Posted on 01/08/2013 7:59:42 AM PST by Kaslin
Eight days after the massacre of 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary, where each child was shot with a Bushmaster .223, The Nation's Gun Show, the biggest east of the Mississippi, opened.
"A line already snaked around the building shortly after the three-day event began at 3 p.m., and the parking lot was jammed" at the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Va., wrote Justin Jouvenal of The Washington Post:
"With an AK-47 slung over one shoulder, Marco Hernandez offered one word when asked why he was in the overflow crowd at the gun show."
"Obama," he said. "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the possible gun ban."
And this is the story across America since Sandy Hook.
The weapon most in demand at Chantilly?
The AR-15 black rifle, a version of which was used to slaughter the innocents in Newtown. At Chantilly, their price doubled in hours to $1,800. Gun stores have sold out their inventory.
Yet for weeks after Sandy Hook, journalists and politicians from the president to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who were making the case for a new assault weapons ban, dominated the airwaves. Those calling for reinstatement of the ban that was in effect from 1994 to 2004 had the national audience almost entirely to themselves.
The National Rifle Association was largely silent. Not until nine days after Newtown did the NRA's Wayne LaPierre appear on "Meet the Press" to be subjected to hostile interrogation.
Yet, from the record gun sales in December, and 2012 -- there were 16.8 million calls to the FBI for background checks for gun purchases last year -- the elites have lost the argument with the audience that counts. They have failed to convince those who buy guns.
Just as East Berliners, before the Wall was built, voted with their feet, fleeing west, Americans are voting with their checkbooks, paying hundreds and thousands of dollars to buy the guns liberals loathe.
The reflexive response of the gun controllers is to blame this on that malevolent force, the gun lobby, at whose apex is the NRA.
But those crowds coming to gun shows in droves and buying semi-automatics are not there because the NRA issued some order.
Today, we Americans are a far more heavily armed people than half a century ago. Forty-seven percent of adult males own a firearm. There are 270 million rifles, shotguns and pistols in private hands.
Are they for hunting? Not according to the Financial Times.
"The number of hunters fell from 16.6 million in 1975 to 12.5 million in 2006, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service." That number will continue to shrink as America's suburbs further encroach on rural areas, limiting hunting grounds and reducing game.
The FT notes that Freedom Group, owner of Bushmaster, has estimated that while "total sales of long guns to U.S. consumers rose at an annual rate of just 3 percent during 2007-2011, modern sporting rifles grew at an annual rate of 27 percent." Last year, sporting rifle sales doubled.
The number of rifles like the AR-15 in private hands has probably tripled since the assault weapons ban expired. The NRA's David Keene estimates the number now at above 3 million.
Who owns these weapons?
Half are owned by veterans and cops. Writes Keene: "Nearly 90 percent of those who own an AR-15 use it for recreational target shooting; 51 percent of AR owners are members of shooting clubs and visit the range regularly; the typical AR owner is not a crazed teenage psychopath, but a 35-plus-year-old, married and has some college education."
These figures suggest that a successful effort to restrict the sale and transfer of "assault rifles" will, as did the Volstead Act and Prohibition, drive the market underground, create lawbreakers out of folks who are law-abiding and send the AR-15 price further skyward.
Many gun controllers not only do not understand what motivates those who disagree with them, they do not like them, reflexively calling them gun nuts, a reaction as foolish as it is arrogant and bigoted.
For given the loosening of gun laws at the state level in recent years, the gun controllers no longer have the numbers to impose their will on the folks who have a love for, or feel a need for, guns.
To most Americans, an armed guard in a school is a good idea in our too-violent nation. Most Americans realize that when shooting breaks out in a gun-free zone -- a school, movie theater, mall -- the first call goes to 911 to get cops with Glocks and a SWAT team with black rifles there as soon as possible.
Most folks understand why air marshals on planes might have to be armed. Most folks know that the people running up the death toll in murder capitals like Chicago are not using AR-15s. And many Americans yet accept that in the last analysis it is a man's duty to be the defender and protector of his wife and children.
