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Assault Weapons Ban - Brilliant Propaganda

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antsi

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A liberal friend of mine insists that under current US law, it is legal for ordinary citizens own full-auto firearms. "Anyone can walk in to a gun store and buy a machine gun."

She will not be talked out of this: she's convinced.

I explained about Class III licenses, fully auto versus semiauto, and the National Firearms Act (PS: was that passed in '38 or '28?).

She doesn't believe a word of it. All my statements to the contrary are out-and-out lies.

To her it is gospel truth that Americans citizens can and do own machine guns legally, all because of the wicked NRA.

It appears to me, that this is a tremendous propaganda success of the anti-gun crowd. This is why they like their proposals to ban "assault weapons" so much... because they can deliberately confuse the issue.

To people like my liberal friend, show her a picture of an SAR-1 or an AR-15 and label them "assault weapons," and gee whiz, they look awfully similar to what Arnold was blazing away with in his latest movie, and gee whisz, if you can legally buy an SAR-1, then you can legally buy a machine gun. No ordinary citizen needs a machine gun, therefore she will support the ban on so-called "assault weapons."

Try telling her that though the SAR-1 and Arnold's AK are similar, they are not the same; one is full-auto and one is not, and neither is as lethal as a typical deer rifle, and she's convinced you're just an NRA-brainwashed zombie spouting nonsense.

Similarly, I took one of my medical students out to the skeet field the other day and the topic came up about living/settling in this state, and I mentioned a rabid anti-gun politician here saying "If you really like shooting, might want to reconsider... [so-and-so] won't rest until he gets that pretty shotgun away from you and melts it down."

The student said - apparently serious - "Oh, he just wants to get the assault weapons off the streets. It's because of the gang bangers. He doesn't have any problem with people like us; it isn't about shotguns." This, coming from a kid who wants to try my 357 SIG because he thinks it might be a good choice for self defense.

In some ways, this is even more frightening. Here's an intelligent kid, who is trained to weigh evidence versus opinion, who actually owns firearms and is capable of competent skeet shooting and wants to get a pistol for self-defense, and yet he's not concerned about the anti-gun movement because he believes they'll lie down and quit once they've gotten the assault weapons off the streets

Got to hand it to the anti-gunners: their focus on assault weapons is pure genius from a propaganda standpoint and it seems to be working.

How then to counter it?
 
That's pure ignorance.

The NFA was passed in 1934. It required a tax fee to "make" or transfer automatic weapons, short barreled rifles, short barreled shotguns, and any other weapon (AOW) that isn't a conventional rifle, pistol, or shotgun.

In 1968, the GCA was passed. This set up the Federal Firearms License scheme and prohibited the importation of automatic weapons for sale to non-government types, among other things.

In 1986, registration, and therefore manufacture, of new automatic weapons for non-government types was ceased. This was part of the Firearms Owners Protection Act that also prohibited the government from creating a database of gunowners. This was a raw deal.

The tactic is to villify a segment of the firearms community, separate them from the same, and persecute. It was assault weapons, it is now any "50 cal". Maybe we should start calling them "12.7s" instead.
 
< Take her to a gun shop and see if she can buy a "machine gun" >

Yeah, that was my idea.

My immediate reply on the spot was, "Let's go out and try to buy one, and see what happens."

Her reply was, "I don't touch guns."

As if this is some demonstration of moral superiority: once a person has made physical contact with a firearm, he/she is morally equivalent to a murderer.

And, therefore, by extension, I must be morally equivalent to a murderer, since I shoot skeet and high power matches and train with pistols on a regular basis. Ergo, I'm vile and ammoral, vicious and dangerous. I should be thrown in jail for what I am doing.

Yet, this same person professes to believe in "tolerance."

I've touched firearms and she has not, therefore she is morally superior. I deserve to be incarcerated, she does not. Again, this constitutes "tolerance."

In medicine, we call this "magical thinking." It's a symptom of psychatriatic disease. No matter... magical thinking is utterly rational and reasonable, so long as you're talking about firearms.

Apparently, "tolerance" means, 'You're worthy of respect to the extent that you agree with me and to the extent you behave as I prescribe."

Furthermore, physical contact with a firearm is, itself a morally objectionable act. By extension, having even the most basic knowledge of firearms amounts to occult knowledge that is inherently Evil and symptoatic of NRA brainwashing. Arguing from Ignorance - Deliberate, Wilful Ignorance - is morally superior to knowledge and experience, when it comes to firearms.

