In the case of Newtown, the killer did jungle tape 30-round magazines together. He shot his way into the elementary school. There was no armed security to slow him down or stop him. The Columbine shooting occurred during the “assault weapons” ban period. Connecticut bans “assault weapons” to this day. Even talking about banning magazines and weapons just sells more magazines and more weapons. Even in liberal California.
Here’s the problem. We have a broken society. Liberals killed off the influence of the church and have killed off any notion of moral right and wrong. They challenged authority for its own sake, not because authority was necessarily wrong, and they ended up replacing authority with their own shifting standards. Now that they’re the authority, though, we’re not supposed to challenge them. They coddle criminals and blame society for their crimes. The mad man who killed two firefighters should have been in prison for bludgeoning his grandmother to death with a hammer, instead of paroled.The Newtown case is far less clear, but there may be a clue in the reports that he killed because he believed his mother loved other people more than she loved him, and in reports that she had found that caring for her mentally ill son alone had become impossible. He was from a prosperous family. Money wasn’t the issue. What was?
The family is on its way out, and with it, fathers who stick around to raise their sons. I’m generalizing, but not really overgeneralizing what’s going on in the inner cities and spreading out. Even in the suburbs and the countryside it’s awfully difficult now for moms and dads to raise sons and daughters with humility, respect for others, a sense of real right and real wrong, and values beyond the immediate and material. Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote about the disintegration of society and the family two decades ago like an Old Testament prophet, and he met one of the usual receptions that such prophets received: We praised him for his brilliance but we ignored what he said.
In a broken society where the ordinary rules are being challenged and brought down day by day, you can ban everything. Or you can ban nothing. It won’t matter. Whatever you ban today is jungle taped to beat the ban tomorrow. Those who respect the ban will become victims, either of the state, or of the predators who do not respect the ban.
Also read: I Support President Obama’s Plan for Making Schools Safer
You can ban everything, or nothing. It won’t matter.
You’re right!
I think the better activist movement would be to involve themselves with the repealing of all homicide statutes across the land and all citizen crimes against the goverment such as this silly notion: “Crimes against the government are infamous crimes (without fame or good report), and under common law, people committing such crimes have not even have the right to defend themselves at trial (a “firing squad” offense). The Constitution of the United States (Article 3, Section 3) does not specifically rule out or rule in the right to representation, but it does talk about treason (and attempting to overthrow the government) as a breach of allegiance and the most aggravated, serious felony that one could commit. Terrorism against the United States is another such offense. The purpose of the criminal law in this area is to protect the innocent and preserve the political process of representative democracy and free elections.
Problem solved!
Heck, even Ice-T won’t give up his guns because he feels they’re the last defense against tyranny. What does that tell you?
“Heck, even Ice-T won’t give up his guns because he feels they’re the last defense against tyranny. What does that tell you?”
He is evoloving to the dark side. It’s a big club. We got jackets.
Who’s got the jackets? All I got was this lousy T-shirt.
I don’t know about you guys, but I haven’t killed anybody with my 30 round magazine all week.
Wasn’t the grand poobah, Ice Cube, who said, “today is a good day. I didn’t have to use my AK.” Piker.
If you go to the local VFW, they got jackets. They also know something about AKs.
Cho Seung Hee killed 30 plus teens and adults with two handguns. I’m not sure about their fire power or their magazine capacity, but I doubt handguns can hold 30 bullets…. I think.
If you had to ban or “control” something, the amount of bullets is probably more relevant. But even if you were limited to 15 bullets a year, all you have to do is wait for have someone else buy it for you.
Did he tape two handguns together?
The virginia tech murders were conducted with one 10 shot pistol and one 15 shot pistol. A point that is not reported very well is the supposed 19 loaded magazines he had with him. A tac reaload on a pistol is just as fast or faster than reloading an ar-15 rifle tape or no tape. Its not the size of the magazines. A reload takes, if you suck at it, 5 seconds. One 30 or three 10s only changes the time needed by a few seconds to fire all shots.
The biggest issue for me, as a Firearms Instructor AND the parent of a First Grader in NEWTOWN PENNSYLVANIA is the damn-near criminal responsibility of Adams Mother….
You, the Adult, are responsible for your families safety. A firearm, or even several, CAN be part of that equation…but encouraging a MENTALLY DEFECTIVE PERSON IN YOUR HOUSEHOLD to become “proficient” with a Firearm, is a ridiculously dangerous idea. If your child has SUCH obvious mental health issues as he did, you should simply never, EVER teach them, to the point of actual “proficiency”, how to operate a firearm.
True, firearms are not THAT complicated, but then again neither is an office stapler. Anyone with a pulse could “operate” either one of them… for a time.
But imagine never having SEEN a stapler before, never being “shown” how to re-load the staples, and you’ll see my point. You might be able to grab and employ a “loaded” stapler until its out of staples, but THEN what?
What would you do you do when it “runs dry” and that “really simple mechanism” (the one YOU’VE never seen manipulated before?) needs to be articulated…opened, reloaded, and closed again? What you do?
You would fumble. Fumble and wonder and PAUSE, taking your eyes off what you’ve been “stapling” as you now, FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, try to figure out how to manipulate the “next layer” of the mechanics of this “simple device” that’s no longer working.
My point is, someone had to SHOW Adam HOW to load magazines, which way the “bullets” face, how to depress the follower and become “comfortable and proficient” through repetition to get the “next and the next and the next” round in place, against increasing spring tension, to successfully load so many magazines, PROPERLY. How many of us have struggled showing a “normal” person, wife, girlfriend, student, how to do this correctly?
Someone ALSO showed him how fire a handgun until it was “dry”, then depress the magazine release, drop the empty mag, insert a fresh one into place, and THEN rack the slide (or depress a slide stop, not to be confuses with a de-cocking lever/safety in that Sig!) to bring it back to battery and continue firing with minimal pause. TV, toys and video games mean nothing, these are simply NOT the kind of things your average person can do “proficiently” for real, with a real weapon, without being TAUGHT. How many of us have seen “drugstore commandos” and “airsoft warriors” utterly fail and need assistance on a real firing range, when handling a real weapon, for the first time?
If I took any normal adult person with NO firearms experience, told them “here is a gun, its loaded, just point and pull the trigger till it stops going “bang” “ THEY WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO FIGURE OUT WHAT TO DO NEXT TO CONTINUE FIRING WITHOUT A SIGNIFICANT PAUSE REQUIRED AS THEY CONTEMPLATE HOW.
In this horrible case its not the gun, the capacity of any ONE magazine that was behind such a large tragedy.
It was the horrifically bad judgment of a PARENT, who TAUGHT her mentally defective son to be “good” at things she had no business being exposing him to.
The tragedy belongs to Adam.
The MAGNITUDE of the tragedy, rests with the one who showed him HOW.
This is the same situation as the Kip Kinkel shootings at Thurston High School in Eugene, Oregon. His parents bought him a Glock because he had responded well to treatment.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kinkel/kip/cron.html
That and prescription psycho-behavioral medicine….
Just read how every school shooter from Kip Kingle to Columbine to Newtown was on Ritalin, Zoloft, Etc Etc…
One manufacturer quietly added “homicidal ideation” as one of the “rare” side effects to their drug.
“Rare” in clinical terms means one in one thousand. Do the math with over 20 million on psych-meds, and you’ll see why your guns and magazines are the REAL problem wont you?
