ahh, what the hell, I'll throw Chuckie in for good measure!
<
Posted on 12/21/2001 9:20:27 AM PST by DaveCooper
Using terror.
It was only a matter of time before the gun-ban lobby took advantage of Americans’ fears of terrorist attacks to scare them into giving up more of their rights. Gun banners are now rushing to demonize the latest politically incorrect sporting gun — the .50-caliber target rifle. The Washington, D.C.-based Violence Policy Center (VPC) now equates .50-caliber hobbyists with gunrunners for the Taliban. The VPC has posted on its Web site a frantic report aimed at .50-caliber shooters.
The VPC report makes much of its “evidence that al Qaeda bought 25 Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles” in the late 1980s. But not mentioned is the fact that at the time of the transfer, the United States was supporting Afghanistan’s mujahedeen against the Soviet puppet government. All the mujahedeen were America’s allies then.
The VPC states: “Nor do we know whether the guns were sold directly from the factory or through a dealer or dealers.” In fact, these rifles were paid for and shipped by the U.S. government. Explains Ronnie Barrett, president of Barrett Firearms (in Murfreesboro, Tenn.), “Barrett rifles were picked up by U.S. government trucks, shipped to U.S. government bases, and shipped to those Afghan freedom fighters.”
After the VPC report came out, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms visited Barrett’s plant and confirmed that the late-1980s sales were in full compliance with the law, as all of Barrett’s sales have been.
Arguably, the VPC could plead ignorance for the content of its October 2001 report, which insinuated that Barrett Firearms knowingly sent guns to al Qaeda. But now, the facts have come out showing beyond any doubt that Barrett’s sale was to the U.S. government, and that it was the U.S. government that took the guns to Afghanistan. Yet the VPC has failed to correct its original report, and so the initial charges against Barrett remain on the VPC Web site.
Even in the context of the often-acrimonious gun-control debate, the VPC’s smear is astonishingly mean-spirited. Imagine if, in 1951, at the height of the Korean War, a pressure group claimed that “The Jones Corporation sold rifles to the Soviet Communists!” while omitting the fact that the sale was actually to the United States government, which then shipped the guns to the Soviet army — in 1943, when the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were allies against Hitler.
Character assassination and deception are nothing new for the VPC, which takes much greater liberties with the truth than does, for example, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. The VPC spread the blatantly false rumor that Professor John Lott’s research was “in essence, funded by the firearms industry.” Even The Washington Post reported that this charge was untrue.
A report by the General Accounting Office summarizes the 18 cases in which a .50-caliber firearm has ever been connected to a criminal, such as an illegal alien accumulating firearms. (Report no. OSI-99-15R, revised Oct. 21, 2001.) The VPC presents these cases in the most lurid manner possible — though it would be possible to present similarly lurid stories for almost any other caliber of firearm, and there would be far more than 18 cases. Indeed, if the VPC hated swimmers as much as it hates gun owners, it could produce another report detailing each of the two dozen murders by drowning which take place every year.
The VPC has been trying to start a holy war against the .50-caliber shooting community since 1999. Their congressional allies — Chicago’s Rep. Rod Blagojevich and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein — have sponsored the “Military Sniper Weapon Regulation Act” and have denounced .50-caliber target shooters as “terrorists, doomsday cultists, and criminals” (in the words of Sen. Feinstein).
In reality, the owners of these big guns are the exact opposite of the villains Feinstein and Blagojevich want us to believe they are. Most are like John Burtt, a retired police officer with the demeanor of a Sunday-school teacher. As spokesman for the Fifty Caliber Shooters Policy Institute, Burtt has the task of undoing the hatchet job of folks like Feinstein, Blagojevich, and the VPC on the sport of .50-caliber target shooting. In testimony before Congress, Burtt explained that the typical participant in the sport of .50-caliber target shooting has the demographic profile of ... a golfer.
The average .50-caliber enthusiast is a successful businessman with an annual income of $50,000 or more. Of the 3,200 members of the Fifty Caliber Shooters Association, at least 75 are physicians.
As civilian experts on .50-caliber technology, the association freely shares its research findings with law-enforcement and military authorities. Knowledge developed through the civilian sport of .50-caliber long-range target shooting has played an important role in the development of .50-caliber rifles for military use. This is part of the broader pattern of the historical development of American firearms, in which the civilians and military users of firearms have worked together constructively, with important benefits to both the military and to sport shooting.
The VPC, though, claims these are “men in states of arrested adolescence.”
Are .50-caliber target rifles lethal weapons? Certainly. But so is a .458-caliber rifle, and so is a .475-caliber rifle — both of which are very powerful hunting rounds. If gun prohibitionists want to argue that rifles which have barrels .50 inches in diameter are too big, but rifles which have barrels .475 inches in diameter are great sporting guns, let them make that argument. If they want to argue for banning .50-caliber guns as a first step towards banning .475, .458, and any other calibers they can ban, let them make that argument too — but not with hysterical claims that .50-caliber weapons are somehow utterly different from other guns.
