Steve Timmer – hey, when did he get an actual name? – writing at MNBlue MNProgressive MN MNLib whatever he rechristened Cucking Stool, exhumes an anti-Second-Amendment argument that isn’t the oldest one, but is certainly the least compelling and convincing; “if you think an “assault weapon” is OK, why not a nuclear weapon?”
No, my synopsis is actually better than Timmer’s piece, but since good form demands it, I’ll give you a quote or two:
Scalia believes the test is your right to own a weapon depends on your ability to carry it — to “bear” it, in other words. There’s no room here for consideration of a weapon’s lethality, dangerousness, or complexity.
(Except for all of those “prudent restrictions” that Scalia himself talked about in in the Heller decision. But don’t stop him. He’s on a roll)
One can imagine signs in gun shops: If you can carry it out the front door, you can own it!
In the shops are rocket-propelled grenades, bazookas, hand gernades, the aforesaid MANPADS [shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles], 50 caliber machine guns, fully-automatic rifles, etc. *
And what if Timmer’s fantasy came true?
Let’s just say that a law-abiding citizen, one who’s never stolen so much as a candy bar in his life, walks into a store that, per Timmer’s fantasy, has one of just about everything from the international arms market that doesn’t require wheels or tracks to move?
Let’s hypothetically say that that law-abiding citizen…:
- …has in his possession a document indicating that several levels of government have put on the ol’ rhetorical rubber gloves and poked and prodded his criminal background, and found that he had no crime record? No record of dangerous mental illness? That the cops and sheriff hadn’t had to pull him out of a succession of brawls, and that he didn’t have a record of picking pointless fights? And that…
- …as a result of having that documented clean history, he had the legal right to carry a concealed handgun, and had done so for, say, seven years? And that…
- …over those seven years the only time that gun had come out of his pocket for cleaning, overnight storage and practice? That in fact that citizen, who had never stolen so much as a candy bar, had not been inveigled to, say, kill someone, notwithstanding the fact that they had a gun in their pocket? That in fact, in seven years, not a single person had guessed that the citizen had a gun in his pocket, because there was no reason to guess it? This is rare thing – there are only 110,000 of them in Minnesota, after all.
- The citizen walks into the shop and does some shopping?
The citizen is a history buff who minored in German, so he buys an MG42 machine gun (think the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan) (Image NSFW, if you work around liberals). Or perhaps to commemorate a Marine ancestor he grabs an M2-2 flamethrower?
Or perhaps in a Slavophile moment he grabs an SA7 Grail man-portable anti-aircraft missile launcher – think “bazooka with a heat-seeking rocket”?
Or perhaps he has a wicked sense of irony, and decides to blow the lid off of every lefty strawman (but only figuratively, ghuk ghuk), and buys the fabled “Davy Crockett“, a (very technically) man-portable “spigot launcher” that fired a small nuclear charge, with a lethal radius of about 500 feet, to a range of about a mile and half.
Or heck, he has a Groupon deal, so he gets all four!
Question: As our citizen – who, remember, has never committed a non-traffic crime in his life, has never picked a fight, has never given society the faintest reason to doubt his stability, and has proven it by carrying a legal, permitted, loaded handgun for years and years without even a whiff of an incident – walks away carrying the four weapons he just bought and, what the heck, an M-2 .50 caliber machine gun to boot (he wants a workout), what happens?
Your choices are as follows:
- Our citizen, who has never committed a violent act in his life, is overcome by a psychic force emanating from the weapons he owns. Our hypothetical placid schlemiel, who has carried a 9mm semiautomatic
boogeymanhandgun for most of a decade without incident, is suddenly overcome by voices telling him to mow down commuters with the machine guns! To cut loose with the flamethrower at the mall! To plink at passing aircraft with the SA7! To lob nukes at the Metrodome just to watch the light show? Or… - Nothing. Same as before.
Of course, all the weapons above are illegal, and nothing the SCOTUS, or Scalia himself, has said or done, officially or not, has changed the “prudent restriction” we put on these sorts of things.
If only the SCOTUS would put “prudent restrictions” on red herring arguments.
Question to Steve Timmer: if I put one of the “MANPADS” (man-portable anti-aircraft missiles) you wrote about in your hands, showed you how to use it (if I knew) and told you to hang onto it for an hour, do you think you could restrain yourself from shooting down an airliner?
