Texas governor challenges Obama to 'come and take' the Lone Star state's guns

And the start of Saving Private Ryan - that beach scene shows how risky and dangerous it is to let someone like Hitler get too powerful.

The one does not lead to the other. You need to contrast that fictional propagandist's account of Omaha Beach with the far less costly events at Utah Beach, where, though a blunder landed the initial wave of troops other than where it was planned they should land, where they did come ashore was not where the Germans were as ready for them. And at Utah, the assault boat coxswains did not launch the DD amphibious tanks so far out from the beach that most were swamped and sunk before hitting the beach; in fact some accounts record that the landing craft carrying the 70th Armor's engineer tanks with bulldozer blades- not the amphibious DDs- came right on to the beach, dropped their ramps, and away the 70th's happy tankers went, rolling up MG and mortar positions with the blades and pouring direct fire from their main guns directly into concrete bunkers from 75 feet and less.

And at Utah there were two other real heroes: the Captains of the Navy destroyers tasked with naval gunfire support of the landing were unfazed by the landing taking place other than where planned, turned their bows toward the gunfire and they too let fly with amazingly accurate direct fire into the German positions until they had nothing left at which to shoot, elevated their guns and continued as indirect fire artillery directed by fire control parties that hitched a ride ashore in the 70th's tanks. At Omaha, a *prudent* Navy commander kept his ships well back from the beach and out of range of return enemy fire, lest the nice paint on his ships get scorched. But if those destroyer captains at Utah had wheels on their gunships, I doubt they'd have stopped until they got to Berlin.

Ooops, I forgot. We stopped our drive on Berlin so the Russians could take it. Yes, the politicians were playing their games with the war even then. But that Brigadeer General who saved the day at Utah by deciding to reinforce the *wrong* initial landing site saved a lot of lives that day, not too awfully surprising considering that actions of that sort kind of ran in his family. And that was how Theodore Roosevelt, Junior earned his medal of Honor. A month later, he was dead.

Don't worry about *powerful* men like Hitler. Just let's find some good men like TR, Junior who can ruin all their carefully-laid plans.

Not sure what a 'glass teat' is,

Googled it, didn't you? Today's kids would have done so automatically.

When I was on the local School Corporation's *Long Range Planning Committee* in 1993 we split our efforts among a dozen or so category sub-committies; the one that got stuck with me was the Technology Committee. Our question was: how would technology affect schools in general and ours in particular, fifteen to twenty-five years hence. The curriculum group made much of the then-current *typing class* and figured the school would be teaching kids how to manually enter data. We reported on the then-current status of voice recognition and optical scanning systems [we missed out on smartphones and tablet books] and if we're not quite there yet, that's certainly coming. But my particular bit of happy news was on precision guided smartbombs and remotely piloted aircraft....and didn't schools full of kids make a really great target for that sort of thing? Hey, I know: put a metal detector up at the front door....

Wow! You really know D-Day!
Aside from the personal side of my dad's Eighth Air Force involvement, two of my neighbors in the 1970s and '80s were D-Day veterans, one at the Ranger raid on the artillery positions at Pont du Hoc, the other at Omaha. The Omaha Beach vet bcame the first Company First Sergeant when the local National Guard outfit was formed just after the Korean War, and by the late '70s most of his old pals had moved on or passed away. The new NG First Sergeant was a pal of mine [and the rigger who packed my reserve parachute] and I filled him in on the origins of his unit. On their next anniversary dinner, you-know-who was their guest of honor. He later told me how he couldn't help noticing that the faces of some of the new guys bore a more than passing resemblance to some of the old hands from his days from the outfit...and now I'm noticing the same thing, only with tank crews. He also told me that he couldn't sleep for the first two or three nights after Omaha Beach, and that it returned to him in his dreams at least once or twice a week, every week, ever since then. And did so until he too passed away in 2004.

Our generals were stick-in-the-muds.

Not entirely- *Pursuit* George and Billy Mitchell certainly were not; but that is stll to be expected after a military purge/downsizing after a major conflict; particularly when it is a mostly-citizen military under arms and a professional military establishment running the show.

For example, the Flying Tigers â€” Chennault if I recall his name correctly, failed to impress enough US officers with the importance of fighter planes and united-fighter tactics. Why he ended up in China.

In April, 1937, Claire L. Chennault retired as a captin from active duty in the then-Army Air Corps and accepted an offer from Madame Chiang Kai-shek for a three month mission to China to make a confidential survey of the Chinese Air Force. At that time China and Japan were on the verge of war and the fledgling Chinese Air Force was beset by internal problems and torn between American and Italian influence.

Even while the good Captain commanded the American Volunteer Group in combat, his official job was adviser to the Central Bank of China, and his passport listed his occupation as a farmer. Chennault himself stated that he was a civilian advisor to the Secretary of the Commission for Aeronautical Affairs, first Madame Chiang and later T.V. Soong. But he really didn't have to press his case for changes in Chinese fighter- and light bomber- acquisition and tactical employment. The Japanese made it quite clear to the Chinese that unless the Japanese aircraft were driven from the sky, they would be free to do whatever they pleased to the Chinese cities and countryside. The job, the overall result was clear: keep the Japs out of China's skies. That was the strategy. The tactics had to be developed as things went along. And the aircraft supplied by the United States were an easy choice: they were the only thing available at that time with a chance of getting the job done.

I wonder if the pictured survivor of the Jap bombing of Shanghai managed to grow up, to have kids of his/her own. I wonder what those kids might be like today:

I had studied it some. According to Eisenhowerâ€™s Lts, the Brits were far more willing to try out new gadgets and tactics. They had a much easier time than we did.

Are you familiar with the efforts of British Major General Percy Hobart and his 79th Division, who studied the failings at the British landing at Dieppe and improvised and engineered ways to overcome those problems? The term *Hobart's Funnies* was sometimes applied.

So far as Brits and *new tactics* you might consider one Major Vladimir Peniakoff [Yes, a Brit, born in Belgium!] usually known as *Popski,* after a newspaper cartoon character of the day, after Australian and New Zealand radio operators gave up on trying to get his name straight. General Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery said that Popski's unit, which never numbered more than a hundred or so men, was the most effective intelligence gathering unit of the Second World War.

‘Billy Mitchell’ — fuzzy memory alert, didn’t he promote air attacks on ships? Same officer, right? The one who bucked the higher-ups with his famous demonstration of bombing a US ship?

Right, he was not a ‘stick-in-the-mud’, but he believed in the ‘flying fortress’ as making fighter planes obscolete up until it was too late to prepare in advance. And he was the dandy [if memory serves] who had the most influence over US air power. Brilliant, but not perfect.

Then there were our Revolutionary War generals who kept going ‘muzzle-to-muzzle’ against the Brits [yeah, I’m a fan of The Patriot’]. Only the backwoods fighters knew how to really beat them [such as King’s Hill] without a sneak attack or through a General Greene style victorious retreat.

Even AFTER the Revolution, Napoleon learned more from our backwoods victories than our own ‘Bannockburn Races’ officers did.

I hope to have more time in the future for this kind of ‘talk’.

FRegards ....

Yet, I am glad that machine guns are highly regulated.

Speak for yourself. Do not presume to speak for others.

I am outraged and disgusted that standard military arms are "highly regulated", as you so delicately put it.

It is long past time to

1) Repeal the National Firearms Act.
2) Repeal the Gun Control Act.
3) Repeal the Hughes Amendment.

A Supreme Court that was not compromised and disloyal to the Constitution would long since have struck down these unconstitutional acts of Congress. A Congress that was not compromised and disloyal to the Constitution would long since have repealed them. A President that was not compromised and disloyal to the Constitution would long since have refused to enforce them.

"... shall not be infringed."

It's not rocket science.

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.