Mary Blek, President of the “Million” Mom March, asserts that the Founding Fathers would have had no use for a .50-caliber rifle (Nov. 28, 2001, McKendree College debate). Actually, the common guns of the early American republic were larger than .50 caliber. The Queen Anne Colonial Musket (manufactured around 1670-1700) was .812. That gun was supplanted by various versions of the English Brown Bess musket, which was .75 caliber. America’s French allies supplied the Patriots with the .70 Charleville Musket. The Dutch muskets bought by the Americans were .65 caliber.
Domestic production of the French-pattern .70-caliber musket began in 1795, with the American Springfield Musket. The famous Kentucky Rifle (a name eventually given to most rifles made by German immigrants) was usually .60 to .75 caliber before 1780, and .50 caliber after that. American rifles and muskets in the period from the Revolution to the Civil War tended to run in the .54 or .69 range.
As for pistols, the standard British service pistol after 1760 — carried by cavalry and by officers — was .69 caliber. French pistols were standardized in 1777, at .67. Many American pistols manufactured for militia, self-defense, and other uses in the first decades of the 19th century ranged from .50 to .69 caliber. Deringer made very compact pistols in .52 and .54 — “pocket rockets” indeed.
In other words, a great many of the guns which were most commonly owned and known in early America were at least .50 caliber.
Nor did large-caliber guns become uncommon later. In the latter half of the 19th century, classic American manufacturers such as Winchester, Remington, Sharps, and Maynard produced many rifles in the .50-caliber size or larger — including the Winchester Spencer Carbine, the Remington Model 1871, and the Sharps Side-Hammer Rifle. Harold Williamson’s book Winchester (1952) lists 19 types of ammunition manufactured by Winchester, in calibers of .50 and above, between 1876 and 1939.
Teddy Roosevelt’s memoir Hunting Trips of a Ranchman tells of discarding his “50-caliber, double-barreled English express” in favor of “a .50-115 6-shot Ballard express.”
Like modern .50-caliber rifles, the 19th century models had long-range power. Marksmen used the .50-90 Sharps rifle to kill Indians a mile away. And these guns could be quite powerful, since some were designed for buffalo hunting. (The Indians, of course, had .50-caliber firearms of their own; Geronimo’s collection included a Springfield .50-70 M1868 and, possibly, a Spencer .56-46.)
Nineteenth-century antique guns are, understandably, treasured by their owners, who tend to be loath to fire them. While such guns may well have been used in frontier crimes long ago, they are in very peaceful hands today. Yet Sen. Feinstein’s “Military Sniper Weapon Regulation Act” (S. .505) would impose severe restrictions on these .50-caliber collectors, under the claim that they pose “a serious and substantial threat to the national security.” Targeted by the Feinstein bill would be antiques such as Remington, Springfield, Spencer, and Sharps firearms dating back to the 19th century, since they are centerfire guns firing .50-caliber cartridges.
Some of the types of ammunition whose firearms would be treated like modern machine guns under the Feinstein bill include:
.50 Remington. Introduced 1867.
.50 Maynard. Introduced 1865.
.50 U.S. Carbine. Introduced 1870.
.50-50 Maynard. Introduced 1882.
.50-70 Maynard. Introduced 1873.
.50-70 Musket. Introduced 1866.
.50-90 Sharps, .50-100 Sharps, .50-110 Sharps. All introduced 1875.
.50-95 Winchester Express. Introduced 1876.
.50-100 Winchester, .50-105 Winchester, .50-110 Winchester. All introduced 1899.
.50-115 Bullard. Introduced 1886.
.50-140 Sharps. Introduced 1860.
.50-140 Winchester. Introduced about 1860.
Ironically, in 1994, Sen. Feinstein pushed into law her ban on so-called “assault weapons.” Her law was titled the “Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act,” and contained a list of several hundred models of “recreational firearms.” Included in her list of benign guns is the Barrett Model 90 Bolt Action Rifle — a .50-caliber target rifle. Yet Sen. Feinstein’s new bill claims that “these firearms are neither designed nor used in any significant number for legitimate sporting or hunting purposes and are clearly distinguishable from rifles intended for sporting and hunting use.”
So the very same guns that Sen. Feinstein lauded in her “Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act,” in 1994, are now said to be “clearly distinguishable from rifles intended for sporting and hunting use.” One suspects that firearms stay on her personal list of “good” guns only so long as there is no political opportunity to urge their prohibition.
Gun-prohibition advocates are free to make the case for The Incredible Shrinking Second Amendment — to argue that that the Second Amendment today must not be allowed to protect guns which fire bullets in sizes that were ubiquitous when the Second Amendment was written, as well as in the century that followed.