I've offered, many times, to give this person instruction in safe gun handling and take her to the range.

No, no, though: that would be Evil. Apparently, it is tantamount to offering to take her to a Black Sabbath and sacrifice babies on a blood altar. Whoops -- bad example -- she's a committed pro-choice advocate. Any education or experience, or even having the slightest idea what she's talking about, would compromise her lily-white moral purity.

Far better, then, to speak from a position of total ignorance. "I don't know anything at all about firearms, therefore I am morally superior, and I should be permitted to criminalize you and have you thrown in jail for 5, 10, 15 years."

This, it seems, is the liberal definition of "tolerance."

"I have no idea what I am talking about, but I'd like to see you slammed in prison, because I am morally superior."

- - -

My counter-proposal, I am considering:

"You don't have to actually touch the firearm in question. Just go out and find where I can legally purchase a fully automatic weapon, and whatever price they are asking for it, I will contribute that amount to your favorite anti-gun PAC."
 
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Take a few minutes and read this:

http://jpfo.org/ragingagainstselfdefense.htm

It's a pretty good look at the psychology of those afraid of firearms/self-defense.

Although in your case I think you may be dealing with someone that is so far detached from reality and has other issues that will preclude you from getting anywhere.

Some people have their reality based on so many misconceptions and falsehoods that any attempt to change any of it will lead to a house-of-cards situation. They’ll protect their positions as far as arguing that the sky is green and the grass is blue. The childish “you’re wrong†when you produce evidence to the contrary is an indication of this.
 
This just shows how far the brainwashing has come in the last 50 years. Its been completely successful in villifying guns to the mainstream. You NEVER hear of any positive benefits of guns anymore. These would include things like the recreational joys of pursuing the shooting skills, pride in owning a piece of fine craftsmanship, being able to procure organic meat from the wild, or being able to chase off the banditos that have raided your village. Nothing positive about guns ever gets said, just the killing potential. As fixated as they are on the killing issue, I would say they are the ones with the problem.
 
<Is she like, way hot or something? Why do you associate with her again?>

Interesting question.

Medically, she is a colleague I repsect very much. She makes good intelligent decions in the field where she is qualfied, educated, trained, and experienced.

Unfortuntely, she seems to feel that she it fully qualified to espouse opnions based on information she does not have the slightest clue how to evaluate, and she doesn't seem to discriminate between areas where she is qualified, versus areas where she is not only unqualifed, but, in fact, deiberately and aggressively and wilfully unqualified.

Given a medical emergency, there is nobody I rather have around to help.

Given a deicision reagarding gun rights, I cannot imagine anyone more unqualifed to form any opinion whatsoever... nor anyone more vehement and determined in holding her ill-informed views.

She is an interesting case in the effects of propaganda. Wilfully and determinedly ignorant, but still fixated in her views. Admits, and takes pride in her ignorance... "I have no idea what I'm talking about, and that makes me morally superior." Not only determined and fixated that her view are correct, but utterly unwilling to consider any evidence to the contrary.

If one our students approached her from the same standpoint, she'd ream him/her out a whole new globally-expansive *******. But, on this issue, she's convinced and she is unwilling to consider or evaluate any contrary evidence.

We are all insane. We are all murderers at heart. She is willing to sepak to me, because she has seen me exexplify resptectable ethics in person, in difficult situations.

On this one issue, though, I am utterly deluded. Despite the fact I have some first hand knowledge of what I'm talking about and she is deliberately and wilfully ignorant, she knows more about it than I do.

What can you possibly do with someone like that?

PS: yeah, she is reasonably hot but there are so many practical issues involved I would not accept an offer, even if it was on the table. Even more critical, I learned long ago it is not worth it to get in bed with crazy people no matter how hot they are. And especially if they are co-workers on my team.
 
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Medically, she is a colleague I repsect very much. She makes good intelligent decions in the field where she is qualfied, educated, trained, and experienced.
Click to expand...

Given a decision reagarding gun rights, I cannot imagine anyone more unqualified to form any opinion whatsoever... nor anyone more vehement and determined in holding her ill-informed views.
Click to expand...

I see a disconnect here. What happens when she gets into an area of medicine where she lacks training to make an intelligent decision? Or an area where the medical community has changed its mind based on new information and she likes her earlier trainng?

Her prejudices will get worse with age, not better.

Bruce
 
Have you asked her how she views the use of weapons in self-defense? Like rape? Surely, in the medical field, she is at least passingly familiar with the consequences of willing victim-hood?