Discussing magazine capacity is fine … but that’s just an intended distarction from the real issue. The very real plan to confiscate our weapons. I say plan because our own State Department and the U.N. have been working incrementally towards doing just THAT. There has been a “step down” or “strategic plan” in place since 1961 that outlines the objectives and implementation methods necessary to achieve them. We need to find out more about where all this gun confiscation and crisis creation is coming from and why! Somebody please ask John Bolton and anyone else bold enough to go up against international support for trashing the constitution and establishing international on our soil.
THAT is the REAL issue … the “magazine” talk is irrelevant at this point because it’s too late in the game for that.
Why don’t we just make murder illegal?
What!? That’s just crazy talk!
The only ones who benefit from banning legal guns/magazines are criminals – who will ALWAYS gain access – and the leaders who want total control.
The rest of the discussion is a moot point, aside from the very fact that wherever guns have been banned murders have skyrocketed.
But the media will stick to this issue like a dog to a bone, as they do the bidding of the radical left leadership in Washington. Their interference, in the Second Amendment, is no longer tolerable and there are remedies to beat them back. Consider: http://adinakutnicki.com/2013/01/03/leftists-go-postal-over-gun-control-threatening-to-kill-legal-gun-owners-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
The conservative camp must be willing to play hard ball. Nothing less will suffice.
Fast & Furious was a scheme to push for new gun control laws. It would have worked except Brian Terry was killed with an F&F weapon and some whistleblower blew the lid off the story. The Trayvon Martin shooting was a story that was groomed, polished and coordinated with the media and all the civil rights players for a month before being released to push for more gun control. It would have worked except George Zimmerman turned out to be Hispanic (Obama needed the hispanic vote to be reelected) and the angelic 12 year old Trayvon turned out to be a drug dealing gang banger who was suspended from school. FAIL again! This Sandy Hook shooting is following the same path as the riots over Youtube video scam from the Obama administration. The Bushmaster that was supposedly used to murder 20 childrem was somehow “found” in the trunk of a car. There were no survivors, only casualties. No crime scene pictures have been released and in all the staged interviews of family members you won’t find a tissue or an actual wet tear anywhere. Now it turns out some of the “parents” interviewed were actually actors from Florida. They work for a group called CrisisActors (crisisactors.org) which is a group hired by government agencies to stage emergencies and shootings for training exercises. Strangest of all is the picture of the Parker family. In the family portrait shooting victim Emilie Parker appears in a red velvet dress. 2 days after the shooting Emilie appears, in the same dress, in 2 pictures with Obama in the Newtown photo op. Who can explain that?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSnhYMaGYuY
Please fold your conspiracy theory until it is all points and insert it someplace uncomfortable.
Rob, maybe you should do some “fact-checking” for yourself instead of soaking in what you are being fed by the lamestream media.
Everything stated by RickA is supported with facts and, whether you care to admit it or not, conclusions are a natural result of analyzing facts.
And fire can’t melt steel, right?
OK — one of the items you declare as “facts”: “there were no survivors, only victims”. Wrong — the rest of the children and the teachers got out alive. If you want to limit it to those shot, THEY WERE MOSTLY CHILDREN — smaller, less blood to lose.
And the demand for crime scene photos is disgusting; do you really need to see them? Weren’t the funerals enough?
The rest is either irrelevant (What interviews is he talking about? ALL of them? No? If one pack of journalists screwed up and interviewed actors, that doesn’t mean everyone involved was acting, just that some “journalists” are idiots.) or purposefully dependent on treating incomplete information as if it’s the truth.
Do you REALLY believe a conspiracy like “RickA” posits could be carried out without a defector?
It’s not like they have ever tried anything like this before; Fast & Furious, Trayvon Martin, Benghazi attack over a Youtube video. Maybe there are a whole bunch of 6 year old Emilie Parker look alikes roaming around Newtown in the same dress making appearences with the Parker family when comrade Obama comes to town?
As far as survivors, I was referring to those INJURED in the shooting! There were 50 people shot in the Theater shoot a few months ago. 17 were fatalities, 33 were injured. How many at Sandy Hook were INJURED and when are we going to hear from them about what they went through? You better believe that if some poor child was shot up and lying in a hospital somewhere that the media would be milking that for all it’s worth.
Your post is absolutely AMAZING!Can you even hear yourself saying, “so what if they slipped in a few actors playing the part of greiving parents?” So what? There’s nothing wrong with some phonies slipping in on a tragedy like this. And certainly nothing wrong with the President of the United States playing along and consoling with the actors.
Actually, I’m saying “So what if journalists are idiots?”
And if you’re surprised that there were no survivors among a group of first graders who were shot and didn’t get help for 20 minutes…
To build on what Benjamin Franklin once said about keeping secrets:
In an age of WikiLeaks, in which the most sensitive government secrets are routinely leaked to the newspapers, there can’t be any giant government conspiracies anymore.
Really? So far Obama and Holder have managed to keep 100,000 pages of damning documents about the Whitehouse involvement in Fast & Furious secret.
Please explain for us the legitimate law enforcement goals of F&F, and by what mechanism the program would have accomplished those goals.
We’ll wait…..
Bend over, I’ll insert it up yours
From what I could tell watching this video, the little girl posing with Obama looked to me like the sister with her hair perhaps fashioned to look like that of Emily. Yes, the dress looks the same & could possibly be Emily’s dress but sis looks big enough to wear it or perhaps she had one just like it. Lots of little kids like to dress like their sibs.
I think this evidence is shaky at best.
It could be the little sister……..except she is already IN the picture.
Rob, It appears you are still blaming the Benghazi attack on a youtube video.
Of course the left is going to pursue gun-infringememnt. There ultimate aim is to ban every weapon which the citizens could use to threaten there statist goals.
The progressives will use the deaths of every child to do so. In fact the democrats/obama types will set up gun free killing fields to insure they have opportunity’s to advance their Godforsaken agenda.
Never let a crisis go to waste. To liberals, the shootings in Newtown, Tucson, Virginia Tech, etc. are both terrible tragedies and great opportunities to promote their ideology. Gun control advances two main principles of the liberal agenda: (1) it grows the power of government and (2) it reduces individual liberty. It is not, never has been and never will be about safety or making us more secure. John Lott and others have proven that more guns means less crime but liberals don’t care.
Rational discussion with these people is impossible. When Wayne LaPierre made the common sense observation that the only thing that stops a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun, the liberals branded him a lunatic (at best).
While I don’t know if armed guards in schools is an effective, practical way to combat shootings like Newtown, I know for certain that “gun control” will take weapons from the hands of good men and women while doing little or nothing to keep weapons out of the hands of those bad men (it’s almost always men) who want to commit horrendous acts of murder.
“While I don’t know if armed guards in schools is an effective, practical way to combat shootings like Newtown . . . .”
The school that the Obama children attend seems to think so.
There, I fixed it for ya!
It’s not like the 30 round magazines are going to disappear off the face of the earth. Killers will be able to get them anywhere. 20 round magazines are actually more reliable anyway.
Speaking purely of legal shooting, i wouldn’t use the “jungle tape” method in any circumstances. It can cause problems with the ammo feed. If you need extra rounds that’s what ammo pouches are for.
Washington D.C. is full of crazy people who can’t add.
Soldiers never use that nonsense – just a good way to expose magazines to dirt and dust, which would then be fed into the weapon.
Maybe we should give the assault weapon ban a try. I mean, when crack and crystal meth were outlawed in all 50 states it did make them nearly impossible for criminals to get.
Oh, wait a minute…..
This issue overlooks a major technological problem: 3D printing. You can fabricate anything you want in various plastics. Magazines are some of the easier things to “print”.
