Posted on 02/26/2004 11:15:11 PM PST by TERMINATTOR
While National Rifle Association officials have been denying that they've been orchestrating a sellout in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) -- an NRA Director -- has been working on an ammunition ban. On the Senate floor today, he introduced, discussed, defended and tried to justify the "Craig/Frist" amendment. This amendment, said Craig, is needed "to strengthen current armor piercing ammunition law." NRA's point-man in the U.S. Senate says that this is "what the law enforcement community needs."
"We don't want to wipe out the hunting and sporting ammunition," said Craig. The "sporting purpose" test was used before -- as justification for firearm rights infringements via the 1938 Nazi Weapons Law and later copied nearly verbatim in the U.S. Gun Control Act of 1968.
"Let's send a message that armor piercing ammunition is flat off limits," said Sen. Craig.
The NRA Director went on to support strong enforcement of his proposed ammunition ban, using phrases like "prison for life."
The Second Amendment does not enumerate the right of the people to keep and bear "sporting" arms. Banning any arms, or their ammunition, is clearly off limits to Congress. A longtime Director of the National Rifle Association ought to know that. Instead, he's supporting an ammo ban -- based on the infamous Nazi "sporting purpose" text -- on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
Some might suggest that it doesn't matter what gets said on the Senate floor -- that what matters is what gets signed into law. People who believe that ought to consider the dangers here. Once a "pro gun" congressman publicly expresses support for gun control -- ammunition control is indeed gun control -- he empowers the enemy and emboldens future attempts to whittle away our rights.
The truth about civilian possession of "armor piercing ammunition" is immutable, immovable, unchanging. If government employees can deploy AP ammo against the people, denying that same ammunition to the people is directly contradictory to the meaning, purpose and intent of the Second Amendment: a balance of power.
The excuse for banning AP ammo -- "to protect law enforcement employees" -- is a dangerous road to travel. It's the same justification used to ban magazines that hold more than ten rounds. It's the same reason given to deny The People free access to machineguns. It was the same foundation upon which the Clinton/Feinstein semi-auto rifle ban was built and signed into law.
When does that excuse stop working? When the legal magazine capacity is reduced to five rounds? When all semi-auto rifles are banned? When owning a bullet-resistant vest means life imprisonment -- unless the government signs your paycheck? When all handguns are banned?
If you use "protecting law enforcement" as justification to restrict the right of the people to keep and bear arms -- if you accept that unacceptable excuse for chipping away at the Second Amendment -- then lay down your arms and go tend your garden, catch up on your reading and forget about restoring the Second Amendment. There's no end to that excuse other than total disarmament -- because even a mere single shot .22 caliber rifle manufactured before World War One can be used to injure a law enforcement officer.
Bear in mind that Sen. Craig's ammo ban amendment is being offered today, by him -- to his own bill. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (S1805) is written to protect gun manufacturers from the frivolous lawsuits being waged by those whose ultimate goal is to ban all firearms. The bill is being used as a rider for many other gun controls today and leading up to the final vote on Tuesday. Sen. Craig wants to amend his own bill -- with an ammunition ban -- under the guise of abiding his oath of office. He said so on C-SPAN, in plain English.
We've requested text of the Amendment (SA2625) from Senator Craig's office and through another Senator's office, as well. As soon as we have it, we will publish it.
That's the path we are embarked upon.
In 20 years the rising generation, raised on school locker searches etc, will see our Constitution the same way as the Ivans saw theirs...just pretty words on paper.
One more generation, and freedom will be a memory of the elderly.
Except for the "houses paid off", that pretty much describes me. I have even have my own lawyers, in the persons of my daughter and son-in-law. Son-in-law just took a Gun Law, continuing legal education class.
The pols are treading on dangerous ground. Very.
I beg your pardon; it was your response to TigersEye in your post #160.
I don't think that most of them realize just how angry a lot of Americans are because of the attempted transformation of this country into a totalitarian police state oligarchy.