If this does not make her at least waver, then she's a write-off, in terms of this discussion, as you say.
 
You have shown admirable restraint thus far, and I note in particular that you seem not to have lost respect for her as she has for you, even though she has given you ample reason.

I know your pain. Art's signature read, for a time, "It is cruel to make people think." Truth is, though, that people are capable of refusing to think if they wish. You can't make it happen.

I had a similar experience. The local liberal weasel radio talk host was yapping last year about guns. He kept insisting that Illinois gun laws were ridiculous because "anyone can walk into a gun shop and walk right out with a gun." To his credit, he didn't say "machine gun," but he's still way off. In Illinois, you'd have to apply for a FOID card, pass the checks, wait between 3 and 24 weeks for your FOID to arrive, go purchase the gun, then wait another 24 hours for a long gun, 72 for a handgun.

I simply told him that there are seven gun shops in the Springfield area and proposed a test. I would give him a list of all the gun shops in town with directions to each. If he could walk into one and walk out with a gun, I would buy the gun from him (legally) for the purchase price plus $10,000 and would testify before the Illinois legislature in favor of any gun-control bill he named.

He said I was an idiot and to stop bothering him. To this day he has never once admitted that he was wrong. To be honest, I respected him before. Now I wouldn't cross the street to spit on him if he were on fire.
 
Leftists believe their irrational fears trump the nation's civil rights. In this, as in so much else, they're rock-solid wrong.

I wouldn't trust a doctor who was that far out of touch with reality.
 
Apology for the anatomically-correct language in some of my posts here.

'Ream them a new ........ " was clearly inappropriate. My bad.

Apologies to anyone I have offended.

ANd PS to the moderator; "Ream them a new ******* is just as effecive in saying what I mean to say, than the anatomically specific terminology."

Sorry, I just got a little overheated here.

Not so much because someone diagreed with me, I can handle that. But, rather, that someone who usually insists on total specific accurracy and absolute understanding of evidence, would go suddenly psychiatrc when confronted with the facts regarding civlllian gun ownershipl

Sill, I take these two cases as alarming because they are exemplars of the fact that even people who are normally evidence-based can go ape-**** about gun rights, utterly accept all the antigun nonsense they hear, and dismiss well-informed statement of fact.

That speaks of an extemely effective progaganda effort.

I don't really give a **** about this one person. What troubles me is the fact that such an otherwise rational person can be so fully and so vehemently brainwashed.

We got to get better brainwashing than the opposition, or we're in deep ****.
 
antsi, why not offer her Don's challenge? If she's not that long out of med school, the idea of $10,000 should seem appealing.

Offer that she go into a gun shop--any gun shop of her choosing--and try to buy a full-auto assault rifle and not have to wait anymore than one week.

Don't make it a bet. If she can get one in a week, she owes you nothing. If she can't, you pay her $10,000.

Once the excitement of the "instant lottery" wears off, you may be able to explain carefully why her beliefs are unfounded.
 
Monkeyleg, in all my lengthy ramblings and venting, you may have missed this:

- - - -

"My counter-proposal, I am considering:

"You don't have to actually touch the firearm in question. Just go out and find where I can legally purchase a fully automatic weapon, and whatever price they are asking for it, I will contribute that amount to your favorite anti-gun PAC."

- - -

Here's my magical thinking: sure would be cool if she was right. I'd be happy to pay double price, even half of it going to Sarah Brady, if I could pick up an full auto I could legally own. A SIG 55X, even at their extortionate prices, would be a delightful toy and, who knows, could come in awfully handy should the SHTF.
 
show her the DOJ report from the Clinton daze that states they are only semi auto and not a significant factor in crime.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/173405.htm
Impacts of The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994-96

by Jeffrey A. Roth and Christopher S. Koper



On September 13, 1994, Title XI of the Federal Violent Crime Control and
Law Enforcement Act of 1994--known as the Crime Control Act of 1994--
took effect. Subtitle A (the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use
Protection Act) of the act banned the manufacture, transfer, and possession
of certain semiautomatic firearms designated as assault weapons and
"large capacity" ammunition magazines. The legislation required the
Attorney General to deliver to Congress within 30 months an evaluation of
the effects of the ban. To meet this requirement, the National Institute of
Justice (NIJ) funded research from October 1995 to December 1996 to
evaluate the impact of Subtitle A. This Research in Brief summarizes the
results of that evaluation.