Yes? OK – why?
Because MANPADS, machine guns, flamethrowers and nuclear spigot bombs don’t actually kill people. There is nothing about them that overpowers a person and makes them need to kill.
Judging from his creepy neighborhood stalking behaviors in the past, I would vote against giving Timmer anything more lethal than a spork.
Seriously, Timmer cruised around filming his neighbors homes, adding hateful commentary all the while and then posted it on his blog (he’s since removed it). While that may not make him a homicidal maniac, it *does* make him a creepy kook.
Heck, I’d vote Democrat style and vote “no” twice.
And speaking of deranged leftists going postal re: gun control, although I gave twitter up in August and have no way of verifying it, I 100% guarantee WB Gleason is in full, raving meltdown mode right now; I seriously wouldn’t be surprised to see him on page one some day. I also wouldn’t bat an eye to learn that his wife is battened down in a safe room right now.
PREFACE FROM MITCH: Dog Gone, yet again you’ve commented without responding to my question from six months ago, patiently-unto-tiresomenessly reiterated in this space countless times.
How – specifically and legally – was Tony Cornish’s “Stand your Ground” bill “crap legislation”? Especially since you inadvertently called for enacting one of its key provisions.
Key factual errors like this indicate you really don’t know the issue at all. I’d like you to answer my question, or admit you were blowing smoke.
Given the way you and Pen huff and puff on your own blog about people who behave exactly as you are here, it’d seem to be an ethical imperative for you to address this. Thanks.
———-
The fundamental problem with this analysis is that we don’t require every one car to have a malfunction before we recall it. We don’t require every person who uses a medicine that has bad side effects to be harmed to remove it from the market or to ban it. We only require that if used as designed or used as widely used, if something is demonstrably dangerous and harmful it can be removed from public access.
It does not require that only criminals, crazy people, or careless people be affected by that removal. It only requires the demonstration that there is a problem with the thing in question.
The assumption that more guns will make us more safe has been proven false. The premise that we are more free if we have guns has been proven false.
The Untied States comprises roughly 5% of the global population. We have a grossly disproportionate number of guns, and unconscionable levels of gun violence, including by those who legally acquire those firearms without criminal records. The shooter in Connecticut used legal guns and did not have a criminal record, nor had he been found in a court of law to be dangerously mentally ill. (Most of the people who engage in mass gun violence are not mentally ill; the mentally ill are more likely to be victims than villains.)
Since 1999, we have had 31 school massacres. We nearly had two more on Friday, one in Oklahoma by a high school student, and one by an old crabby flabby white gun nut in Indiana, who threatened an elementary school. The rest of the world, the other 95% of the world has had 14 in the same interval. In just 2012, we have had a total of 16 mass shootings, so far – the year is not over. Roughyly 30,000 people a year die from guns, and many more are injured, or intimidated or coerced by them — and not all of those people are criminals. Domestic abuse with threat or injury involving firearms are dramatically higher among LEOs.
In mass shootings, two things show up over and over; not in every single instance, but in most of them: expanded capacity magazines, and assault style weapons.
Because of the problems with those two kinds of things in endangering people, it is reasonable to ban them. It is also reasonable to enact other restrictions and regulations, like making full compliance with submitting names of prohibited people to the NICS data base mandatory, not optional, and making a background check on all transactions a requirement, not just through FFLs. It also makes a lot of sense to require by law that people who own guns secure them, and to set a standard for that security, and to require insurance – both liability and comprehensive insurance to compensate people who are harmed, which would protect gun owners from the expense of liability to a point, and which if comprehensive coverage were included, could compensate them for theft or other loss.
Without a weapon, a person who wants to kill is unable to do so effectively. Without a weapon, a person who ‘needs to kill’ as you put it is not going to do so. The assumption of substitution of means has been widely debunked in suicides, and the lethality of other means has been demonstrated as widely, but most recently in the comparison of children injured by stabbing in China, versus killed in the United States.
Guns are weapons, not tools. No one has committed a school massacre with a spoon, a screwdriver, a baseball bat, or any other item commonly thought of as a tool. It takes a very specific kind of weapon, not just a ‘tool’. The tool argument suffers from the failing of false equivalency.