So what would you do? Ban the publication of a blueprint or shape, or CNC file on the Internet? Register all servo and stepper motors? Register heated nozzles?
Go ahead, Mr. and Ms. Legislators. Legislate whatever you want. It only annoys the honest people. It won’t keep those who were intent upon breaking the law from doing anything they weren’t already contemplating.
You also have to ban or closely police every machine shop in the country. A magazine is little more than a metal or plastic tube with a spring at the bottom. Your average machinist could make even a decent machine pistol such a Sten pretty quickly. In places like Pakistan, AK-47′s are manufactured in cruder conditions.
Ironically, the “30-rnd” magazines used by Soldiers and Marines are rarely loaded beyond 28-rounds to save the springs. The day after a 30-rnd ban, 29-round mags will start rolling off a production line.
The British Sten and American M-3 “Greasegun” submachine guns of WWII were designed to be very cheap and easy to mass produce. They were built in vast numbers and served well in combat. Just about any machinist could make them. A typical magazine is nothing more than 3 pieces of stamped metal with a spring inside. Again, they’re cheap and easy to produce.
Hollywood movies and TV shows have every two-bit gangbanger blasting away with fully automatic weapons. Since it’s illegal to buy or sell such weapons without an expensive (and hard to obtain) federal license, all of those guns likely would’ve been smuggled into the country illegally. Any organization that can smuggle tons of illegal drugs can also manage to smuggle weapons if they want. I often wonder how uch of the Left’s gun paranoia is actually driven by the inaccurate portrayal of gun use in movies and TV shows (as an aside, anyone who holds a pistol sideways is an idiot).
Hehe….I am one of those immoral types who enjoys horror films. Was watching one last night with da wifey, as a matter of fact.
And it DID have a gangster shooting a gun sideways to get off 17 shots in just a few seconds.
Did I mention it looked like he was using a Colt Trooper revolver?
Anyway, da wifey – about midway through his string of shots – looks over at me and wonders at how many times he could shoot that gun without reloading and wondering how many times he had already shot and if anyone ever counted.
She further observed that she didn’t get a good look at it, but she thought it only held 6 rounds.
I was laughing when I gave her the final tally of rounds fired…..and I am SO proud of my Southern Belle for being so observant!
There is a goal, I will not say explicit, rather than instinctual, though for some it is probably an explicit pan, as we have seen the m.o. before–there is a responsible, educated, intelligent, but not overly politically involved middle class guy with a family out there. It’s a shrinking group, but it still rules for a while longer.
Once you get him and her convinced of the non-worthiness and demonology of some guns, of the inherent uncontrollable yahoo nature of those who would have them, then you can move onto other guns. It’s about the delegitimizing the concept of guns in general–”oh, you don’t need 30 rounds”, “oh, you don’t need to hunt, you can go to the grocery store”, “oh, you don’t need a handgun, here is a sword”, “oh, you don’t need a sword, we have the police and no one has guns anymore”, “young man, if you point your finger as a gun again your automatic suspension will be for three weeks vice two–we are all non-violent now and anyone who plays soldier is crazy.”
Some think they are just being sensible. Others have an end state, and know they can get the “just being sensible” folks there one step at a time, and don’t mind destroying the lives of six-year old boys to get there.
And then there are areas where actually, the majority of the citizens perhaps should not have guns, because too large a fraction are not worth much as citizens. Trouble is, to solve their issues with bans, we have to deny others freedoms. Sorry, no. What is needed in those area is in fact the militia, composed of the responsible citizens of those communities, acting as an adjunct to the police, and some organic free enterprise and initiative from within.
explicit pan—->>”explicit plan”
Though Pan *is* often explicit.
Of course this article misleads the audience by asking the wrong question. The better place to begin the analysis is this: why does any civilian NEED a thirty round magazine in the first place. The short answer is that there is no civilian who can explain why he or she NEEDS a thirty round magazine.
You can look at other products to see the obvious problem. Why do you need a car that can drive 180 mph? You don’t. Why do you need a 250′ yacht? You don’t. Why do you need a syringe that can inject heroin? You don’t.
There is no legal purpose served by a 30 round magazine that cannot be served as well if not better by some other means. People purchase 30 round magazine for one of three purposes: (1) to shoot at targets; (2) to kill animals; (3) to kill people.
It is not legal to kill people, so #3 provides no reason to have a 30 round magazine. And to kill animals or shoot targets, a shooter can get by quite nicely with a more reasonably sized 5 or 10 round magazine.
I still do not get the fetish for keeping 30 round magazines legal.
Good thing you here to tell us “what we need” and what is verboten. Heh.
In Switzerland, every citizen keeps his rifle and rounds at home which is provided by the state after your compulsory military service. Apparently the Swiss state does not fear its armed citizens and seems to have few problems.
And Switzerland also approved a program to legalize the use of heroin. I can see that working just fine in this country.
It used to be that way. There was less drug-related violence.
Of course, we also didn’t guarantee people who wrecked their lives on drugs free food, housing, and luxuries. So the addicts either died from the secondary effects of their addictions, forced themselves to kick the habit, or found a level of use that let them function otherwise.
So what. That program was dropped ages ago.
Why do you fear your fellow citizens and why do you want to controll others? Brown shirt, eh.
Oh look, gun ban harry also supports the discredited drug war as well. What a surprise.
Hey gun ban harry, magazines and drugs are easily manufacturable. Bans against them won’t stop ghetto slime from getting them.
Not anymore.
Ever since 2007, Swiss citizens are required to keep their ammo in government armories, not at home. They can keep the guns at home–but in case of a national emergency, they will get the ammo from a government armory.
Don’t believe me? Go ask a Swiss citizen how things have changed there in the last 5 years.
Everybody has glided right on by the point of the article and spilling out their activist fed talking points.
The gist of the article was; we can’t control people getting hold of HC magazines so whats the point in enacting any laws against them.
Using that logic, one could argue against most all, if not all, societal laws. No laws needed for anything you can’t presumably control.
Novelist Larry Correia explains why we ‘need’ 30 round, normal-capacity magazines.
http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-gun-control/
It’s the same reason that law enforcement always excludes itself from gun bans. Knowledgeable people know that you miss a lot in a fire fight. It’s different than shooting at stationary paper or metal targets that don’t shoot back. Defenders need to stop the threat. If they have more shots available before having down time changing magazines, they increase their chances of surviving.
The Secret Service officers who escort Obama’s daughters to school carry normal-capacity magazines. The security officers who guard the school Obama’s daughters attend are licensed special police officers. They also carry normal-capacity magazines.
According to you, law enforcement is the true fetishists, because they will never surrender their normal-capacity magazines. Thank you for publicly declaring yourself as being anti-cop.
It is entirely proper to have one set of rules for trained professionals and another set of rules for ordinary people. For example, we let trained physicians prescribe controlled medicines. But we do not let ordinary people walk into a drug store and purchase the same medicines on their own because they feel that they NEED that medicine. I am fine with licensed professionals, such as the Secret Service, using 30 round magazines when they protect the President or other officials.
But that does not mean some Secret Service officer, or anyone else,should have a stack of 30 round magazines sitting in his house that he can use in his spare time when he goes off on a shooting party with his buddies. The fact that trained professionals use a tool for their job does not mean that every amateur needs the same tools.
What are you intending to do, Harry, that you’re so intent on rendering the rest of us defenseless? You seem quite desperate to do so, and quite controlling.
What is at the root of your totalitarian impulse?
