RockyMtnTactical
Member
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2006
- Messages
- 3,539
He claims to be a gun owner but calls those who own AR15's "sickos" and insinuates that they are Columbine murderers waiting to happen. Remind you of anyone?
I went ahead and emailed him, [email protected]
I went ahead and emailed him, [email protected]
http://www.freep.com/article/20081126/SPORTS10/81126087/1048/sports
The extreme gun nuts, who think the Bill of Rights is limited to the Second Amendment, are panicked that a Barack Obama administration is going to take their firearms rights away. And the ignorant idealists who see guns as the root of all evil are hoping he will.
That’s not going to happen, although Obama might throw a sop to the idealists by pushing for some changes that will have no effect on 99% of the people who own guns.
Most of the idealists don’t know what they are talking about. They don’t know anything about guns nor how hopelessly ineffective gun laws are at curbing crime and gun violence.
The phrase “assault rifle” often shows up in this newspaper, and often in the context of people demanding that that their sale be outlawed. Those stories, obviously, were edited by people who don’t know that the guns in question almost never are real assault rifles, which, by definition, can be switched to fire consecutive rounds simply by holding back the trigger, i.e., a machine gun.
But it’s nearly impossible for the average Joe to have a machine gun in this country. A law passed in 1934 requires a thorough background investigation, justification and an expensive license to own one.
The people who edit those stories fail to understand that most of what they call “assault rifles” are no more deadly than a typical semiautomatic deer rifle, and at close range, they are less deadly than the semiautomatic shotguns used by pheasant and duck hunters.
What newspapers and television shows refer to as “assault rifles” are largely what the firearms trade calls “black guns,” civilian versions of military weapons.
These pseudo-assault rifles have a Rambo look that appeals to a certain segment of gun owners, and while they may fulfill some fantasies, the shooter still has to pull the trigger each time he wants to fire, just as with semiauto hunting and target rifles and shotguns.
I don’t use one because few pseudo-assault rifles are anywhere near as accurate as my bolt-action rifles or, for that matter, a 125-year-old, single-shot, black powder buffalo gun that I got chance to shoot last summer and could make 6-inch groups at 1,000 yards.
The quasi-military guns must satisfy some strange fantasies. While the people who buy them like to tout their utility, when I visit hunting camps, I rarely see people carrying them. Most are made in calibers like the .223 that are too light to be a good deer rifle, and since more than 90% of Michigan hunters only hunt deer, they don’t have much use for a gun like that.
And if you want something for home defense, nothing beats a semiautomatic shotgun at close range.
A major issue here is perception. The Rambo guns attract sickos who are responsible for tragedies like the Columbine massacre -- loonies for whom the militaristic-looking weapons represent the power and control absent from their sad lives.
When these nuts are caught or killed after a shooting rampage, the TV cameras are on hand to show police confiscating their wicked-looking pseudo-assault rifles and scare the heck out of people who know nothing about guns.
And there is no shortage of elected officials willing to fulminate against “assault rifles” if they think it will generate votes, even though banning these weapons is an exercise in futility because they account for only a tiny fraction of U.S. gun crimes.
After seeing several recent items on national television news shows about a big boom in gun sales following Obama’s election, I checked with a half-dozen Michigan gun shops, and the people who work in them hadn’t seen it.
They said there didn’t seem to be much of what they called “fear buying.” Most of what they did see was limited to “black guns” and people who think Obama might re-institute a Clinton-era ban on semiautomatic rifles with things like collapsible stocks, flash suppressors and oversized ammunition magazines.
In one large gun shop I visited, a couple dozen people were looking at deer rifles, shotguns and black powder rifles. I didn’t see one customer pick up any of the dozen or so pseudo-assault rifles nor military surplus guns on the racks.
Despite the dire warnings we’ve been listening to for decades, we have more gun rights today than we did even 10 years ago. Any Michigan resident who isn’t a criminal or demonstrably nuts has the right to carry a concealed weapon, and a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision confirmed that the Second Amendment guarantees us an individual right to own firearms.
One big problem when talking about guns in America is that the extremists on both sides drive the debate, as is true with much of what passes for political dialog these days.
When I advocate the right of individuals to own guns and argue that pseudo-assault rifles are not a problem, I’m attacked as a right-wing militarist. And when I argue for some basic gun laws and say it doesn’t bother me if pseudo-assault rifles are banned, I’m accused of being a left-leaning dupe for the unnamed forces who want to disarm America so that the country can be taken over by the new world order.
The truth is that I have no problem with sensible gun-control laws, such as licensing. I don’t want any goofball who feels like it walking down the street with a pistol under his arm any more than I want unlicensed drivers on the streets.
But like most of the hunters I know, I don’t see why my right to own a firearm should be curtailed by laws that do nothing to prevent the crimes at which the laws were aimed.
