Posted on 09/13/2004 5:29:12 AM PDT by craig61a
Over the last decade, buying an assault weapon hasn't been as easy as it once was. For that you can credit Congress, which decided in 1994 that rapid-fire killing machines have no proper place in American life. Apparently that conclusion has been renounced, for assault weapons are even now rushing back into gun shops. Today marks the expiration of the ban -- and the coming of a great shopping opportunity for gunsters. Never mind that most Americans strongly backed the ban. Somehow, the prohibition was allowed to wither without regard for the public will -- and despite past support from major-party presidential candidates. Last March, Sen. John Kerry voted for renewing the ban, which cleared the Senate but died in the House.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
And exactly how do you propose to make THAT happen? Criminals have guns, have always had guns, and will smuggle or manufacture what they need. They ignore not only the 20,000 gun laws on the books, but also laws against robbery, burglary, and murder - that is why they are called "Criminals".
Your "modest proposal" will mean that only the criminals have guns when trouble starts - and the police will be 10 minutes away if you're lucky (and if the criminals haven't cut your phone lines). Ten minutes is a long time when a disarmed victim is facing a robber, rapist, or murderer.
My father shot a burglar in our home many years ago (the perp wasn't seriously injured, but he was badly frightened.) It took the police OVER AN HOUR to respond to my mother's frantic call for help. In your scenario, my father, my mother, my eight year old sister and I would have been at the thug's mercy.
No thanks, I don't like your world. And neither will you if you think about it for a minute instead of responding emotionally to the scare tactics of the gun-grabbers.
I didn't follow the incident closely, but my guess from the pictures I saw is that most died as a result of a gasoline fire ignited by explosives. Firearms are not the most effective weapon for mass murder.
The defensive tactic which will work, and the only one that will work, is immediate counter-attack when the threat is recognized. The Israelis know this.
How do the Israelis know this? Because six million or so Jews allowed themselves to be gathered up, grouped behind barbed wire, gassed to death clutching their children, and bulldozed into mass graves; mostly without a defensive shot fired.
The Russian teachers owed it to their students to be armed and ready to repel an attack immediately. It is the tactic which prevented Flight 93 from being used as a weapon. If Todd Beamer and friends had realized the nature of the attack, they would have rushed the box-cutter armed fanatics earlier and perhaps only a few lives would have been lost.
Schools in the US are sitting ducks. They are one of the liberals' defense-free zones and the results here can be almost indistinguishable from the results in Russia.
Please tell me what you think prevents the attack in Russia from taking place here. And please tell me what we should do about such attacks. Anti-gunners are not going to like the answer.
Wonder no more.
According to the federal gummint, the answer is "Not hardly ever."
The original "Ban" legislation mandated a federal study to determine the effects on crime, if any, of the ban.
The conclusion was that no relationship could be established, in part because the numbers of crimes committed with weapons of the sort banned were statistically insignificant, and also in part because functionally identical weapons with only cosmetic differences were NOT banned.
According to that same Justice Dept study, there may have been one small unintended consequence of the Ban: making new manufacture of the firearms illegal made the existing ones highliy collectible, driving up the prices and making it likely that a criminal would sell his at a profit rather than using it in crime and risking losing it!
"Last March, Sen. John Kerry voted for renewing the ban, which cleared the Senate but died in the House."
I believe this claim by the article is false. It passeed on an ammendment to the lawsuit protection bill in the senate which the senate then defeated. So it did not "clear" the senate.
I would say most of those kids were killed when the bombs started going off.
The part you are forgetting is that the townspeople came rushing to the scene with THEIR guns and laid down covering fire for the escaping kids.
Of course, if the Democrats had their way the kids would have just been killed in order not to offend the terrorists by pointing guns at them.
True. Which is exactly why we have to stay true and stick together on this.
I have over 50 firearms and can say that his car has killed more people than all of mine put together in my hands. Must say in my hands due to the fact I collect WW1/WW2 military rifles.
For one thing the majority of people did not support the reauthorization of the ban, for another there is no ban on earth that will stop a criminal from getting any gun he wants, and finally criminalizing decent citizens and making them take the heat for the criminals solves absolutely nothing. Have we learned NOTHING from "prohibition" or the supposed banning of drugs, drunk driving, rape, murder or any other common practice. Hello! Bans do not work! It wall illegal for the two scumbags to go to high school and kill people, but the only people who could not fight back were the ones obeying the bans, folks!!
bet your underarms are smoking after that post
like it really matters what you think.
False. An assault rifle is defined by the military as being a select-fire weapon, but the term "assault weapon" was coined by the anti-gunners and has no precise definition. Hell, my baseball bat can be termed an "assault weapon" by anybody who chooses to.
I say let's trust the NAZIs when it comes to their own word.
BTW, their involvement in the nomenclature is sufficient reason to reject using the term "assault weapon" out of hand.