Harry – I disagree with every word you wrote. From drug control to different standards for state enforcers.
I don’t need big nanny state government to tell me what to put in my body or what kind of metal tubes to keep in my house.
Why not? I do. I have a whole stack of 30 roung mags issued to me that i store at my house with the rest of my issue equipment. Those same magazines work just fine in my ar-15. It seems a bit rediculous that you would make it a crime for me to use these mags in my rifle. Is it a crime for me to forget one in the car on my way to the range? Or what if i get pulled over and have my TA 50 in the trunk? Crime? It is a small metal box witha spring in it. Get over yourself.
“It is a small metal box witha spring in it. Get over yourself.”
Its just a microgram of anthrax. Get over yourself.
It is a small metal box witha spring, man made and anthrax from nature.
All kinds of things can facillitate individual or mass death just as guns yet, they are highly regulated. The talking points of the pro gun people are just as ridiculous as those who would advocate for legalizing poisonous gases and deadly bacteriums for the explicit purposes of killing.
There are simply NO needs justifications for the general citizenry to own rapid fire high capcity magazine weaponry in a civilized society with large standing, high tech militaries in place. The states, likwise, have standing militaries and a few states expand to still another lesser level of organized militia’s which cover the intent of the Second Amendment against some perceived tryannical government. Otherwise, one sure doesn’t need high tech weapons to defend themeselves and their property against others citizens of the same society.
No person(s) with any rational knowledge of the constitution is advocating that the individual right to bear arms should or can be disturbed. Those in such camp are very, very small in numbers. So, to keep diverting the discussion to that kind of point is just that — a usless diversion. Even the amendments drafters found cause to ‘regulate’ gun ownership and did! What is not ‘definitively addressed’ in the constitution is subject to regulatory enactments should it become the will of a majority of the people due to inflaming the conscience.
yep, only the nobility and their knightly retainers should defend themselves, right harry? Can’t have the serfs defending themselves.
Nice alinsky. It’s about two Americas. One for elites who get all the armed security they need. One for the 99.99% who must live in fear. Thank you for outing yourself as a lover of feudalism.
“Need” Interesting thought. Why would I need to justify anything related to an enumerated right? Turn your argument around. A law abiding person could safely any small arms that a soldier uses (including machine guns) Why? Because they are law abiding. By definition, they are no threat to any other law abiding person so there is no NEED to restrict their freedom. The vast majority of people in this country are law abiding. Almost all gun owners are, so there is no NEED to target them with laws that the evil or insane will ignore anyway.
What you really need is the ability to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals and the crazies but you need to do that without punishing the law abiding. That really cannot be done because people ‘snap’ and the evil ignore laws..
Better to simply accept that in order to allow maximum freedom we are going to have to put up with an insane person running amok now and then. We can help with better mental health diagnosis and ARMED citizens in more places so the evil and the crazy can be stopped before they finish, but the fact is they will do something, evil or crazy on occasion.
I’d much rather live in that world than a “nurf” world where the government tries to remove every possible risk and every possible freedom that goes with it.
What I don’t get is why Sidwell Friends isn’t a gun-free zone. What if one of their guards goes nuts?!?
“Why do you need a car that can drive 180 mph?”
Because you enjoy the sensation and challenge of driving at high speeds.
“Why do you need a 250′ yacht?”
Because you enjoy the sea.
“Why do you need a syringe that can inject heroin?”
So you can inject insulin.
I enjoy shooting — it’s a challenge to be accurate and quick. Larger capacity magazines mean I can spend less time loading magazines and more time shooting on the rare occasions I can get to the range.
And we’re supposed to be a nation of free people, not subjects of a tyrant. WE decide what we “need”, not some busybody.b
Don’t know why that’s anonymous… it was me…
Can you please show us where in the constitution, it states individual ‘freedoms’ shall trump societal well being, security and safety?
Of course you can’t! ALL freedoms are contingent upon responsibility which brings us back to the point and logic of article — if you can’t control something then theres no point in enacting laws is such an attempt. Think about that logic!
Sure can; “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.”
What part of “shall not be infringed” do you not understand?
Nice try Tommy!
“A WELL REGULATED Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…”
However, since the supreme strayed away from the literal language and intent of the second amemendment, it gave way for future congress’ and courts too uphold ‘regulating’ as may be needed from time to time without disturbing the original intent of the amendment. Sometime a presumed victory is not what it seems at the time — a common consequence of activist or knee-jerk rulings from the bench. Note: No constitutionalist lawyers have had the brass to challenge standing regulatory enactments to include Clinton’s ban on assualt weapons.
Moving on. the Supreme Court has now definitively held that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that weapon for TRADITIONALLY “LAWFUL” PURPOSES, such as SELF-DEFENSE WITHIN THE HOME.
So, lets address what is NOT traditionally lawful.
18 USC § 2385 – Advocating overthrow of Government. Want to discuss this one further?
18 USC Chapter 115 – TREASON, SEDITION, AND SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES. Want to discuss this one further?
So, in the world of reality, aside and apart, from the activist rhetoric, void of reality, you haven’t a leg to stand on in terms of claiming malitia rights to overthrow some government — that is left to the states ‘organized and well regulated’ malitia’s and in a few case, some states less organized but still regulated malitia’s. The most modern courts decision make this defintively clear. Likewise, the court made it definitively clear that the individuals right to arms was for ‘traditionally’ lawful puposes such as self-defense within the home and would naturally expand to sports shooting. Hmmmm! That, in and of itself, just ‘regulated’ the uses of individual gun owners outside the realm of malitia’s. Stand by for, if and when, society gets their conscience so inflamed the need for more regulation comes about.
Except that regulated doesn’t mean regulated. It means “trained”. Like a fine watch used to be regulated so that it kept time correctly.
It doesn’t mean that the government has the right to regulate the militia, in the modern sense of that word.
“Can you please show us where in the constitution, it states individual ‘freedoms’ shall trump societal well being, security and safety? Of course you can’t! ”
Oh yes we can Precious.
You do realize that the bill of rights spends most of it’s effort enumerating further restrictions to the government, not the people.
As for your emphasis on “A well regulated militia” I assume you can recognize the difference between a dependent clause and an independent clause. In short.. A well regulated militia DEPENDS on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
They really did have full command of the language back then.
You might like to think that the supreme court invented a new reading but you would be wrong. In truth, they went back to their original understanding of the law and the understanding of the lower courts before “Miller”
Frankly, they expected a common citizen to understand the language in a society with a 90%+ literacy rate. Any normal person would read “the right of the people” exactly the way it reads
You are obviously a non shooter so I will explain it to you.
Range time is expensive. One way to maximize your actual practice time is to preload a bunch of large capacity magazines. That way you can spend more time shooting and less time reloading your magazines.
My preferred carry pistol is US Army model 1911-A1 45 caliber pistol. Its standard magazine carries 7 rounds. Some models carry 8 rounds. I can fire off all 7 rounds in around 3 seconds. It takes about 2 seconds to reload. Do the math. That’s 84 rounds a minute but I am not going to hit anything. Practically speaking I can probably shoot 40-50 rounds a minute for a short period of time. The WWII M-1 Garand with its 8 round capacity had a similar maximum rate of fire. Do you what the maximum sustained rate of fire is for the dreaded AR-15? It is 15 rounds a minute which is less the practical sustained rate of fire of the M-1 (20 rounds per minute). So magazine size is largely irrelevant even in a spree shooting. They typically take place in gun free zones and cops are 10-20 minutes away.