But what gun-prohibition groups should not do is to make outrageous and vicious smears against the hobbyists who shoot .50-caliber rifles, or against the companies that supply these target guns. Such tactics are reprehensible any time, but in wartime, false accusations of near-treason are as unacceptable as anthrax hoaxes.
We have repeatedly told gun-rights activists that it is their responsibility to rein in those who use improper tactics (such as telephoning pro-control politicians at home late at night). It is now time for the responsible elements in America’s gun-control community to insist that the gun-control battle be fought with legitimate arguments — and not with the character assassination of innocent Americans.
By Dave Kopel research director, Independence Institute and Timothy Wheeler, Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a Project of the Claremont Institute.
/john
I think that the anti-gun lobby is trying to pick up the pace to consolidate the efforts of the UN to fingerprint us, and give us that newfangled U.N. ID card. All under the guise of safety.
A good interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, is that we are to be armed, just like the law enforcement, and the military, if we are to be able to fight against the would be oppressors. However, now that they've successfully dumbed down two generations of people, and postfactoed a lot of other legal gun owners, not to mention made it difficult to own a gun, there's nearly no way to defend our constitutional rights against a totalitarian regime.
Another anti-gun vitory, is a victory for oppression. If the million moron march has it's way, we'll be governed by a 50 year old, micro-managing mother. Telling us all what to eat, what to drink, when to sleep, who to date, who to marry, how many kids we get to have, if we get to drive a car, what education we'll get... It's all headed that way. All in the name of Safety
For good reason - a semiauto Barrett will run you $7300 WITHOUT the scope.
/john
ahh, what the hell, I'll throw Chuckie in for good measure!
<
"The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it."
--Thomas Jefferson
"The ultimate civil right is the right to defend one's own life, that without that right all other rights are meaningless."
-- Prof. Robert Cottroll
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
- Plato
It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much ...to forget it.
-- James Madison
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."
- Frederick Douglass
"No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
Thomas Jefferson
"Executing a murderer is the only way to adequately express our horror at the taking of an innocent life. Nothing else suffices. To equate the lives of killers with those of victims is the worst kind of moral equivalency. If capital punishment is state murder, then imprisonment is state kidnapping and restitution is state theft."
Don Feder
"Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences."
-- C.S. Lewis
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
- Thomas Jefferson, June 1776
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms…disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater … confidence than an armed man."
- Thomas Jefferson, quoting Cesare Beccaria in "On Crimes and Punishment" (1764).
"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the right of resistance? Let them take arms...The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
--Thomas Jefferson
"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace. A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined."
- George Washington, First Annual Address , January 8, 1790.
"When firearms go, all goes - we need them every hour."
- George Washington
"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence. From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."
- George Washington
"The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose."
- James Earl Jones
"The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals … It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of."
Albert Gallatin of the New York Historical Society, October 7, 1789
"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA — Ordinary citizens don’t need guns, as their having guns doesn’t serve the State."
-- Heinrich Himmler
"There is no reason for anyone in this country- anyone except a police officer or military person- to buy, to own, to have, to use a handgun. The only way to control handgun use in this country is to prohibit the guns."
--President Bill Clinton while signing the Brady Bill 1993
"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so."
-- Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), April 11, 1942, quoted in Hitlers Tischegesprache Im Fuhrerhauptquartier 1941-1942. [Hitler's Table-Talk at the Fuhrer's Headquarters 1941-1942
"Our main agenda is to have ALL guns banned. We must use whatever means possible. It doesn't matter if you have to distort facts or even lie. Our task of creating a socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed."
-- Handgun Control Incorporated President Sarah Brady to Senator Howard Metzenbaum, The National Educator, January 1994, p.3
"I don't care about crime, I just want to get the guns."
-- Senator Howard Metzenbaum, 1994
"If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them, Mr. and Mrs. America turn them all in, I would have done it."
-- Dianne Feinstein, United States Senator, HCI - Handgun Control Inc. Board Member
"Americans have the right and the advantage of being armed, unlike the citizens of other countries whose governtments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
--James Madison
"I ask you sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials."
--George Mason
"To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
--George Mason
"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the arguement of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves."
--William Pitt
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day, but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, unalterable through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery."
--Thomas Jefferson
"Experience proves that those are oftenest abused who can be abused with the greatest impunity. Men are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest. "
-- Frederick Douglass
I think that about covers it. If there's any more, please let me know; I'll add 'em to the list.
Well, we've seen a moment of shocked silence from the Anti crowd after 911; now they seem to be tuning up into a Greek Chorus all singing the same song. ( anyone suspect collusion? )
I strongly sugggest that all of us inform our Representatives, at local, state, and federal level, that enough is enough- if 20,000-25,000 guns laws won't fix whatever problem they seem to see, adding a few more won't do a damn thing but harrass innocent citizens more.
We do not need more of the garbage they are trying to peddle!
P.S. If I need a sarcasm tag for that, we've got problems.
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