D.B. Cooper
Member
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2016
- Messages
- 4,396
So I didn't know where to ask this so I'll try here. I won't be surprised if it gets merged into somewhere else.
In thinking about the many comments here (and I don't even want to think about what's going on over at AR.com) that seem to allude to an inevitability of violence regarding the current events in Virginia, I have to ask was this an issue in 1994 with the federal Assault Weapons Ban? If not (I seem to think it was not), then what has changed? Why is the thought so prevalent now? Why wasn't this thought so prevalent when California and other states introduced gun restrictions? (I don't recall anyone ready to storm the Winter Palace over the bullet button a few years back.)
Now I was a young man in 1994, having just voted in my first election in '92, but I was politically aware, read American Rifleman and most of the other gun magazines of the time, wrote my elected officials, wrote letters to the editor, etc., and spent a lot of time at the range listening to other gun owners' rants, and, to be honest, I just don't recall anyone saying or writing anything about a violent, armed resistance to the '94 AWB.
I was aware that "militias" existed because I would see them recruiting at gun shows, but they always appeared connected to fringe movements or people, such as Timothy McVeigh or the Branch Davidians. They didn't have the air of legitimacy in the gun world at that time-at least not to my observation and recollection.
Prior to the '94 AWB, I didn't know a single person, outside DCM Service Rifle circles, who owned an AR15. I didn't know anyone who owned an AK, and I never saw either of them at the range (again, other than at a DCM match).
So I don't know what has changed in 25 years, other than now everyone and his brother owns an AR, to help turn this issue into a flash point for armed, civil insurrection.
In thinking about the many comments here (and I don't even want to think about what's going on over at AR.com) that seem to allude to an inevitability of violence regarding the current events in Virginia, I have to ask was this an issue in 1994 with the federal Assault Weapons Ban? If not (I seem to think it was not), then what has changed? Why is the thought so prevalent now? Why wasn't this thought so prevalent when California and other states introduced gun restrictions? (I don't recall anyone ready to storm the Winter Palace over the bullet button a few years back.)
Now I was a young man in 1994, having just voted in my first election in '92, but I was politically aware, read American Rifleman and most of the other gun magazines of the time, wrote my elected officials, wrote letters to the editor, etc., and spent a lot of time at the range listening to other gun owners' rants, and, to be honest, I just don't recall anyone saying or writing anything about a violent, armed resistance to the '94 AWB.
I was aware that "militias" existed because I would see them recruiting at gun shows, but they always appeared connected to fringe movements or people, such as Timothy McVeigh or the Branch Davidians. They didn't have the air of legitimacy in the gun world at that time-at least not to my observation and recollection.
Prior to the '94 AWB, I didn't know a single person, outside DCM Service Rifle circles, who owned an AR15. I didn't know anyone who owned an AK, and I never saw either of them at the range (again, other than at a DCM match).
So I don't know what has changed in 25 years, other than now everyone and his brother owns an AR, to help turn this issue into a flash point for armed, civil insurrection.