A number of factors--including the fact that the banned weapons and
magazines were rarely used to commit murders in this country, the limited
availability of data on the weapons, other components of the Crime
Control Act of 1994, and State and local initiatives implemented at the
same time--posed challenges in discerning the effects of the ban. The ban
appears to have had clear short-term effects on the gun market, some of
which were unintended consequences: production of the banned weapons
increased before the law took effect, and prices fell afterward. This
suggests that the weapons became more available generally, but they must
have become less accessible to criminals because there was at least a
short-term decrease in criminal use of the banned weapons.

Debated in a politically charged environment, the Public Safety and
Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, as its title suggests, attempted
to balance two competing policy goals. The first was to respond to several
mass shooting incidents committed with military-style and other
semiautomatics equipped with magazines holding large amounts of
ammunition. The second consideration was to limit the impact of the ban
on recreational gun use by law-abiding owners, dealers, and
manufacturers. The ban specifically prohibited only nine narrow
categories of pistols, rifles, and shotguns (see exhibit 1). It also banned
"features test" weapons, that is, semiautomatics with multiple features
(e.g., detachable magazines, flash suppressors, folding rifle stocks, and
threaded barrels for attaching silencers) that appeared useful in military
and criminal applications but that were deemed unnecessary in shooting
sports (see exhibit 2). The law also banned revolving cylinder shotguns
(large capacity shotguns) and "large capacity magazines," defined as
ammunition-feeding devices designed to hold more than 10 rounds, far
more than a hunter or competitive shooter might reasonably need (see
exhibit 3).
 
As most "full auto" guns start easily in the $3K range, tell her to walk into a gun shop and ask for one to buy. If they will sell her one, you'll foot the bill...

"Evil NRA".. Those damn NRA'ers, why when I was in Oregon, I saw them channeling fund for the wetland preserves... Damn them conservationist bastards!
 
antsi, i used to watch Frasier, so I feel reasonably well qualified to offer a psychiatric opinion: the problem ain't guns per se, it's guns as a symbol of her set of values. She suffers from years of indoctrination in the liberal orthodoxy that masquerades as higher education in this country. In some small corner of her mind, she suspects that this indoctrination does not really fit with the "real world" she has recently encountered. However, she cannot abandon any part of her indoctrination without placing the rest of her liberal dominos at risk of tumbling down. And that is just too horrifying a prospect for her, which is why she cannot even "touch" a gun.

Bottom line: she may well come around with time, but it could easily take 10 years. It isn't just guns, it's everything she believes in.
 
I think that Pilgrim is spot on.

Medically, I wouldn't let her anywhere near me.

It sounds like she is a tragic waste, certainly she must possess great talent to learn the healing arts, but if she rejects reality outright, she is (by definition) mentally ill. Perhaps medical science will find a cure for her someday. Hope springs eternal.

In my life I've known people just as messed up in the head as she is. Educated people that are esteemed by their colleagues. After a very few nasty arguments (right after 9/11) I dumped them out of my life . I simply don't have anymore time for them or their irrationality. None!

I suspect that the sobering reality of maturity had a hand in it as well, but 9/11 and my country in crisis gave me a reason to focus.

My life is to precious to waste on the stupid, and since I don't forsee their number being reduced anytime soon, the next best thing is avoidance.
 
Some people are so deeply entrenched in irrational beliefs that nothing can or will change their minds.

I lost my first love to such darkness, and I mourn to this very day. That is, however, another long sad not gun related tale, best served up with close friends and vodka.


The relevance: there are circumstances under which some folks aren't ready for redemption, and there aint jack you can do about it.

This is starting to sound like such an occassion.
 
Airwolf,

I especially like this quote from that link you posted:

"If people carry guns, there will be murders over parking spaces and neighborhood basketball games."

Didn't we witness this a short time ago at a hockey practice. IIRC, the guy pummeled the other guy to death with his fists, not a gun. Gee, maybe we should ban our hands too.

GT
 
antsi,
After reading your posts, three cliches come to mind:

"Truth is a Perception"
"Perception IS Reality"
"Ignorance is Bliss"

Some people just flat out "Don't let facts get in their way"

I tend to put the "Ignore This Person" attitude on when dealing with such intelligent, know-it-alls. Their opinion means nada. Maybe not in all subject matters, as everyone is entitled to their opinions. But remember another old cliche, "Opinions are like anal orifices. Everyone has one and they usually stink". FWIW

Do not fret over small minded persons. Move on.

Adios
 
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