Last week, retiring Gen. Stanley McCrystal made a stir when he suggested that America ought to take a look at enacting new gun control laws. Specifically, McCrystal said he supports banning military firearms such as M4 and M16 rifles. Such weapons are already banned from civilian ownership except in very few cases, and have been since 1934. Such weapons have played no role in any of the recent shootings that have been in the national headlines.
Appearing on America’s Radio News today with Chris Salcedo, Gen. McCrystal reiterated his stance. You may listen to the full interview at the link.
“I carried an assault weapon for many years, an M4 carbine. I think it’s the best weapon of its type in the world. Shoots a 5.56 round at 3000 feet per second. When it hits human flesh, it’s devastating. And if you see it up close, you know you don’t want it around our schools, you don’t want it on our streets.”
The M4 is not on our streets, at least not legally as a fully automatic weapon. The 5.56 round is fired by many other rifles besides the M4. It is similar in size to the .223 round, and is on the smaller side of rifle rounds that are available to civilians. The devastation an M4 brings upon its target is as much a result of its fully automatic fire rate as from its ammunition.
Gen. McCrystal continued: “I’m not an expert on gun control or the Second Amendment, but I am an expert on that kind of weapon. And I’m an expert on how I fee about my family. So what I want is a national conversation, a mature national conversation, that figures out how we protect innocent people from that kind of weaponry.”
How mature can that conversation be, when so many of its most prominent participants know nothing about current gun laws and refuse to learn anything about them? They admit that they know nothing, as McCrystal does here, yet opine anyway.
Host Chris Salcedo pointed out that with our porous border and lack of ability to control the illegal drug trade, only criminals will have firepower if civilians cannot legally own it.
“Think about the children of Newtown,” McCrystal said in reply. “That is not a philosophical argument. That’s a bloody reality, and that’s the kind of thing that I want us to talk about.”
The Second Amendment is also not a philosophical argument. It is a constitutional guarantee.
The weapons that Gen. McCrystal consistently brings up are already banned. They played no role in the recent shootings. They are not among the most powerful available, no matter what the weapons look like. They factor in fewer murders per year than hammers do. Proper incarceration of murders would have saved the lives of the two firefighters murdered in New York State, by a felon who reportedly used a straw purchaser to obtain his weapons. An armed guard or faculty member would have had the chance to save all those children at Sandy Hook from an armed madman. “Gun Free Zone” signs may as well be painted to look like targets, for all the good they do in protecting innocent life.
Do the facts have any place in this “mature” discussion, General?
He’s helping to make things McCrystal clear…
Yeah, this jerk is trying to make a run for politics.
Warning–I think I’ve seen enough to say that there is going to be an attempt to ignore the Tea Party and brute force it into extinction. You can see it in Christie, this guy–to blame it for the RINO failures.
This guy needs to be crushed. Hard.
He has been a ward of the state his entire adult life – of course he wants that to continue.
Being in the military, under the Geneva Convention (even if the US never ratified it) he hasn’t seen what soft point and hollow point ammo will do to human flesh compared to “hardball” military ammo. A .22LR with HP ammo can do a number on you, too.
It’s amazing how stupid people can be when they start asskissing!.
Imagine someone constantly offering his opinion about traffic safety while insisting that a 2013 Ford Mustang could go 400 MPH and DWI was legal. Or blathering on about immigration and insising that if we don’t strengthen our border with Luxembourg pretty soon we’ll all be speaking German. Or someone who didn’t think abortion was worth debating because babies are brought by the stork.
Any of those people would be justifiably ridiculed and ignored, by BOTH sides. For some reason it’s only while debating the Second Amendment that people are allowed to argue from a place of such deep, impenetrable ignorance.
If people can’t kill each other with weapons that are banned, they’ll kill each other with weapons that aren’t. Lots of things qualify as weapons.
Eventually they would have to ban the human brain — but not before attempting to ban the opposable thumb.
So he only wants to talk about the bloody shirts of the victims of psychopaths?
OK, then why not include the blood America’s young men bled out in battle to set us free from killer tyrants who said we have no rights? What about draftees who spilled blood fighting Communism to preserve those secured rights? Does he think they sacrificed themselves only so that he and other generals like Colin Powell would be free to spout mature deceptive propaganda?
McCrystal clearly isn’t an expert in a few other topics. If subjects like American and military history elude him at this moment though, he’s either been an empty uniform or he’s playing a role. What or whom does he serve if not the Constitution? “The Children?” Of course not.
Dakota Meyer has something to say about McCrystal’s brand of leadership. Some of his soldiers might comment, had they lived through it.
