun restriction or personal disagreement with certain state of affairs in the government in but a moment of time!
Oh look! More ignorant generalization! I’m not religious, in fact I’m agnostic and a gun owner. But hey, keep going on with your willful ignorance and keep necro-ing the old “everybody on the right is an evangelitard” canard.
Isn’t great how much entertainment there is when they can’t keep the mask on anymore? I was rolling after just the first three sentences!
Good times.
“Accuse others of what you do…” V. I. Lenin videlicet:
Zeke: “Everything you write is done with a central underpinned motive — a devious motive. You set about to perpetuate social division and hate using politics and religion. A division of we the arrogant intellectual and informed elite with our rigid philosophies and everybody else who may have some differing opinions are the enemy.”
Like incorrigible, poop-eating dogs, they just can’t help themselves, can they? Mental health professionals call that projection; in this case, it’s projection mixed with a rather large dose of narcissism and Utopian megalomania.
“I know you are, but what am I?” – Ward Dorrity.
I love it how the antigunners just necro the decades old debunked points over and over again.
Bitter clingers.
To my knowledge no one has indicated that the AR-15, whether it was used or not in the killings, met the criteria for the legislative description of an assault rifle. Rifles designated as assault rifles are not for sale in Connecticut from media reports.
In CA rifles approved for sale look to the untrained eye the same as the legislatively designated assault rifle. Assault rifles were defined during the ban as a rifle accepting detachable magazines having two or more of the following: pistol grip, folding or telescoping stock, flash suppressor, bayonet lug and/or grenade launcher. That is not the military’s definition where full automatic selected firing rate is the major capability described. A Ruger Mini 14, which looks much like a Ruger 10-22 which is a 22 cal semi-auto, is just as lethal as an AR-15; it fires the same .223 round but looks much less lethal without a pistol grip or flash suppressor
When someone writes about clips and multiple bullets one knows they know little about firearms. For me their story loses all creditability. Unfortunately the uninformed know nothing to challenge the article.
BTW, for a M-1 it is a clip that hold the rounds, but a magazine for an AR-15, M-16 or AK-47. Talking points for the Left need to be improved.
You lot want weapons because you dream of voting from the rooftop. The role of assault weapons in the hands of individual crazy people is serious enough, but what concerns, or should concern, patriotic Americans is the obviously seditious intentions behind the gun mania of so many on your side of things. I certainly hope that the FBI and ATF are keeping a list and checking it twice.
Americans have always viewed privately held firearms as a hedge against tyranny, probably because the founders of this country relied heavily upon privately held arms to seceded from England. There is nothing new going on here, the paranoia from the left that there’s some sort of right wing violent revolution coming is just as paranoid as the deluded ravings of those calling Obama the antichrist and prophesying the second coming.
President Barack Hussein Obama organized “Fast and Furious” to sell illegal guns to Mexicans, which led to the deaths of many Mexicans and two Americans. So he is a hypocrite about the massacre in Newtown. In any case, Adam Lanza did not buy his guns; he used his mother’s.
Zeke, try o get it right. The 18th Amendment was NOT repealed by the 27th Amendment. It was repealed by the 21st Amendment.
A little off-topic, but I saw another example of ignorance, today. This was classic Hollywood ignorance. It was in a movie listed in TV Guide as “Nora Roberts’ Carnal Innocence.” IMDB just calls it “Carnal Innocence.” In one scene, a woman, who is hidden from view, fires a warning shot, and then you can hear the unmistakeable sound of the slide of a pump-action shotgun. When she steps into view, she is holding… [drum roll] a side-by-side, break-action, double-barrel shotgun.