The Day of reckoning isn't far off, if things continue at their current rate.
Thanks. Personally, it gives me the creeps, but I'm not sufficiently limber as to be able to stick my head in the sand and pretend that the obvious isn't... obvious. (And it seems pretty obvious to me that "the chessboard" is moving into position, so to speak.)
I can see a con-con which is denounced by broad segments of the population as something totally bogus, from a banana republic, and the results ignored.
That's a great opening chapter for CW2, BTW.
IMO a civil war has already begun, with the homosexual "marriage" thing. It's not "anarchy", as several people have termed it. Nor is it "civil disobedience", as its practitioners have presented it. It's an act of civil war. There is no other rational way to view it.
Anarchy is the absence of laws, regulations, licenses, and so forth.
Civil disobedience is when the civil population (i.e., non-government folks) refuse to obey a law that they believe is morally wrong -- and, are prepared to accept due process as a test case (i.e., they are civilized about it, and use "the system" to change the law, rather than attempt to simply "break" the system via chaos).
A civil war, on the other hand, is what you have when part of the government breaks away from the rest of the government. And that is precisely what's going on in different locations across the country vis-a-vis homosexual "marriage".
What I find chilling is that "the other side" (i.e., "the rest of the country") is essentially surrendering to these acts of civil war. The responses to date have amounted to some minor hand-wringing, and a "serious look" or two from Bush -- and, of course, the call for a Constitutional Amendment, which, as I've stated before, brings us ever closer to the possibility of a Constitutional Convention.
We live in frightening times. I can easily see things going chaotic in a major way, and very rapidly, with little warning.
And I do not believe that there is anything even approaching a critical mass of people with the wherewithal to hold things together during times of major chaos.
What that tells me is that there may be a very real possibility of our children enduring a society like that depicted in "The Postman". It's seeming less and less like far-out fiction and looking more and more like a possible/probable future history lesson.
This stuff scares me.
I like to think that I am a fairly logical, dispassionate person when it comes to stuff like evaluating situations and projecting likely outcomes. And that scares me even more, given the outcomes I keep coming up with as "likely."
I really don't want to see society come all unravelled. I know that there are some folks sitting on the edge of their seats, teeth grit, saying "Bring it on" in their best Clint Eastwood voices. Well, I'm not one of 'em. I've got a pretty good idea of what "bringing it on" will entail, and in a word, it's "chaos." And that's not anything to take lightly, let alone anything to desire.
I don't have any answers. At least not any answers that anyone in a position to act on them would consider implementing. For example, try this on for size: Suggestion to politicians: stop being such self-centered, scheming, cowardly, cravenly political animals, and force yourselves to behave as statesmen from now on, because your country depends on it.
Yeah, right.
Well, scratch that idea. And short of that fantasy, all I can come up with by way of "answer" or "advice" is stuff like "hold on to your hats, tighten your seatbelts, bumpy road ahead. Fallen rock zone next ten thousand miles."
Well, there's my two cents. The painkillers are starting to kick in again, so I'll proabably be going soon, gonna try to catch another few hours of sleep. Catch as catch can.
It had an "Israeli Safety" AKA "Condition Three". :)
(I watched part of a training video on some TV show a few years ago, they train their guys to work the slide as they draw, and then aim and fire the first round just as it's chambered. Supposedly they have a very good first-shot success rate. It looked amazingly natural to watch the guy draw and chamber at the same time -- perfectly smooth -- and then begin firing. It seemed like he was mostly holding the slide stationary and chambering via pushing the frame forward as he prepared to fire. When he had it in position, he snapped the slide shut, and went to work.)
That's the path we are embarked upon.
From Article 29 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
3. These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. (emphasis added)
There's Orwell's " bootheel, stamping on a human face forever," codified in black and white for all to read. If we're headed toward a con-con, I expect to see something similar at the end of the "New Bill of Rights" in the "New Constitution".
Kosovo, Bosnia, Lebanon, Sierra Leone to the Nth power...that could be our future if our leaders are not very wise.