This may come as a surprise to you but facing multiple attackers is not uncommon. Doing a tactical magazine change under pressure is no easy thing. Even if you practice it on the range under benign conditions it doesn’t mean you can do a two second change when your life is threatened. But two seconds is lifetime in a self defense situation.
I hope this has been helpful to you.
Well, that same syringe that can inject heroin also injects the insulin I need to stay alive you ignorant fool.
I don’t need a 180mph car so I didn’t buy one. Unlike you I’m not arrogant enough to declare that no one else should have one either. I’d prefer they didn’t run full bore on public streets, but on a NASCAR track Yeah Hah!
Sorry to break this to you, but it’s perfectly legal to kill people in defense of your own life or that of your loved ones.
As for that 30 round clip, if I’m awoken in the middle of the night by person or persons unknown breaking into my home I will grab a gun to defend myself. I may not have time to grab a bag of spare magazines, so the higher capacity already in the gun the better off I am.
Come to think of it, you don’t really need the computer you used to make your comment. From now on please write all your observations on parchment and submit them by post.
“From now on please write all your observations on parchment and submit them by post.”
But only if the post is carried by foot, horse, or sailing ship. The founders didn’t have cars and planes carrying their broadsides, so clearly they didn’t intend for us to either, right Harry?
This is parody, right?
Your counter-examples prove that need has nothing to do with the right to own a personal possession. The 250′ yacht is not “needed” but they exist because they are wanted by people who can afford them, that desire them, and that enjoy them responsibly. The supercar is a similar luxury that can be enjoyed on private tracks.
Also, you ignore the biggest “need” – to ensure that you are capably equipped to face criminals or tyrants. Neither group will follow the rules passed to restrain law-abiding ordinary citizens. The Second Amendment should never be read in a way that leaves good citizens under-equipped compared to criminals or oppressors.
Regarding killing people, we do have laws against homicide, and those often also include sections carving out self-defense cases; that should take care of any issues on that front.
The best way to enforce the laws against murder is to allow innocent people to defend themselves.
Show me where the word “need” appears anywhere in the Bill of Rights, let alone the Second Amendment.
What if the government were allowed to regulate speech, or religion, or the press — on the basis of “need?”
It isn’t any of my business, your business and most definitely not the government’s business to determine what people “need.” That’s up to each individual to decide.
Are you an empty nester with more bedrooms in your home than occupants? You don’t need that much housing space. You should either be forced to sell it or to house someone in that extra space.
How much vehicle do you “need?” Do you want others to make that decision for you?
How about the kinds of food you eat? You likely don’t eat as well as the busybodies think you should. Likely you eat more calories than you “need” and of the wrong stuff. Perhaps other people should define your food “needs” for you. Would you like that?
The essence of freedom is for people to make their own decisions based on their own perceptions of needs and wants. Freedom of choice should be more than just about abortion.
You use this word “freedom,” and I have no idea what you refer to when you use it. The word “freedom” does not appear at all in the original text of the US Constitution. The word “freedom” appears in the Constitution as currently Amended in the First Amendment only. The Constitution provides for an orderly system of government and with the “Bill of Rights” certain narrowly defined political rights. In some cases, such as the 4th Amendment and 5th Amendment, the Constitution provides that individuals have a right to “due process” before the government does something that affects the ability of an individual to keep and use property, or before the government confines a person to prison.
“Freedom” is usually one of those weasel words that folks use when they seek to give themselves license to carry on in anti-social or improper ways. State and local government are expected to use their police powers to regulate and organize community affairs to protect the well-being of the community. “Freedom” is usually the word used when the folks who lost an election want to resist reasonable efforts by government to maintain a bit of social order.
Not to repeat myself, but it seems a fine way to “regulate” the operation of the “militia” (since we are using 2nd Amendment speak here) to place rules on the type of magazines folks may reasonably use. Other than folks who talk about ‘want” or “convenience,” I have still seen no real defense for why amateurs sitting at home need to own this professional tool.
The Second Amendment may mention the particular value of a well regulated militia, but its operative language defining the right is that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Your view of “freedom” is inconsistent with the Founding and the nature of this nation and its ideals. The existence of the Bill of Rights, the structure of limited powers, and the supermajority process for amendment is to prevent the tyranny of the majority, and protect essential freedoms from closely-contested elections.
It’s also ironic that you present that argument about freedom in the same thread where you make a comment about how Conservatives are the real anti-freedom group… it leads one to doubt your honesty, to say the least, unless you can square those two separate comments.
Freedom is the right to make your own decisions and to live with the consequences. It’s none of your damned business what other people “need” regardless of the topic.
“…The Constitution provides for an orderly system of government and with the “Bill of Rights” certain narrowly defined political rights”
No. You have it backwards. The Constitution lays out the limits the People grant the Government. The Bill of Rights defines a set of Inalienable Rights so important that the Government should never be able to take them away for any reason.
These documents do not ‘grant’ We the People anything. They lay out what We the People ‘give’ to the Government. These documents place the limits on Government and not, as you imply, set the stage for the government granting us our liberties.
Harry:
The term regulate in the Second Amendment doesn’t mean what you think it means. Back then it meant drilled. What drill were they referring to? The Prussian Manual of Arms taught to us by Baron von Steuban during the Revolution. A citizen was well regulated when he could load and fire his musket according the steps and pace of the Prussian Manual Arms. It doesn’t mean regulating the characteristics of a firearm.
Regardless of what the constitution may or may not say, the pro gun activists stand on a single point for their defense — anarchism! That is their implied defintion of freedom!
Anarchism is what your side is into.
What we are into is government doing what it does best. Keep the civil peace, protect country, establish a legal order, manage the currency and provide true public goods.
Do you believe that “that governs best which governs least”? Or do you think that every aspect of our lives should be ruled by government? Given a choice between Anarchism and totalitarianism, which would you choose? …And yes, the Nanny State IS heading that way. Haven’t you noticed? So, what’s so bad about Anarchism?
–Leslie < Fish
For the same reason the farmers at Lexington needed professional tools.
For the same reason privately owned CANNONS were used by farmers in the Revolution. (No, not deer hunting cannons, the military kind.)
For the same reason privately owned WARSHIPS were used in the Revolution, and are AUTHORIZED FOR SUCH PRIVATE USE IN THE CONSTITUTION. (See Section 8.)
Yes, it’s quite clear that you have no idea what it means. We get that.
True. The Founding Fathers, both Federalist and Anti-Federalist, more often used its synonym “liberty”, and they used it copiously, and everyone alive at the time knew that liberty was the whole point of the entire exercise.
As everyone with any sense or understanding of history does today. Or even anyone who as bothered to read the Preamble.
Clearly, you are not one of that group.
And who are you to tell anyone what they should “need”?
Are you going to tell us how many horsepower my next pickup truck should have?
Are you going to tell us how to properly store hammers and baseball bats so that we won’t bash someone’s head with it? (Hammers and clubs were used in significantly more murders than rifles over the last decade)
Are you going to tell us what birth control methods our children should be taught about in school?
This is what the left seeks to do. I have no beef with them when they only wish to set an example. Don’t like guns? Don’t buy them. The problem is that they never stop there. They always think their way is best and therefor I must do it their way too.
These are the good intentions that the road to Hell is paved with. I would tell you to have a nice trip, but that would be redundant. You’re headed there already.
Actually it is the “Right” or “Conservatives” who tend to want to regulate the choices people make in their lives. The right opposes women having the right to choose for their own bodies. The right would like to regulate family planning and women’s pregnancy related medical choices. The Right is in favor of regulating the use of recreational drugs. The right usually is in favor of things like regulating liquor sales. The Right wants “ratings” on movies. The Right likes to regulate adult dancing. The Right likes to regulate people’s private sexual practices. The Right likes to regulate who can marry. The RIght would like to regulate college admissions and private employment decision making by prohibiting colleges and employers from using affirmative action plans to improve the opportunities available to minorities. The Right would like to limit opportunities for Mexicans to move to the United States. The Right would like to limit the opportunity for people to use Sharia law to govern private contracts. The “Right” is the group who wants to limit what you call “freedom.”
Oddly it is the “Right” which is now reluctant to allow the State to “regulate the militia” … even though the 2nd Amendment clearly indicates that the State may do so.
Harry, why do you have a problem with treating men and women like equals?
There are many different groups on the “Right.”
For example, I’m a fiscal conservative, not a social conservative. I do NOT believe it’s the Federal Government’s job to regulate personal morality. So your arguments about abortion and marriage don’t cut any ice with me.
But regardless of that, it’s clear that you guys on the Left just love to regulate the purchase of consumer goods: How big a car we can drive. How big a soft drink we can drink. Etc. You’re constantly coming up with new niggling little regulations to tell us what we can and can’t buy. Every moment of every day.
I certainly don’t approve of any of those things you mention any more than I do of someone like you coming in here demanding that their be standards imposed on people based on your (or anyone’s for that matter) notion of what those standards might be. You have to be among the most stellar examples of completely unabashed hypocrisy I have seen in quite some time.
…
theirthere…..“The right would like to regulate family planning and women’s pregnancy related medical choices.”
A complete lie.
There are people who believe that once a woman has conceived, there are TWO lives involved, and that we have an obligation to consider that life as well.
As did the Founders, who understood that morality and liberty are inseparable.
You provide a lot of ‘philosophical’ quotes. General philosophies that certainly have value but — now, how about quoting the ‘language’ of the single authority of law and governance in America — the U.S. Constitution.
Harry, you’re a turkey…women have control over their bodies and they should up until
they decide to commit murder. That’s where their control ends. Just because it takes place within their bodies doesn’t justify the right to murder the unborn.
Your conslusions are largely based upon ‘your’ conditioned ‘religious’ beliefs. The constitution prevents the government and the high court to interpret or rule upon constitutional matters in favor of one religious believe over another to include those of society who follow no particular religious beliefs. The fact that “murder’ was in one parties claim before the court, the court was constitutionally forced to rely upon the sciences inpart, for resolution of that issue. Likewise, the outlying issues of conception and life, cannot constitutionally rely on any particular religions definition(s) or belief. One must, whether or not they find it rational, understand that abortion is also a ‘natural’ function (“Involuntary fetal mortality” involves natural abortion, miscarriages and stillbirth (a fetus born dead) within the paremeters of several natural variables. This is an area that can create a very slipery slope as its well conceivable, that most if not all those variables could have been prevented and chargeable as criminal manslsughter.
Nothing is as black and white as some would like and likewise, the unintended consequences are often times not in the best interest of those who fail to see their potential — if considered at all.
First of all, what someone believes they need is not subject to government authorization. (“Why does someone need a computer with 2 terabytes of disk space? Why can’t they get along with the kinds of computers we had 10 years ago?”) We don’t ration consumer goods in this country, much to your disappointment.
Secondly, it’s certainly legal to kill a person in self-defense.
The reason is that freedom isn’t lost by sweeping edicts whose purpose is obvious to everybody, it’s lost by dozens or hundreds of regulations that are each described as benefiting the common good.
Your comment includes half a dozen examples.
Show me, please, anywhere in the Bill of Rights where there is a ‘needs based test’ before a Right can be exercised.
Why does anyone ‘need” to be free from the Police searching their person or home. If they aren’t criminals they should have nothing to hide, right?
Why does anyone ‘need’ to have unfettered access to the internet, or phones? Our Founding Fathers had no idea what the internet would be when they wrote that silly document all those years ago so how can you sit there and tell me you *need* to be able to look up anything at anytime from just about anywhere.
The legal and moral reason for keeping 30 round magazines is as obvious as the purpose of the 2nd Amendment.
It is so that the civilian populace will be able to effectively mount a military action against the government of the United States, or any of the individual states, should that government go beyond the bounds of the law and become oppressive.
It was never about hunting. It was never about personal self-defense.
It’s about maintaining a civilian ARMY, NOT under the authority of any government, that can effectively revolt against the government.
Just like…. what was the name of that town??? Oh yeah, Lexington, I think.
Go back to Britain, Redcoat.
“It’s about maintaining a civilian ARMY, NOT under the authority of any government, that can effectively revolt against the government.”
Where did you get that gem from? Seriously!
You’re not quite up to speed on the Second Amendment, supreme court decisions or a couple very important sections of USC Title 18 which reflect directly to the constitutions Article 3, Section 3.
Dude, just read the federalist papers. It’s all in there for anyone with half a brain.
Ed, I think you may have put your finger on the crux of the problem….
I read what they said about it. Seriously!
You ought to try it some time.
You left out training and/or nostalgia for us current and former military folk. No car I’ve owned in the last 25 years wasn’t capable of at least 110, some a tad faster. I’ve never driven over 90. So? Capacity isn’t an issue. I used to go to a range that charged by the hour. Having normal capacity magazines actually saved me money, because I didn’t have to pay for the time it took to pre-load them.
If you really want to save lives, ban bortion and sodomy.
The last few paragraphs define the real problem.
The reason that problems fester in our society, never are solved, never get any better, is that powerful vested interests like the status quo. They get elected, make a good living and will not permit change. This is the reason, or nonreason, that they rail for laws which every thinking person knows is useless. Do this for generations, and you get what we have, a dysfunctional society.
One crucial technique is to control the language, and the argument, by using loaded terms such as Assault Rifle, or pollution, or Saturday Night Special, or spending cuts, or racist. What exactly does each mean? Read Alice in Wonderland. It means exactly what I mean, just when I mean it.
If we can not have decent families, or treat mentally ill people safely, I suggest that we ban Tuesday Afternoon Specials. It will make some people happy, keep politicians from doing greater damage, give lawyers more work, and not harm anyone because it has absolutely no meaning. Or does it? Is this true? Do such laws lessen our trust in government? Do we get cynical after hearing outright lies?
A recent statistical analysis of murder weapons reveals that more Americans are murdered with hammers and clubs than with rifles. I open carried a 16 oz claw hammer for years without a permit, and sincerely hope the G men will not have to pry it out of my cold dead hands in the near term.
The argument against high capacity magazines is indeed a distraction. The ultimate goal of the left is to ban all guns period! I read this morning that Al Sharpton, MSNBC’s resident village idiot now wants a ban on certain types of knives. I read another article that said the FBI released last year’s report on murder and found that more people were killed by hammers and clubs than guns. Also more people were killed by fists than guns. They’ll be coming for your Louisville Sluggers next.
I believe a lot of people truly don’t understand to principles of the 2nd amendment. The 2nd amendment has absolutely nothing to do with hunting or target shooting for sport and it has everything to do with self defense. As a human being if you believe you have the right to defend your life, then you have the right as granted by the 2nd amendment to a firearm with enough fire power to do that. Like it or not, a firearm is the only reasonable way the physically weaker or outnumbered citizen has of defending their life. It’s just a fact. I don’t know how many rounds I may need but I certainly don’t want some politician telling me it should be 5 or 10. What the hell do they know. It maybe 100 rounds. Who knows??