Terrorists can always obtain guns. If all else fails they can just look up a drug dealer and buy his. He'll sell if the price is right, and his suppliers will just include another one in the next cocaine shipment
What's needed is not to try to make it harder for terrorists to obtain guns. The real objective should be to exclude terrorists and their support networks from the US. We need to stop admitting Muslims
The actual term was "Sturmgewehr" which wikipedia translates into "assault rifle" but literally translates as "storm rifle".
It's use is in the final "storming" of a position, where you have to have the ability to fire rapid suppressing fire as you charge the position. In the US military, this phase is called the "assault".
An "assault rifle" is a rifle used in the assault in the military (as opposed to legal) sense of the term. An "assault weapon" is whatever Sarah Brady says it is.assault
(DOD) 1. The climax of an attack, closing with the enemy in hand-to-hand fighting. 2. In an amphibious operation, the period of time between the arrival of the major assault forces of the amphibious task force in the objective area and the accomplishment of the amphibious task force mission. 3. To make a short, violent, but well-ordered attack against a local objective, such as a gun emplacement, a fort, or a machine gun nest. 4. A phase of an airborne operation beginning with delivery by air of the assault echelon of the force into the objective area and extending through attack of assault objectives and consolidation of the initial airhead. See also assault phase; landing attack.
Technically your translation is correct, but given the context of the weapon type, my understanding is "more" correct.
Actually, it's not at all surprising to find Sarah Brady picking up on Nazi jargon ~ all mind numbed, robot-like, knee-jerk Liberals are alike.
I am not entirely sure that the assault weapons ban has NO relationship to military usefulness. Even semi automatic weapons with a high magazine capacity are militarily useful. (Such as the M1 Carbine, SKS) As an infantry squad leader in Vietnam, I regularly admonished my grunts to hold off on full auto fire in certain circumstances to control ammo expenditure and maintain long-term fire superiority until we could get resupply. I think it is precisely this military utility that makes unconstitutional, tyrannical, authoritarian types so nervous as they contemplate these weapons in civilian hands.
What the hell does this FOOL think that the citizen militia mentioned in the second amendment gears supposed to use? Spit Balls!!!
Gun grabbers are increasingly trying to separate the right to keep and bear arms from its constitutional underpinnings. To everyone but liberals and gun grabbers the word militia implies a body organized for military use. The Supreme Court Miller decision of 1939 held that the militia was 'A body of citizens enrolled for military discipline.' And further that ordinarily when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time."
To begin with, only the national government was represented at the trial. With nobody arguing to the contrary, the court followed standard court procedure and assumed that the law was constitutional until proven otherwise. If both sides were present, the outcome may have been much different.
However, since only one party showed up, the case will stand in the court records as is. As to the militia, Mr. Justice McReynolds related the beliefs of the Founding Fathers when commenting historically about the Second Amendment. He stated that, ". . .The common view was that adequate defense of country and laws could be secured through the militia- civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion.
"The significance attributed to the term Militia appears from the debates in the Convention, the history and legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators. These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.
It is clear that the firearms that are most suited for modern-day militia use are those semi automatic military pattern weapons that the yellow press calls "assault weapons". Since nations such as the Swiss trust their citizenry with true selective fire assault rifles, it seems to me that this country ought to be at least able to trust its law-abiding citizenry with the semi automatic version.
Self-defense is a vital corollary benefit of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. But its primary constitutional reason for being is for service in the well-regulated militia which is necessary to the security of a free state. WE must be prepared to maintain that security against even our own forces that are responding to the orders of a tyrannical government, and the only viable way to counter a standing army's qualitative advantage is with a huge quantitative one. Don't let the gun grabbers and their politician allies separate us from the constitutional reason for the right to keep and bear arms. Miltary pattern weapons are precisly the weapons that should be MOST constitutionally protected. Even defenders of the right often neglect the constitutional aspect of it, and concentrate on their near non-existent use in crime.
Gun grabbers love to haul out their straw man argument of tanks, howitzers, bazookas, flame throwers, satchel charges, whenever we defenders of the constitution reference the type of modern day INDIVIDUAL military small arm protected by Amendment #2.
There are three main reasons that guns are used by modern military forces - 1) They use chemical energy for propulsion of the damaging projectile, rather than human muscle energy - 2) They have the advantage of range of use that a human muscle powered weapon like a sword can never match - 3) Guns require less time to teach a soldier to use than a human powered weapon.
Stupid question time, how would YOU want us to get to the point only the police have guns?
There are a lot of honest peolpe that own firearms, that would never give them up without a fight. Do you want the police going house to house to round up guns? That would make Waco look like a little tea party.
They were also quite innovative in rocketry, jet planes, and tank technology. Does that make all these "tainted".
Also notice that the current US Army helmet has evolved to be more like the WW2 German helmet than the US WW2 design. The German design gave better protection to the head. Should we toss that too?
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