Last I checked, machine guns are used to kill people, as do flame throwers, etc., and they do not belong in the category of hunting equipment or self defense.
DG, who can’t be bothered to do her homework, is too slovenly to even do a proper post, instead she cuts and pastes her ramblings from her (unnamed) blog and then slinks away congratulating herself to the point of arousal for having “spoken truth to power”.
DG=balderdash
DG,
I’ll dignify your comment with a much better answer than it deserves, especially given the way that you have – by your own blog’s “standards” – abused my hospitality on this site.
The fundamental problem with this analysis is that we don’t require every one car to have a malfunction before we recall it. We don’t require every person who uses a medicine that has bad side effects to be harmed to remove it from the market or to ban it. We only require that if used as designed or used as widely used, if something is demonstrably dangerous and harmful it can be removed from public access.
That’s an extremely dishonest comparison. You’re talking about product liability. If a firearms maker builds a gun where the chamber explodes on firing? Then you have a point.
We don’t recall the car, or ban cars, because someone kills someone else in a drunk driving accident.
The assumption that more guns will make us more safe has been proven false. The premise that we are more free if we have guns has been proven false.
Really, DG?
Proven?
Show us the “proof”. And it’d better be good – not another one of you and Pen’s magic anonymous world-class-expert neighbors – because I’ve got a whooooole lot on the other side.
I’ll make this your second bit of homework, along with the Cornish thing. Please see to this.
(Who are we kidding, DG? You’re making up bullshit as you go along. You’ve got a little bunch of fever-swampies cheering you on, so you just keep going, but it’s all still crap!)
Without a weapon, a person who wants to kill is unable to do so effectively.
Right. That’s why we buy them. Because if someone is confronting us with lethal force, that’s what’s needed.
Your command of logic is breathtakingly bad.
The assumption of substitution of means has been widely debunked in suicides,
Please show us the evidence leading to this “wide debunking”. Quickly.
and the lethality of other means has been demonstrated as widely
What fantasy-land do you live in?
The two biggest mass-murders in US history, 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing, had not a gun in sight. Planes, fertilizer and diesel fuel. That’s it.
The biggest school massacre in US history? Bath, Michigan. Commercial dynamite and nails.
Dog Gone, notwithstanding the fact that you abuse my hospitality with your “crap and run” posting habits, I let you post here largely because it’s a form of comic relief bordering on intellectual Schadenfreude. Is that what you want?
A response would be in order. On this, the two questions above, and by the bye, the Cornish question.
Please see to this.
Oh, I missed a point:
The premise that we are more free if we have guns has been proven false
The SCOTUS, in Heller and McDonald, refutes you.
DG, (where’s your homework) to follow up on Mitch’s point when Steven Allen Abrams purposefully drove his car onto the playground of Southcoast Early Childhood Learning Center killing two children and injuring four other children and an adult no one thought to ban Cadillacs and indeed these dangerous weapons are roaming at large today!.
old crabby flabby white
Er, DG?
Um…
How do I put this?
Leaving aside the obvious, your constant (and I do mean constant) focus on that irrelevent bit of ad-hominem has reached caricaturish levels.
As in, maybe you need some help with something?
Just saying.
Good lord, DG, it’s like a rhetorical Russian doll. The more I read, the more lies and buggered context I find.
The Untied States comprises roughly 5% of the global population. We have a grossly disproportionate number of guns, and unconscionable levels of gun violence, including by those who legally acquire those firearms without criminal records.
And yet we have a much lower rate of people being murdered by the state than a lot of other countries that make gun-grabbers all tingly.
BTW, of your numbers? Many are suicides; tragic, but not the gun’s fault. Most of the remainder are related to the “War on Drugs”, which needs to end (and which your president is prolonging for no good reason against many states’ wishes).
And there are at least 1,000 justifiable homicides a year. Every one of them a human being who faced a lethal threat, every one of their lives at least as valuable as yours.
Why do you hate them?
Penigma’s Chihuahua (aka DG) barked”and the lethality of other means has been demonstrated as widely” …Neither of the 2 biggest mass murders in St. Paul involved a gun. Strangulation and gasoline were the weapons of choice.. Fact Check that.
Mitch asked: “Why do you hate them?”
because they have the courage that DG fundamentally lacks.
