The Gun Control Thread

[Nitro Express]

I don't like what the NRA has become... never been a member but have friends that are. The political bullshit being spewed from that end of the field is way off the reasonable and educated scale... and has nothing to do with gun rights even remotely.

I read that membership is up to 4.3 million and that lobby has thrown more Democratic elections than any other. Too much power for a lobby... I'd like to see the whole playing field for lobbyists wiped clean and eliminated completely.

The National Rifle Association used to be a national gun club and it's real purpose was to oversee amd sponsor shooting competitions. When I played in tennis tournaments I had to be a member of the USTA and when I entered shooting competitions I usually had to have an NRA card. I think since the 1960's the NRA just got more and more political.

[BigBadBrian]

BTW, I am a Republican and a gun owner!
[/i]

[clarathecarrot]

The Gun Control Thread

All the NRA is doing is manufacturing more violence to justify their warped paranoia. I myself own a gun (a Taurus 9mm) and oh yes, it's sexy but I never bought on the ridiculousness that the NRA says I should.

Kristy, did you take the NRA sponsored safety course or one by some other organization, since you are a concerned gun owner ?

You should if you haven't.

I took one back in 1974 and another refresher course back in 1979 when I went for my Louisiana safe hunter game license.

Every gun owner should be required to qualify on a range, by a licensed NRA, gun safety class...myop.

By required I mean you should require that of yourself.

[Nitro Express]

Guns are not a substitute for shitty debate skills. The only way anyone needs an assault rifle to hunt deer is if the fucking deer are shooting back.

Assault rifles have the option to go full auto so technically an AR-15 isn't an assault rifle nor is a semiautomatic only Kalashinikov an assault rifle. They are semi-automatic carbines and rifles that can take a large magazine. Now you have semi-automatic rifles that look like regular hunting rifles but they won't take a big 30 round or larger magazines. The AR and AK styled weapons shoot small calibers. .223, 762x39, 5,45x39. The reason is such weapons are designed to be effective out to 300 meters and not long ranges and the smaller rounds allow you to carry more rounds.

Not the best weapons to go deer hunting and in most states using such small rounds for deer hunting is illegal. You need to have more velocity and a heavier bullet than the 7,62x39 soviet. I would say the smallest you want to go is a 30-30 winchester at short ranges and then use something in the 30-06 range for longer distances. Those are proper deer hunting calibers.

The real issue is magazine capacity and then of course if you can change out the magazine with the push of a button you have a quick reload. People get too fixated on what the gun looks like. The last assult rifle ban did nothing about magazine capacity. It focused on what the gun looked like and forbid having a pistol grip, a flash hider, and a bayonett lug. As long as the gun looked more like a hunting rifle you could slap a 80 round wind up drum on it.

So what they need to do is focus on magazine capacity. For a rifle make it five rounds. You can also modify the new guns so the old magazines won't fit so all the new ones can only use the short magazines. Also another cool thing some gun manufactures like Bersa are doing is they have a built in lock in the gun that you lock with a little key. It just looks like a hex screw on the side of the gun so if you lock it the action locks up and the gun can't be used. So if someone steals the gun or kids get to them unless they have the key, they aren't shooting them.

One new form of technology that is being looked at is to have an electronic trigger system where the gun won't fire unless the shooter is wearing a special ring. This is being looked at for law enforcement so if their firearm gets snagged and taken away from them, it won't fire.

I just see a realistic solution is limiting the magazine capacity and putting some built in saftey locks in the guns so if they get stolen they can't be used. The reality is there are millions of guns out there. You can change laws and restrict the sale of things but it's very difficult to take away what's out there without setting off a big powder keg. I mean if the government really wanted to get the guns they could offer awsome rewards for trading your AR-15 in. The way the federal government wastes money why not offer people a brand new pickup for their AR-15 or AK? There's a lot of rednecks that would go for that offer. LOL!

[Nitro Express]

Maybe some public announcements on gun safety would do some good. