|
Posted on 11/13/2008 12:20:22 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The votes were barely counted and Barack Obama’s supporters were still dancing in the streets, buoyed by hope for a better tomorrow, when the news reports began to hit the wires. Obama’s victory brought a huge sigh of relief to those weary of the direction in which the country has been led for the last eight years. But on the other side of that coin, intense anger, fear and paranoia has sparked a flood of people nationwide to buy assault weapons and large amounts of ammunition.
Reports on the numbers of people buying guns and ammo over the last year has filtered out in blogs and tiny newspaper articles for some time. But as the election grew near, and especially after the outcome became known, a tidal wave of frantic buying has captured mainstream, front-page news from coast to coast and border to border, including a prominent Sunday spread in Missoula’s daily.
The most interesting thing is that the weapons and ammo most in demand are not the kind of rifles and bullets normally used for hunting, but the so-called “black guns” that are primarily for military and personal protection. These include, but are not limited to, the AK-47, undoubtedly the most widely used assault rifle in the world, and U.S. military counterparts such as the M-16 and AR15.
These guns all have one thing in common besides their military roots—they were outlawed for sale under the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The law banned all assault rifle semi-automatics with folding stocks, high-capacity clips, threaded barrels, pistol grips and grenade launcher attachments as well as certain types of pistols and shotguns.
The Assault Weapons Ban expired exactly 10 years later, on September 13, 2004, and neither President Bush nor Congress has attempted to re-instate it. More than a few political observers claim the ban was in large part responsible for the Democrats losing control of Congress for the ensuing decade.
But now, there’s fear sweeping the nation that the new and larger Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate will pass a new weapons ban and that President-elect Obama will sign it into law. If you don’t believe it, just go to a local sporting goods store that carries assault-style rifles and take a look around. Last week, following the election, the lines were three deep in front of every salesperson in my neighborhood gun shops. And late last week a front-page article in the Helena Independent Record interviewed the owner of a local sporting goods and gun shop who said he had just ordered 120,000 rounds of ammo, half of which was already pre-sold.
Or stop into the next gun show in your area. The gun show in Helena last weekend, for instance, set new attendance records and sold out of AK-47 ammo well before it ran out of customers. When I talked with one vendor about what was going on, he told me that the New York Times had called his Missoula shop last week and the reporter tried to get him to admit that it was just the National Rifle Association (NRA) spreading fear and driving the citizenry into purchasing assault rifles while they still could. Besides the gun ban, he added that there was great concern that Congress and Obama would approve a ban on any ammunition that could penetrate law enforcement body armor, which he said would include virtually all high-powered rifles. When I asked how the federal government would deal with those who reloaded their own bullets, he said that those kinds of questions remained unanswered at this time. The result is that the fear and apprehension continue to rise as the intentions of the new Congress and president remain uncertain.
While it would be one thing to say that right-wingers are up in arms (so to speak) over a potential future weapons ban, it would be incorrect to limit concerns only to them. There is considerable evidence that many from the progressive side of the political aisle are equally concerned—but for a different reason.
In their case, they fear that President Obama is literally walking around with a target on his chest. Given the assassinations of President Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.—as well as the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan—those fears are not unfounded. Pundits may proclaim that Obama’s victory has shown the nation is leaving racism behind, but it would be naïve to think that an almost evenly divided populace would somehow be purged of violent racists through the mere outcome of an election.
The supposition is that if President Obama is assassinated, the nation would be thrown into a violent and uncontrollable cataclysm that would pit citizens against each other in a way we haven’t seen since the race riots of the ’60s ravaged Watts, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., leaving hundreds of dead and injured in their wake and millions of dollars in damages. Given the extreme polarization of the populace during the Bush administration, such fears are certainly within the realm of possibility.
Finally, the vast uncertainty over the nation’s economic future must be factored into the equation. It’s well known that, in times of economic downturn, people buy guns and ammo. We here in Montana like to believe it’s for hunting, so we can put meat in our freezers. But you don’t buy AK-47s for hunting in our mega-cities, where big game is non-existent. The only things to shoot there are fellow human beings—in this case, those who would theoretically threaten to harm or loot individuals or families.
No one knows what the future holds, but we do know what’s happening right now. All we can do is hope for cool heads—and cooler trigger fingers—in the coming months, and for the health and safety of our president-elect.
As for Obama being personally imperiled by the rush to purchase what he intends to criminalize, I doubt it highly. That's simply another cheap tactic by the reporter to cast firearms owners as assassins. But along those lines I have a question - when a new AWB is enacted, will the reporter admit that he was blowing smoke out his nether orifice? Don't grow old waiting for it.
Hiding under their desks when the phone rings while reading this thread, LMAO.
|
The answer to that is to go and drop some ammo casings on all of your immediate neighbors property fence lines. Wipe the casing with alcohol first and wear gloves.
Get it so common that nobody is alarmed when the little tots come home with a brass casing in their pocket. :~)
|
"A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences." - Proverbs 22:3
As I have said on several threads before, have more than a gun and ammo folks... Have plans that allow you to EAT, DRINK, SLEEP, RUN, AND FIGHT - And know when to implement the proper plan.
I am sure by now that several of you have read my long post regarding being prepared. I saved it in HTML format so that I could post it again if needed. I will not post it again unless someone else on the thread calls for me to do so... I don't like coming off as trying to be a "know it all" - because I certainly do not know it all. But people need to think beyond the gun and the ammo box.
AND REMEMBER: DON'T FEED STEEL CASED AMMO TO YOUR AR-15!!! YOU WILL CAUSE YOURSELF A WORLD OF PROBLEMS!!! JUST BECAUSE IT SAYS 5.56mm NATO AND YOU CAN BUY IT CHEAP RIGHT NOW DOESN'T MEAN IT WON'T COST YOU DEARLY IN THE LONG RUN!!!
Regards,
Raven6
GOOD EVENING, B4RANCH!
|
GOOD EVENING, Sir
Hope all’s well.
Stay safe
I have yet to meet one of his supporters that has the brain power to digest the points you make- though they are good ones.
There are few supporters of O in my immediate area- they are welfare druggies that are counting on him to legalize all drugs and the “OMG not more cops” is what works with them.
Just last week I had fun telling two of them about Obama’s security force. It was fun.
Who the heck wrote this article? I could do a better job with fewer words.
AND not sound like a weenie writing it.
Figure your angry Obama supporter can’t throw a Molotov cocktail farther than 25ft for fear of them lighting themselves up.
Then there are those that may have pistols and/or shotguns.
Then those with rifles.
The farther you can engage your target, the safer you shall be.
I have. While not easy, I wouldn’t consider it “hard”.
The biggest issue is self-control: eliminating every flinch, and being totally calm despite blast & recoil, down to every muscle. One of my instructors is a Freeper; he taught me the necessary self-control by threatening to beat me with a rock (and he would have, and it worked!). Understanding the equipment is the easy part.
I’ll bite. Please let us see your preparedness post. Don’t worry about the know-it-all stuff...if you know more than even a single person, and can thereby help even just that one, then it is worth it.
I think that a good part of the value of threads like this is that the DU or lettered-Agency lurkers can see that they have lots of opposition. They HAVE to know that for every person reading these threads (let alone posting on them), there have to be at least 100 who aren’t. LET THEM see the size and determination of the opposition - maybe they’ll go away without much more than tax increases. No one really wants CWII (or III, depending on one’s outlook), and deterrence is the key. The more information is out there about being self-reliant, about buying guns and ammo, about who historical resistance movements achieved success, etc., etc. - the more hesitant the other side will be. Isn’t that the goal? Avoid a tyranny by never having anyone make the attempt. Push the cultural conflict back into the media, press, debates, etc. - i.e. keep it civil.
If you want peace, prepare for war. Both Caesar and Washington said that - well, folks, we all want peace and the only way to have a chance at it is to so worry the other side about the consequences of changing the rules in the middle is to scare the crap out of them by showing them how prepared we are.
bump
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