When the Second Amendment was drafted, “well regulated militia” meant everyone — the whole people — knew how to use guns. Now we have government-owned schools that are “gun-free zones” when what they should be doing is teaching firearms safety and proficiency to everyone hoping to become a full member of the citizenry.
Actually self defense from criminals was not the point of the Second Amendment either. The whole point of the Second Amendment is to protect the people from a tyrannical oppressor, foreign or domestic.
Why do you think the liberals and the government are so hell bent on desecrating the Constitution? The Constitution is all about LIMITING the power of the government.
Actually, self-defense was also an issue. The colonists kept weapons because they had to defend against raids from savages underwritten by the French and Spanish; it was only after they were denied their rights as British citizens that the use for removing a tyrant came into the picture.
Not to mention defense against run-of-the-mill criminals.
This video clip says it all!
You Know You’re a GUN CONTROL HYPOCRITE IF….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6-FtsnIFsc&feature=player_embedded
Magazines are just boxes with springs in them. They are easily manufacturable at the home. Such a ban would be easily defeated by criminals such as David Gregory. It’s purpose is the make it harder for law-abiding serfs to defend themselves against ghetto slime.
Aside from the many issues surrounding mass murders that are well described by Mr. Preston and many others, can we just say that anything the federal government does is just about 100% certain to make a situation worse.
Even if you think that the criminals and idiots in the government are actually benevolent saints, the simple fact that they are making up laws and regulations that are supposed to apply to 300+ million people guarantees that everything they do will have, at best, major unintended consequences, and more probably, make whatever the situation is much worse. The damage that they do, every single time they act, far far exceeds the potential benefit. And then consider their motivations for whatever crazy new things they impose on the country.
First of all, there isn’t any perfect solution to any problem, no matter one as complex as lunatis periodically getting the urge to kill dozens of other people. But if you think that something needs to be done, it is certainly true that it shouldn’t be done at the federal level. That’s crazier than the lunatics who shoot people. At least at the state level, political solutions can be tried and only screw up the lives of a few million people rather than 300+ million. If we get lucky, and the brain farts of corrupt and power-mad legislators actually improve a situation, than other states can adapt them and throw away the brain farts of their own crazy legislators.
This is so obvious that only people in academia can refute it.
To put it very simply, “gun free zones” were created to accommodate mass killers by making certain no one has the ability to interfere with with their sport. The size of magazines is irrelevant–that being one of the deliberately legislated “shortcomings” of the gun free zone law. That is, killers have all the time in the world to fire all the rounds in a magazine, regardless of bullet count, and then reload by inserting another magazine. It took many minutes for cops to respond at Sandy Hook. How many magazines did this psychopath have time to go through, toss aside and replace??!! Whether 5, 10, 20 or 30 rounds it was irrelevant, wasn’t it Senator Feinstein!
If you’re defending yourself from ghetto slime, magazine size matters, 30 is better than 10. When you’re killing innocent unarmed people, magazine size doesn’t matter.
It’s as if magazine bans were designed deliberately to make it harder for law-abiding serf… (oops!) common citizens to defend themselves!
I am going to go ahead say what should have been said all along.
I actually don’t give a damn if banning normal capacity magazines WOULD save lives. I wouldn’t care if someone could PROVE it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
I’m willing to live with a body count to keep my freedom. It is really that simple. I’ll take my chances; my kids will take theirs; I will mitigate where I can. But freedom is more important than the minuscule number of lives saved.
Good for you for saying it.
Likewise, there could call for a ban on cars because of the annual 30K+ lives lost to them, but nobody calls for that (yet). Similarly for hundreds of other things. Another example, we could institutionalize mentally disturbed people. Nobody suggests it although it would probably save more lives every year than are lost to mass murderers.
The fact that only prohibitions on guns are called for tells you all you need to know about it. It isn’t about guns at all. It’s about disarming the public so the tyrants can have a free hand.
Professor Senator Daniel P. Moynahan predicted disaster for the black community due to illegitimacy not two decades ago but nearly FIVE decades ago.
Anyway, preventing these outrages is not the goal. The goal is to ban guns. It’s OK if it happens again — that will just be an opportunity to ban yet more of them.
Glad the author included the moral issue; that’s the main problem. Lack of moral restraint…and a belief that a clever Leftist lawyer can get you off…like they did OJ.
Debate magazine capacity if you like, yesterday’s PJ had an article about OWS thugs convicted of planning to blow up a bridge with C4 explosive. Nothing to do with a firearm, but here were people planning to cause perhaps hundreds of human deaths and $millions in destruction.
Most likely it’s illegal to possess C4 explosive, these domestic terrorists got it anyway and almost used it. Credit our FBI for stopping another major crime.
So much for government trying to control evil.
Steve McQueen had 3 magazines taped together for his Thompson or grease gun in a movie, maybe Hell is for Heroes.
I’d like to know why we can’t get a clear answer to the simple question of whether the Bushmaster was in the trunk of the car or used in the shootings? Seems to me that this is a salient question, particularly if the answer is that it was in the trunk. If it was in the trunk then it is ludicrous to even be discussing an assault rifle ban.
A good side issue here is that with the media politicizing everything, getting answers to basic questions like the one above are next to impossible. And if that’s the case then what the hell is the point of discussing anything whatsoever. Just implement tyranny and be done with it.
Since our Dear Tee-der’s S O S-grantee-designate will have zero need for sea transport in this age of gummint perk jets, will there be millions of HH think-alikes volunteering to remove the grantee’s yacht under the gaze of the (probably armed) guards ?
What amazes me is that there hasn’t been more comment on that really creepy photo released by the White House showing Obama receiving news of Sandy Hook.
There’s a pretty good take on it in this post:”Obama Worships Obama” at:
http://john-moloney.blogspot.com/
tdiina – Normally I wouldn’t respond back to such silly nonsense but since you made the below statment in such a matter of factly way, I will respoind this one time.
“Anarchism is what your side is into.”
I will assume that you assume, I’m of the evil democrat side — WRONG!
Next, you have this delusion that the anarchists are a part of the democrat party — WRONG AGAIN!
As a reformation strategy, the anarchists formed the Libertarian Party way back in 1971. The did so for the very same strategic reasons as the socialists, some factions of the communists and progressives who joined up with the democrat party. However, listen to this very closely! The anarchists are 180 degrees oppsite of the socialist, communist and progressive ideologies. The anarchists are the extreme radical “freedom” ideology! Can you guess which of the two conventional political parties they strategically selected to join? Yep, the GOP! I’ll leave it up to you to figure out why they chose the GOP.
Probably in attempt to make them look ‘bad’ to the average ‘low information voter.’
The features that define an assault rifle are 1) military center-fire rifle caliber; 2) magazine-fed; 3) selector for SAFETY, SEMI-AUTO, AND BURST; 4) pistol grip; 5) flash-hider; 6) bayonette lug. In some cases, the selector has two- and three-round burst features. The only difference between an assault rifle and my duty/target/self-defense AR-15 rifle is the selector. “Assault rifle” and “high-capacity” magazines (what the media incorrectly call “clips”)are just scary buzzwords to stun us sheeple into a state of disarmament. Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto allegedly told his staff thet the US mainland could not be successfully invaded because, “Behind every blade of grass there is an American with a rifle.” We Americans with rifles are ready, not so much to repel foreign enemies, but DOMESTIC ones.