In the Soviet Union, they were honest enough to give the politicians their own ranks, lest they be confused with leaders.
I don’t know what McCrystal did to make flag rank but it is obvious that since he did the interview that killed his career, his judgement has continued to decline. If he wanted to be honest, or had any real knowledge, he’d have pointed out that injuries from rifle rounds are devastating, compared to handgun wounds. All rifles.
BTW, we do have M4s on our streets. They are in trunks of FBI and state bureau of investigation agents’ cars all over America.
Old soldiers never die, they just run for President and get stomped in the primaries.
Perfumed Prince. Whatever he may have been, that General Staff Officer School Lobotomy really took. That’s when good officers have all their best qualities removed and replace with pure careerism, dragging them down to natural level of most of the big brass. Simply put, they’re scheming to use their career in the military either to land that plush job with a contractor or head into politics or sometimes both.
Wonder why our wars often turn out badly? There it is. High officers more concerned with their careers after the military and tailor their actions while still in it to that end. Nothing really new about it though. Many nations suffer from this disease and many have fallen because of it.
“already banned?” Sorry but not true. Full auto weapons are privately owned in the US today – best estimates that there are over 80,000 legally owned full auto weapons in the US. http://atfmachinegun.com/ And I’d add, they SHOULD be legal to own. The missions of the militia defined in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution include repelling invasion. If “shall not be infringed” means anything, it means that we the citizens get to own pretty much what our employees use in doing the same mission.
We’ve been through this stuff here. Go try and buy an M4 at the local gun store.
Try being factual. Not hard to do. And no you can’t buy one at your local gun store. Don’t overgeneralize. The fact is that there are SOME full-auto weapons legally owned in the US. My simple point is that the Wild West hasn’t come back just because some privately owned full-auto guns are out there. Fact is, I cannot see how the provision of FOPA that forbade sale of machine guns manufactured after 1986 (the so-called Hughes Amendment) is Constitional.
You can only by an automatic weapon, after the appropriate backrounds checks, that was manufactured before 1986. That excludes the M-4 which is is a post 1986 weapon. So you cannot legally own a select fire M-4.
Given that this putz, this toady is typical of today’s army, and taking into account all the scandals in the Air Force and other services of late … I am all for downsizing the military. Let the rest of the world fend for itself for a while. See how they like it. We are in no danger of being invaded ever on this continent and the world can just police itself. As far as projecting power concerning our own national interests that can be done using high tech weaponry at much less cost than maintaining large ‘boots on the ground’ forces. Let’s put a few thousand military officers out to pasture. They deserve it.
I wouldn’t normally say this about a member of the military, but since he’s a general, I feel better about it. This guy’s an idiot.
“Gen. McCrystal continued: I’m not an expert on gun control or the Second Amendment, but I am an expert on that kind of weapon. And I’m an expert on how I feel about my family. So what I want is a national conversation, a mature national conversation, that figures out how we protect innocent people from that kind of weaponry.”
And that comment gives license to trash a person, much less a general who has devoted his entire adult life to our national military and defense? I guess he has not any first amendment rights as a career military man unless he be trashed by those who disagree with his message. I note he did preface debate by ‘mature’ american citizens for which he obviously knew some would not be. This is not the America I grew up in!
No one here is trashing him. But having called for a mature conversation, he should come to the table with knowledge of the current state of gun laws. Is that too much to ask of our national leaders now?
Brian! With all due respect the General has never been a ‘national leader’ as you infer. He was one of many military generals in only one military branch of service ‘under’ a vast political and military civilian structure and was not a ‘direct’ policy maker even for ‘combat’ operations for which he commanded a part of in a single theater. Likewise he didn’t pretende to be an expert on the subject but rather stated his ‘personal’ opinions for a mature national debate. Isn’t that you on nearly every academic and professional discipline for which you write? Or are you an expert on every subject you write about inferring your personal opinions?
“this jerk”
“He has been a ward of the state his entire adult life”
“It’s amazing how stupid people can be when they start asskissing”
“this putz”
“This guy’s an idiot”
I’d hate to seek what you define as trashing somebody! If not ‘trashing’ then maybe very inmature and disrespectful?
“Immature” and “disrespectful” are excellent words to describe McCrystal.
Once again McCrystal is mouthing Army propaganda. The M-4 is not a particularly “devestating” weapon. Springfield Armory makes a carbine version of the M-14/M-1A called the SOCOM 16. It the same 16″ barrel as an M-4 but fires the twice as powerful 308 Winchester cartridge. As a matter of comparison you can hide behind a stout car door and be immune from 5.56 fire at 100yards. A 308 wlll go through both car doors and kill you on the other side.