The Layman’s Guide to High Capacity Magazines vs Brady laws.

Curt Bolding is a 16-year police veteran with experience spanning four jurisdictions in Illinois. Still active in his chosen profession, he currently serves as both a street officer and as a police control and arrest tactics instructor.

Ladies and Gentlemen of America: One of the facets of the ongoing firearm controversy has been over the existence of high capacity magazines, sometimes known as "clips." For those of you who have acquired your knowledge of firearms from watching late-night reruns of the A-Team, the little doodad that hold the bullets and fits into our semi-automatic pistols and rifles is called a magazine, not a clip. This is for those of you who thought a magazine was something that sat on a table in your dentist’s waiting room. A clip was another device designed to hold, say, eight rounds at a time, and is often seen in firearms such as the M-1 Garand. Hopefully more of us have seen Saving Private Ryan than watch the A-Team. The thing flying out of the rifle along with the shell casings is a clip.

One of the complaints by the people who’d like to erase the Bill of Rights from the Constitution is that some magazines hold too many bullets. Fortunately, as of September 1994, this problem was alleviated by the tireless, self-righteous crusaders for gun control, and what a relief, huh? The world sure is a better place to live in now, isn’t it? Since September of 1994 there have been, at my last count, no less than 17 school shootings and almost never is the magazine capacity an issue. Does this high capacity argument actually even matter? Well, let’s see.

There have been cases in the past in which a person has needed a high number of bullets to defend him/herself. Such instances include dealing with multiple attackers and/or someone under the influence of drugs. Under such harsh survival conditions, even expert marksmen cannot count on each and every bullet even striking at attacker. PCP, commonly known as Angel Dust, does a number of things to the human body, such as disconnecting pain centers and giving the user superhuman strength. There have been many incidents of fights in which it took four or five officers to subdue one man on PCP. Likewise, they often keep fighting after being shot and taking wounds that would have had you or me dead right there. Even if the heart is destroyed, sometimes these guys keep fighting until enough blood pumps out, causing the body’s electrical system to short out and shut off. That’s why snipers often use the brain stem as a target in hostage cases; one properly placed shot there and the guy drops like a rag doll. Game over, and there’s no unfortunate body convulsions which might cause the trigger finger to spasm. Otherwise, even with the heart totally pulped, some attackers have been known to persist long enough to close with and even kill somebody bare-handed before expiring.

You wanna take this guy on with six or eight rounds? Not me. Better to have ‘em and not need ‘em than to need ‘em and not have ‘em. I’ve been to a lot of shootings in my career as a police officer and never once was the capacity of the magazine an issue. Either the thing was used properly or it wasn’t. Either it was used in self defense or it wasn’t. As long as a threat continues to exist, you keep firing. If you run into problems because you ran out of bullets, I recommend suing Sarah Brady, assuming you live through the incident.

Now let’s look at it from the other side. Creepy Dave is a disgruntled malcontent loser who’s been in and out of the joint a few times. He’s decided that it’s time to walk into a fast food restaurant and shoot the place up, which will Show Everybody. You see, when Creepy Dave was seven years old, his dad kicked his Tonka truck, and Dave’s never gotten over it. Sad, isn’t it. Now he’s on his way over to shoot up the local Burger Hut, because then Justice Will Be Served.

Creepy Dave’s got him one of them there semi-automatic pistols. He got it because he thought "semi-automatic" sounded really cool and dangerous. Plus, it looks just like the one he saw in The Matrix. Creepy Dave’s got a felony conviction on his record, so he couldn’t go to the local gun dealer and buy one, because the gun dealer has a different concept of serving justice. No problem; Creepy Dave just met up with his dope dealer, Skeevy Dick. Dave knows that Skeevy Dick can get him a gun, magazines and ammo because the vast black market that supplies such things doesn’t require background checks; only the law abiding saps have to go through that. Dave knows that if the state won’t give him a driver’s license, they sure as hell won’t give him a Firearm Owners Identification card.

Now that Dave’s figured out which way the bullets go in the magazine, he’s ready to go get him some Payback. Only one problem, though: Creepy Dave plans to get a body count of about thirty today and his magazine only holds ten rounds, thanks to the unrelenting efforts of the anti-self defense movement. But even a dimwit like Creepy Dave has the answer to this one: he’s got three full magazines. With an absolute minimum of practice, literally anyone can eject one magazine and insert another in under two seconds. Creepy Dave became proficient one afternoon while he was sitting on his ass watching Rosie O’Donnell, which comes on right after the A-Team.

There’s a huge crusade these days for "common sense gun laws." I agree wholeheartedly. Except it’s the politicians and not the guns that are most in need of common sense. Many politicians, you see, are looking out for their own by hamstringing the public in favor of helping out the crooks. Common sense says we give the law-abiding citizens every possible advantage and opportunity to defend themselves. Common sense says we educate the public in safe gun handling and storage procedures. Common sense says we prosecute gun crimes to the fullest extent and hand down the harshest sentences possible, without exception, to the criminals and not the gun owners.

But don’t take my word for it. Ask State Representative Suzanna Gratia-Hupp of Texas. In 1991 she watched while some lunatic gunned down 21 people, including her parents, in a restaurant in Killeen, Texas. Her legally owned and carried firearm was outside in her car, where the law mandated that it be kept. Don’t stop there, either. Ask the school district in Pearl, Mississippi, what they think about gun control after a courageous school official got a gun out of his car and confronted the 16-year-old who shot nine students, ending the situation, and saving countless lives in the process.

A gun is nothing but a tool and it’s only as good as the person using it. Let me spell it out real simply for you. Imagine there are two groups of monkeys and they all have sharp sticks. Now imagine that a bunch of touchy-feely prudes want to take the sticks away from one group; namely the group that you just happen to be in. They’re picking on your group because it’s too hard for them to figure out where the other group is getting their sticks. What do you do, hotshot…. what do you do? Well, I know what I’m going to do:

******************************** Yes, it's worthwhile to study debating techniques and logic so you can be a public speaker and take gun control proponents to task when they try to spew their lies, half-truths and junk science. But, don't expect the public to give your science any more credence than theirs because the public is not well-educated enough to recognize who is telling the truth. Sadly, the general public has been raised from birth to believe that government is the answer to all problems and needs. Have a problem? The government will fix it!

From now on, I plan to cut through all the crap involved in the gun haters' arguments and demand they answer just one question:

Assume some criminal is about to put a knife into your chest and I am standing nearby and I have a gun. There is no time to call the police. Do you want me to shoot the criminal, or not?

This is what the right to own and bear arms is all about, fundamentally. Is innocent life to be protected? Nothing else really matters in the debate. If we still consider it worthwhile that innocent life be protected, then government should be damn sure that people like me and you can own and carry firearms. There is never a cop around when you need one. That is a fundamental truth which the public will accepts universally, without any debate.

Let's go on the offensive. Start any discussions with the question above. Then propose that to accomplish this worthy goal, government should see that there are shooting ranges available where people can voluntarily seek training and qualify for a permit to carry. Laws should be passed which protect private citizens from civil suits when they use their firearms to protect innocent life (i.e. if they have violated no criminal laws, no civil suits should be allowed). Dr. John Lott has shown that states with permit to carry see a reduction in violent crimes and the more people that are issued permits the lower the violent crime rates go. People should therefore be encouraged to obtain firearm training, to purchase firearms and carry them as a matter of civic duty.

By Paul Vallandigham

Any person who tries to disarm a honest citizen is a criminal.

Isn’t it great to be free?
Isn’t it great to be stupid?

A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity."
-- Sigmund Freud, General Introduction to Psychoanlysis (1952)

A man walking into a 7-11, brandishing a weapon and demanding everyone lie face-down on the floor, and then robbing and/or killing said people isn't a conflict, it's a crime.

CCW is about being prepared for when things become very uncivilized. When you try your conflict-resolution skills on the guy who breaks in into your home or attacks you on the street, to get his fix, see how far conflict-resolution gets you.

Guns are often used to commit violent crimes. Fact 90% of all violent crimes in the U.S. do not involve firearms of any type. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. 1998

Self-Defense is a Basic Human Right

Myth: Stricter gun control laws could have prevented the Columbine massacre.
Fact. Harris and Klebold violated close to 20 firearms laws in obtaining weapons. Would 21 laws really have made a difference?