And we know they're mendacious power-tripping fools.
I'm going to attempt to shop it as adult literary fiction and avoid the SF genre. The SF aspect will be as an adjunct to the plot, rather than being the plot. Kind of a civilized (and coherent :) "Slaughterhouse Five" (but with an entirely different storyline; I just used that as an example of an adult literary fiction work with an SF element that avoided the SF genre).
OTOH, one of my former editors is working on a straight SF novel (in the genre) and is pretty confident he can make a go of it. Who knows? He may succeed, and I may flop.
That's for sure. We must take our meaning where we can, for the flesh doesn't last long. Getting a work that lasts on paper, that has meaning. No matter what happens now, at least I did write what may someday be considered a novel of some importance.
Nope. I just went and checked (I knew I'd never said anything like that, not my style). My # 160 was a reply to "Dan from Michigan", and contained that quote by him that I was replying to, from his # 93. Here's his entire post 93, with the part that got misattributed to me highlighted/underlined:
To: TigersEyeI really don't like things being called a BAN unless it IS A FLAT OUT BAN. We don't need 'the boy who cried wolf' out there. This time KABA is off the mark.And I never said I liked the study. For the record, I will take that in exchange for the ban on gun lawsuits. Same with the trigger locks(unless the CPSC clause is there - that's a dealbreaker). Those are PITA's. The lawsuits can break the business.
And an ammo ban(Kennedy's), gun show ban through red tape or otherwise, or AW ban will be a dealbreaker for me.
93 posted on 02/27/2004 10:41:06 AM EST by Dan from Michigan ("You know it don't come easy, the road of the gypsy" - Iron Eagle)
Besides putting you on target quicker,by making use of the "push" in your gunhand,it's easier to work the slide for a weaker person.
Perhaps I didn't understand your post correctly but it sounds like what I've done since I was a kid,if for some reason I don't have one in the tube.
First off, the number of cops that have been killed by "armor piercing bullets" is, I'm nearly 100% certain, Z_E_R_O! Believe me, if any have been killed by them, the numbers would have been trumpeted in the media. Secondly, the first time this nonsense went around, police agencies BEGGED the media NOT to publicize it... You see, at the time, body armor for police officers wasn't really public knowledge... Of course, the media in it's frenzy to ban ammunition, went on with the stories... And the number of officers killed went up. You see, more officers were being shot in the head, since the bad guys now knew about the body armor.
As have been stated numerous times before, armor piercing ammunition isn't really a problem. Sort of like banning the plastic guns. They don't exists, but let's ban them anyway, just in case. The problem is that if the definition of an "armor piercing bullet" is one that can go through body armor, then just about every high velocity centerfire rifle ammunition would be banned. That would include my buddie's 7mm Remington Mag rifle, which he just used to bag a deer during hunting season. It would also ban my .308 rifle. And my .223.
Unfortunately, you're a big part of the problem... You've got the same attitude as some of the "shotgun sportsmen." Why do you need to hunt at all? Then there are the shotgun hunters. "Why do you need a rifle to hunt?" Or even the rifle hunters... "Why do you need a handgun?" In my case, I used to hunt with all three. But hunting has nothing to do with the Constitutional reasons for owning guns.
"If we don't hang together, we'll hang seperately."
Mark
Nope. I just went and checked (I knew I'd never said anything like that, not my style). My # 160 was a reply to "Dan from Michigan",
Again, I stand corrected, and you again have my apologies for my observations landing otherwhere than best directed, though not for the sentiment expressed; and thanks for helping note where it deserves to be delivered.
I'll only plead *real tired* having been involved with following the events ongoing in both the American congressional actions and the Haitian political change of weather for the last 20hours-plus; and a liklihood of continuing for another 20 hours or so, at least.
Fortunately, I have the able assistance of the small pink animals hopping around the room, and those curious humming insects that somehow fly out of my line of sight when I turn to look for them. Hey, there go those bells again, too....
-archy-/-
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