DG, didn’t I just send you to fetch me a sammich? Be advised; ignorant cows grow on trees. Stick to what you’re qualified for, or you’ll find a new mongrel at your food dish!
BTW, Mitch?
Your blog, your decision withstanding, seems to me you’ve been pretty patient with Ms. Cur. When do you prevent her from spewing more unfounded (and racist) papspew until she acknowledges the previous batch was just that?
Miss Ann wrote – “Since 1999, we have had 31 school massacres. We nearly had two more on Friday, one in Oklahoma by a high school student, and one by an old crabby flabby white gun nut in Indiana, who threatened an elementary school.”
Bad enough that we have any school shootings that you have to conflate two threats that didn’t even get out of the basement. One can’t help but notice your description of “old crabby flabby white”. I sought out his picture and while he does in fact appear to be a person or pallor from the head shot I’m looking at, I’m wondering what you see in his picture that would lead you to describe him as old, flabby and crabby. The gray beard and long hair? He doesn’t look fat.
Also, I sought out the fellow in Oklahoma you noted. Again, based on the head shot alone he appears to be a person of color and with surname of Chavez, perhaps of Latin descent. Curious that you didn’t note his skin color, physical fitness or youth. It’s like you consider the color of someones skin rather than the content of someones character. I hope that you don’t plan to take January 21, 2013 as a holiday.
PS: Miss Ann? Biology question: What do you get when you cross a woman of South Asian descent with a man who is of African descent? Well I don’t actually know but Tim Scott, is the newly appointed Senator from South Carolina.
Here is a link Miss Ann, where you join your fellow Democrats in bigoted, racist, comments regarding the appointment and the people of color who have escaped from your plantation….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/17/tim-scott-senate_n_2315830.html
Also..let us not forget that the #1 weapon used to kill children in America is a suction curette. 54,000 bloody murders commited with them last year alone…now *that* is a massacre.
Let’s ban those first.
Tim Scott is my Senator, Sef…keep an eye on him; he’s gonna kick moonbat ass and take names.
Swiftee – You have got to check out the HuffPo comments on his appointment before Arianna shuts it down. Don’t be surprised if there is a cross burning over there by the time you get there.
Said it before, I’ll say it again: The KKK has nothin’ on the Democrat party, Sef. Mongrel Cur is a perfect case in point. While babbling on insanely, she suddenly becomes coherent when spewing racist hate.
These people are really messed up…I think we should ban ’em for the safety of the country.
Holy crap…the HuffPo moonbats have gone completely bat-shit crazy over Senator Allen. Too much bald-faced racist hate to list them all, but this one gives you the flavor of whats going on over there:
“Yes. That’s called a GOP Minstrel Show.”
Wow. You’re right, Sef…Arianna had better shut this thing down if she know what’s good for her; these quotes will be surfacing for years.
On another note, a new gun store opened in Eden Prairie in the same shopping plaza where Menards is. It used to be a Hirshfields. I was in there on Thursday night and it was crowded. We have enough paint stores anyway!
Oh and Doggy Breath, Ted Kazinski, aka the Unabomber didn’t use a gun, either and was a liberat. I’ll bet that we can throw out a crap storm similar to yours and say that 99% of all criminals are also liberats and are registered DemocRATs. And, what about the two Topeka, KS police officers that we gunned down by a Hispanic man. I would bet that if they catch him, he turns out to be an illegal alien.
“Also..let us not forget that the #1 weapon used to kill children in America is a suction curette. 54,000 bloody murders commited with them last year alone…now *that* is a massacre.”
These words cannot be repeated often enough!
I actually know someone who has a “Ma Deuce” as well as several other machine guns and submachine guns. Legally owned after procurring a $200 transfer stamp. Expensive guns to purchase, and they can also be very expensive in ammo use.
I don’t know anyone who owns a 110mm Howitzer, however I do know someone that owns a full size civil war cannon that they shoot off every year at the Tax Freedom Rally at the MN Capitol grounds.
Scott; my family has friends and family members that were WWII and Korean War vets that have a virtual laundry list of enemy (mostly Japanese) weapons that they brought home, including a Japanese army Type 89 grenade discharger or knee mortar. It is broken and can’t be fired though. One of my uncle’s relatives was a Sergeant in the Wehrmacht and brought his Mauser Gewehr 98, bayonet, several uniforms and helmet to the U.S. with him after the war. We used to tease him that he never fired the rifle because it is in such great condition.