Human nature will ultimately triumph over ideology.
How about this scenario, you want an extra Magazine or Clip for practice time, you turn on your 3d printer and print an extra two (or the parts which just snap together) with no paperwork at all.
Heh, "above" 3 Million is a very rough estimate. Even the lefties over at www.liberalgunclub.com like to do group purchases of stripped lower receivers, which don't get counted as completed rifles. The number of completed ARs sold is the tip of the iceberg.
ok forgive this basic question, but what is the deal with “assembling” a do it yourself ar?
and what exactly is a stripped receiver?
Went to the Ranch/hardware store yesterday. The man at the guns & ammo counter said that the manufacturers of the popular calibers of ammo have wholesale orders scheduled for 5 years into the future.
If you’re into the market, this might be a place to put some investment money.
“That’s assuming you are in compliance with unconstitutional gun laws to begin with. Most won’t comply on currently owned weapons.”
Gee, I’d like to, but I got rid of them all at my garage sale.
“That’s assuming you are in compliance with unconstitutional gun laws to begin with. Most won’t comply on currently owned weapons.”
Gee, I’d like to, but I got rid of them all at my garage sale.
Bronco Bamma will find out real quick that any Federal law that requires that will cost the government $$$ Billions every year.
The Fed is restricted by ‘Takings’ law that requires them to pay for whatever they take from someone at fair market value. If they want to require a dealer do the transfer, they will have to pay for it.
Still gotta fill out the Form 4470, though, don't you??
Yes, you have to fill out the Form 4473. However, this form is KEPT buy the gunstore, to be stored up to 10 years in a fireproof container. ATF, at least now, cannot on a wholesale basis ask for them unless there is a crime that has been committed with a weapon that has been traced from the manufacturer back to that store. They then only have the right to get the Forms 4473 for the purchaser of that firearm.
The ATF has been known to have their agents go to a gunstore and ask for copies of them, but the smart gunstore owners tell them to go get effed, unless they have a warrant for a specific firearm.
it is usually a cast forging for an AR. It is the bare serialized main component of the lower receiver (the part that is tracked). You have to install all the myriad parts on it to mate with an upper which isn’t tracked.
The tough part of assembling any rifle is attaching the barrel and setting the chamber headspace. This is already done for you on the "completed upper assemblies"; you just have to mate the upper and lower halves. So the portion of the AR-15 that contains the explosive force of the cartridge is technically just a part or collection of parts; it does not have to be shipped to a FFL holder. Lower receivers (built or stripped) and completed rifles do have to be shipped to FFLs.
YouTube probably has lots of AR build videos. Here's another site that illustrates what I'm describing:
Of course, if you buy the forging before it’s serialized, all the better.
I sent all mine to Mexico. Seemed like the patriotic thing to do.
I'll believe it when I see photos of the empty .223 cartridges on the crime scene, and .223 bullets from the autopsies.
We're talking about "reports" from the same media that gave us "Ryan Lanza" and George Zimmerman brutally beating Trayvon Martin's fists with his face.
The media will lie for the Obama administration all day long.
As far as I'm concerned, he used the pistols.
I still want to know...who is the second person arrested behind the school in black and camo? No further info has been released on this person. I find that odd.
In Massachusetts, that item X would have been registered in your name. If your friend is caught with it...as an unregistered firearm...he gets a year in jail. Mandatory.
You could sell him X for whatever reason you like but the actual transfer and paperwork required by MA would need to be done by an FFL. No one would risk conviction by having an unregistered firearm in this state. I can't wait to leave. Unless this type of thing becomes the norm all over the country.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! - Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! I am so stealing this.
Transfer and paperwork required by MA would NOT need to be done by an FFL. There is a form FA-10 that is required for such a sale that effectively transfers the registration and is recorded by the Firearms Records Bureau .
I assume you mean no otherwise law abiding gun owners would risk having an unregistered firearm in this state, because I'm guessing there are a whole lot of drug dealers, gang bangers and other criminals with them...
A tragic canoeing accident has mine at the bottom of a lake. :-(
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