"There is nothing so powerful as truth." - Daniel Webster

If you don't understand weapons you don't understand fighting. If you don't understand fighting you don't understand war. If you don't understand war you don't understand history. And if you don't understand history you might as well live with your head in a sack.
~ Colonel Jeff Cooper

Post your answers here. Here's my answer:
Registered: "Does a fire set itself?"
Me: "In a world where guns kill people, SUVs run over teens, and vertical stabilizers fall off airplanes on their own? Yes."

Who gives a rats a$$ what the polls say?
IF the principle is right, true and honest, full speed ahead.

To those who say or quote the anti gunners spin. I say, the more you post this crap the more the weak minded souls who read this crap think that we are doing the wrong thing. If you think this is true then tell the truth, don't echo some weak-minded anti gun bastard. If you do you are as weak as they are.

Gun Controllers impact on American civil rights
are as deadly as the A.I.D.S. virus is to health!

* Supreme Court admits "the people" in the Second Amendment are the same "people" as in the rest of the Bill of Rights -- In U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez the Court stated that "'the people' seems to have been

"911 - Government sponsored Dial-a-Prayer."
Bob Mueller - www.OhioCCW.org - Ohioans For Concealed Carry

"There is always hope, only because its the one thing nobody
has figured out how to kill, yet...!" - Crusade's Galan

"Dialing 911 takes seconds, waiting for help can take the
rest of your life. - Oleg. MA 2000.

"Sometimes a person has to exercise personal judgement and take
the chance of being mistaken, or stop calling himself or herself
free." -POUL ANDERSON "DIAL 1911-A1 !"

Do firearms carry laws result in chaos? No. Consider the case of Florida. A citizen in the Sunshine State is almost twice as likely to be attacked by an alligator than to be assaulted by a concealed carry holder. During the first ten years that the Florida law was in effect, alligator attacks outpaced the number of crimes committed by carry holders by a 146 to 88 margin.21

When a anti gunner says: I don’t think we have all the answers
You say: I don’t think you have any of the answers.

The social cost of gun violence is $20-100 billion.
If the same methodology were used t ocalculate the social savings from private gun ownership, we would see a benefit to society of $500 Billion dollars

"The No. 1 killer of children and teens isn't drugs, smoking, suicides or gun violence.

"It's sitting in your driveway...

When they say you are a gun nut. Say you are a conservative catholic and resent the attack on your religion.
The idea is to defuse the listeners around the discussion with humor.

Leftist filmmaker Michael Moore, in the process of finishing an anti-gun documentary, made this dramatic statement that probably expresses the feelings of many at his end of the political spectrum:
"This started out as a documentary on gun violence in America, but the largest mass murder in our history was just committed -- without the use of a single gun! Not a single bullet fired! . . . I can't stop thinking about this. A thousand gun control laws would not have prevented this massacre. What am I doing.

"Good order is the foundation of all things." --Edmund Burke {}

"Delay is preferable to error." --Thomas Jefferson {}
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." --John Adams {}

"A sword never kills anybody; it's a tool in the killer's hand." --Seneca (the Younger) {}

"Where there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned." --Herbert Hoover {}

"It's a poor rule that won't work both ways." --Frederick Douglass

New Orleans police spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo in Friday night's and Saturday morning's five slayings, there's was one glaring commonality that got no mention. I'd bet that each of these murders was committed with an unlicensed and illegal firearm. It is not the honest citizen causing the problem.

There are not enough police to protect everyone. Currently, there are about 150,000 police officers on duty at any one time, per U.S Justice Department 1998. 450,000 TOTAL.

This is on-duty police. This included desk clerks, command sergeants, etc. far fewer than 150,000 cops are crusing your neighborhood. With approximately 271,933,702 people living in the U.S resulting in only ONE on-duty cop for every 1,813 citizens.

It was President John F. Kennedy who said, "Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom."

The Second Amendment was not intended to guarantee my bird hunting, or for states to maintain militias. It was, and is, as even Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe (liberal icon) acknowledges, an INDIVIDUAL RIGHT

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