We used to tease him that he never fired the rifle because it is in such great condition.
Teasing? You should have been congratulating him!
As to the post – the only people who should own guns are the Gobernmint. Heel, you sheeple!
I guess it wasn’t my fault Dog Gone leaves drive-by droppings here. I have not visited her site at all, much less commented, but here she is again. Good to know.
The fundamental problem with Dog Gone’s “logic” is she is fixated on the tool and not the tool-wielder. If taking guns off the street is simply a numbers game, I can make a major improvement in an instant. There are 799 St. Paul police officers and 225 Ramsey County Sheriff’s deputies. Have them leave their weapons at the station. There – I just took 1,000 guns off the street. Crime in St. Paul should plummet. And it won’t cost a thing!
Dog Gone, there are two other things common to recent mass shootings: mentally ill people and defenseless civilians. Taking guns out of the equation is only one way to make a difference, there are other options.
Frankly, given this country’s experience with Prohibition on alcohol, drugs and illegal aliens, I’m not sanguine about a worthwhile gun ban. I think it’s smarter to take the mentally ill person out of the equation by ensuring he gets proper treatment so he’s no longer a danger to others. That’s the most humane idea.
Why do you oppose humane treatment for the mentally ill?
I’d just note that when the crime is burglary, the left tends to want to look at society for what needs to change and the right likes to look at the criminal and his or her means. It’s kind of interesting that in a mass-shooting that kind of flips with the right wanting to pray together as one people and the left wanting to take away the lunatic’s gun retroactively.
Boss Hogg had Nazi relatives. Angryclown could not be more surprised.
And Angryclown’s comment dashes my hopes yet again…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/24/robert-blasetti-dead-clown-macys-thanksgiving-day-parade_n_2184401.html
Seems to me Emery that you have it wrong. The Left doesn’t want to take away the Lunatic’s gun, they want to take away the law abiding gun owners gun and don’t seem truly motivated to remove the weapons of those in authority (does the EPA have to have an armed force?) as well as the criminals and the mentally ill who won’t give their weapons up without a fight. I think the Right – for our discussion identified as the NRA – have prioritized taking away the Lunatics gun by getting authorities to enforce the numerous guns laws already enacted and by educating gun owners on the proper handling and storage of their firearms all along. Focusing on the people who commit crimes (the burglars you noted above) – with mandatory sentences, prosecuting nuisance crimes, (and if you believe the Freakonomics guys, the number of abortions since ’73) etc. has reduced crime levels significantly to the point that both parties want to take credit for improvements in crime reduction.
If burglars were burglars because they were insane, Emery, I think conservatives would endorse the idea that their was a social aspect to the problem. It’s kind of a given that crazy people are not responsible for their actions.
Emery,
Seflores and Terry have it right. You have the analogy wrong.
If liberals took the same approach to burglary that they do to guns, they’d be taking away ladders and hammers and whatever else you use to get into someone else’s house from people who’d never stolen a candy bar in their lives.
I appreciate the writing and what the post intended, but it assumes that the sincere people who want to prevent such massacres all think that gun control is the way to do it.
No Emory. It assumes that leftists could care less about massacres unless there is something to be gained politically from them.
Our basis for that assumption may reasonably be taken from how minorities are used like toilet paper by the left or, more glaringly obvious, how they choose to ignore the genocide of abortion.
Well…I hardly ever comment here, for two reasons: A) I hate getting yelled at, even if it’s from a stranger with a fake name and in (e) print so I can’t even actually hear it, and B) I am the first to admit I’m not smart enough to make a sensible argument about most things. This is really just going to be a long, depressing ramble and it probably won’t get posted anyway, because as the wise woman says in that Youtube video my son plays 97 times a day, “Ain’t nobody got time for that”.
I, like everyone else in America and lots of other places, have been bummed out to the point of helpless weepiness since Friday. I know this thread isn’t about that, but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t turn every conversation into a reminder of how I’m doing (I’m a petite blond female, so my self-absorption usually works in my favor. We all have our gifts–and that’s the only one I have, so let me have it, n’kay?)