So now our “police” are all decked out like storm troopers with full auto AR’s, dreaded high capacity Glock .40′s, body armor, battering rams, armored vehicles etc, etc. No more does the local “Barney” carry a simple .38 caliber revolver. Why is this? Who are they protecting themselves (yes themselves) from and why shouldn’t “we the people” be entitled to the same “protections?” Think about it, it is very troubling. They work for us. Not the other way around.
I don’t know how to handle firearms myself but when I was in Israel, the Israeli soldiers all had their magazines taped up for that very purpose. I only remember seeing that done for the Galil (their own version of the AK-47) but I do not remember seeing it done for the Galil. They told me they were very proud of it because if the Americans wanted to double their magazine capacity it would be a ten to fifteen year process and a formal piece of equipment made to exacting specification. Israeli’s take pride in their improvisations.
oops I meant I did not see it done for the M-16……which a lot of reservists carry.
“My point is, someone had to SHOW Adam HOW to load magazines, which way the “bullets” face, how to depress the follower and become “comfortable and proficient” through repetition to get the “next and the next and the next” round in place, against increasing spring tension, to successfully load so many magazines, PROPERLY. How many of us have struggled showing a “normal” person, wife, girlfriend, student, how to do this correctly?”
I fail to see why someone had to show him. He was a 20 yr. old driver: he could have driven to a remote location and taught himself through trial and error, shooting cans. He could almost as easily have clubbed or knifed his victims. He could have printed out directions from a Web search. Plus he was murdering up close and personal: he didn’t have to learn to be highly accurate.One reason most people “struggle” showing “normal” persons anything is that most use a “monkey see, monkey do,” approach. They demonstrate, rather than having the student go through the motions. Most of us learn mechanical processes much better with a hands on, with simultaenous verbal step process instruction. Besides all that, did someone teach him the wisdom of a bullet “proof” vest, or did he deduce that from watching TV?
What I always wonder is how amateurs manage to shoot without ear protection. When I was first learning I couldn’t get past jumping from the noise, until an instructor advised wearing both ear plugs and muffs.
In any case, how he learned is not terribly relevant. What is relevant is that passing more gun laws is not going to improve anything, but will make it easier for criminals to kill. And once someone murders, what does his background matter. Whose to blame? He is, as well as those who were not equipped to stop him!
Some commentatators begin with “I see no reason for…” either banning or not banning, doing or not doing, whatever, e.g. high capacity magazines, practicing Christian or whatever, saying offensive things ot compatriots, not liking other people for whatever reason….
This is precisely what the control freaks (feel your pain compassionate illiberal liberals, multiculturalists, internationalists and progressives/”democrats” say about whatever it is they do not like or want that citizens in the Constitutional Republic of the United States do or do not do.
Many who “see no reason why anyone would want to own or ….” do not appear to know, understand or care about the principles, and laws protecting those principles, on which the Federation of States aka the United States of America is based. And on which citizens made – until the control freaks were given the machinery to “drive” citizens/sheep into the pens they designed for them – the most respected and hated/envied, powerful and richest conglomerate of disparate peoples in recent memory/history. Disparate peoples FREE from overarching government or self-appointed know better control freaks. “Educated” members of a self selected, self propagating and incestuous gang of self promoters.
Those principles and Laws protecting ALL citizens in the intent of the creators of these United States of America. The Founding Fathers. Note FATHERS.
So hopeful were they that humans could and would become the best they can become if free from control freaks, then called royalty, elite, aristocracy etc they published documents to that HOPE/Dream, that intent.
Document creating the philosophical and legal double helix, the DNA, bequeathed to their progeny. That DNA to “fundamentally transform” individuals from subjects – subject to life or death, freedom or prison, at the whim of the monarch and court – to citizens. Citizens independent from any such over-arching controls. Henceforth to be known as Americans. FREE citizens. But NOT free.
The Cost of their liberty – knowing the temptations of unaccountable power over “The Lives of Others” – eternal vigilance over the men and women they elect to represent them in governance. The men and women they elect as guardians of their rights. Citizens quis custodiet ipsos custodes.
Guards, custodians tempted by the trappings of their honourable state in representation believe themselves to be princes, aristocrats, royal. And even at times Messiah.
That double helix of the Declaration of Independende AND Constitution of these United States. To the latter each and all elected represenatatives of the people in Congress/Legialature, Judiciary and Executive STILL swear/affirm oath to uphold and defend.
“I do not believe…” does not and may not in principle, law, social contract and custom force, compel any compatriot, citizen, to that same belief. Compatriots have RIGHTS to their beliefs even when others gang together to force those rights from them.
This USA IS NOT – yet? – a dictatorship by individual OR Commissariate.
ALL citizens AND rights, which includes beliefs are equal before the law and protected in the fundamental law of the land, the double helix. In the USA aka a Country of Law. NB. NOT of lawyers.
“So hopeful were they that humans could and would become the best they can become if free from control freaks, then called royalty, elite, aristocracy etc they published documents to that HOPE/Dream, that intent.”
This particular comment presents the majority of problems within your philosophical dissertation.
The founders (“fathers”), no doubt wanted for the people to be free. However, primarily free from what, is an important point you ommitted.
Without rendering yet another long dissertaion, the founder set about creating a final controlling document that in and of itself was just that — controlling.
Furthermore, that documement, called the constitution, a frameworks of controlling laws, also granted many authorities to the congress and the states, too establish even more laws.
But for irresponsible citizens exercising individual freedoms, there would be few laws. Had not a particular religious class not tried to ‘force’ their Christian views and values upon the freedoms of the society at large, we would not have had cause to have the supreme court exercise its constitutional authority to protect the ‘freedoms’ of those who may not share in the same beliefs. Again, irresponsible actions towards the rights of ‘all’ creates the needs for laws and more control. The founders left to the people and their own ability to be responsibile, their own destiny, the precept of freedom.
Great Britain/United Kingdom has and has had for some long time draconian gun control laws. That same United Kingdom whence comes that paragon of humanity and humility Piers Morgan, who believes the laws of these United States should comply to his personal attitudes. (Why is he in America?)If Americans do not recognise his godliness he’ll take his halo and go home.
Interestingly despite draconian gun laws to control homicidal lunatics and sundry other armed transgression by and towards British Subjects – note Subjects NOT citizens – Brits maintain a sniff-poo attitude towards private ownership of guns by guns and religion bigots – aka Americans – the following is a Headline in the Sundday Times.
A Broadsheet eg “quality” newspaper of that same Great Britain of draconian gun laws: “TALKING the GAMGS out of their guns”, emphasis added. A report on the success of the enterprise in “halving” the gun murder rate in ten years in one of the larger cities their Chicago equivalent, of Great Britain. Of course the numbers of murders does not bear comparison to similar in the US< Then again the population of Great Britain is less than a third of the United States.
Just as a curiosity, how many people were killed by rifles in CT in 2011? Anybody know?
If you flip me the finger you have the correct number. One. 1. The next integer up from zero. Half of two. Anybody know how many people were cut or stabbed? 18.
The Bill of Rights were written by people who had just been through a civil war against a tyrannical government. The militias weren’t controlled by this government (else why would there have been a fight). Lexington and Concord happened when the Brits decided to take the guns away from the Minutemen.
Today, I went to the beachfront with my kids.
I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She put the shell to
her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear.
She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is entirely off topic but I had to tell
someone!
you don’t even need tape or anything like that anymore to make the jungle mag. they now have a piece of plastic that holds two mags together and it only takes about one minute and ten dollars to do so and you can find these in any gun store