Anyway. I’m still not sure what it is I’m wanting to say here–Hmmmmphhhhhh peas and carrots peas and carrots peas and carrots bbbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrppph…OK, I think I’ve got it–
I just don’t get it. I don’t get why anyone wants an assault weapon, or the right to own one. I don’t get it the way I don’t get why anyone wanted to see (or make!) The Human Centipede. There are certain things that cause revulsion all the way down to my DNA, and those are two of them. Another is sashimi. Yuck.
I don’t think sashimi should be outlawed. Actually I don’t really care either way. I do think any more Human Centipede movies should be, though. The existence (or rather, access to) of such a thing is not only not necessary, it is damaging. I don’t know why it’s damaging, I don’t know statistics and what happens in other countries and whether or not those movies would be less horrifying if the acting had been better–I just know it is. I don’t think it, I know it. I know it with the same stubborn conviction I knew peanut butter was made from meat when I was a kid. Everyone tried to explain to me why I was wrong, but I wouldn’t have it–I was right. I knew it in my bones.
I was wrong, of course. I didn’t come to that realization because someone finally explained it in a way that made sense to me, I came to that realization by reading the ingredients on a jar of peanut butter. I realized that if it were made of meat, it would be called meat butter (which to me, is a much better name than foie gras, or liverwurst or whatever).
Where am I going with this? I’m not sure I have a point. I told you this would be rambling. If you’ve read this far, you’re a champ and I thank you for indulging me.
Back to assault weapons (Oh, I should clarify–I guess anything can be called an assault weapon, right? I was once attacked with a dried chunk of Elmer’s Glue. You’re probably imagining this happened long ago in elementary school, but it was about a year ago…a story for a different day. When I use that phrase here, I’m talking about rat-a-tat-tat machine guns or whatever fancy thing they’re called now– not single-shot hand guns and not hunting rifles) and Human Centipede movies–no one’s been able to convince me there’s no meat in the peanut butter. Maybe someday I’ll read the ingredients and it will all make sense, and I’ll understand that guns don’t kill people and lots of other bumper stickers, but so far, every time I try to get on board and listen to rational arguments (with a view to truly understanding! I swear! I don’t listen to other people’s points of view simply in order to pounce when they’re done–as I said earlier, I’m not that smart and I actually do want to know others’ thought processes) about letting everyone do/own/watch any dang thing they want to, something horrible happens that reminds me it’s not just a movie, it’s a movie about people’s mouths sewn to other peoples’ anuses and that shit ain’t right.
Yes, I know…the minute we ban Human Centipede movies, we’ll start banning Real Housewives franchises and so on and so on. So what’s the answer? How do I convince everyone what I know in my bones to be right, so they’ll make the choice to think what I think instead of forcing my choice on them with a law? I can’t. It doesn’t work. I wish it did.
The military-grade guns have got to go. That’s what I think, and what I (feel) I know. I’m low-hanging fruit indeed; if anyone wants to argue with me, especially anyone here on this thread, you’ll shred me. Another thing I know for sure. But all this despair I feel is telling me that the peanut butter has meat in it, and that’s f***** up.
Earlier Mitch wrote something about good people who have never done so much as steal a candy bar–I’ll admit something to y’all–I’ve stolen candy bars. More than once. So I hope I’m not coming across as some self-righteous arse-hole who thinks everyone who doesn’t agree with me is an immoral, ignorant idiot. I’m open to having my mind changed, for reals. It just hasn’t happened yet.
God bless us, everyone.
katiemc:
the semantic point is – every centerfire rifle/cartridge started out as military-grade
REAL assault weapons as opposed to “assault-style” weapons have one very significant difference – they are field configurable from semi-automatic to fully automatic fire. They are very heavily regulated, nearly impossible to buy and of the approximate 15,000+ (last time I checked a few years ago) people licensed to possess them roughly a third work for the entertainment industry (hollywood, etc), some few hundred are arms dealers selling to local, state & federal police and foreign militarys and the rest are private citizens, collectors and the like.
An “assault style” weapon “looks like its military cousin but operates no differently than any 30-06 semi-auto hunting rifle.
Katie, I’ve been following your FB posts on this topic and, while I don’t agree, I know where you’re coming from and that your horror is sincere and your intentions are good. I’m also pretty sure, from your other writings, that you understand that convulsive, reflexive actions to “do something” rarely turn out well.
Part of the issue here is that gun owners don’t trust the actions and intentions – or even the world-view – of those who have always wanted to ban guns and look for (and will use) any excuse to advance their cause, even at the expense of the constitutional rights of their neighbors. “Assault weapons” happens to be the rallying cry for the second amendment just as “Hate Speech” is for the first amendment (never mind that both are difficult to define except under the most subjective of terms – and those that get to define the terms get all the power).
Just as certain parties are quick to trumpet their call, other parties are quick to run to the barricades to defend their own. I suspect that most gun owners don’t want to own “assualt weapons” but see any restriction being pushed by the anti-gun groups as the camel getting its head under the tent…and they plan to blow that camel’s head off. The issue of school shootings is a mental health issue just as much, if not more, than a gun issue. Mental health reform, however, can’t be talked about lest you stigmatize a community, the vast majority of whom are no threat to anyone. Yet there are those who will readily stigmatize (and regulate, criminialize and ostracize) another group that also poses little risk to others.
KatieMC,
I couldn’t answer about peanut butter, and I have no idea what a “human centipede movie” is.
But military “Ratatatatatatat” machine guns have been illegal since 1934.
Oh, you can get ’em, if you pass a background check that starts with the rhetorical rectal probe and moves down from there, and costs $200 per gun And among that crowd, there’s been exactly one crime in the past 79 years; it was a cop.
Oh, and you can get ’em if you’re a criminal, and can pay what the dealer in illegal machine guns is asking.
Great to have you here!
Thanks, ac! Coming from a member of the new Nazi party aka DemocRATs, that worship a couple of other people that probably have Nazis in their family tree, i.e. Keith Olbermann and insane Ed Schultz, I take that as a compliment! I also hate to break it to you, but not all German soldiers were Nazis. Many were duped just like you and your fellow useful idiots have been duped by Obumbler and many were conscripts from occupied nations. There were thousands of German soldiers, including SS members, that wised up to Hitler as early as 1943, including my uncle’s relative, whom, even though it’s none of your freaking business, married into our family.
jpa; yea, like all Mausers, that is one sweet shooting rifle!
KatieMC; you make far more sense than most of the lefty moonbats that post here, i.e. Doggy. I would make one correction though, because in the truest sense, all guns could be called assault weapons. Unfortunately, as several people have already pointed out, the left wing media uses the term assault rifle for practically any rifle. I have a semi-automatic .22 caliber rifle that by their definition, an assault rifle, yet you don’t see many soldiers or SWAT team members carrying them.
katiemc; Epic post
I suspect that most gun owners don’t want to own “assualt weapons” but see any restriction being pushed by the anti-gun groups as the camel getting its head under the tent…and they plan to blow that camel’s head off.
I’ve got a couple boxes of 7.62×39 anti-camel rounds laid in for that exact purpose.
Oh, and KatieMC?
When they ban Human Centipede movies, all it’ll do is create a black market for them. The price will boom, since everyone involved in the production and distribution will have to be risking arrest, prosecution and (presumably) jail – so they get to charge the risk premium.
It’s what’s happened in every country where they’ve banned, Human Centipede movies. And ugly guns that aren’t really military, but sorta look that way, too.
I’ve got a couple boxes of 7.62×39 anti-camel rounds laid in for that exact purpose.
And similar calibers for elephants, donkeys and, especially, RINOs.
I’m still looking for a Czechoslovakian shoulder cannon, but they are very rare. In fact, they are almost mythical!
If you don’t know what a Human Centipede movie is, count yourself lucky. I fear you may have Googled it and now you know, and for that, I am truly sorry. Take it from me, that wont leave your brain anytime soon. (South Park actually did a ridiculously funny parody…)
Katiemc: yours was the most honest, heart-felt post I’ve read on the subject in a long time. Thank you. I don’t share your conclusion but we’re both people of good will, we can agree to disagree.
I inferred from your note that you don’t shoot much. I invite you to go. My wife will come so you won’t be the only woman in an all-guys setting. Indoor range, safe environment to experiment with different guns.
If you still feel the same way when we’re done, that’s your right. But give yourself a chance to decide with facts instead of fears. My treat.
And since Joe brought it up, I’d be happy to invite you and Mr. Mac to come out and bust come caps with me and my posse someday.
At a range. Naturally.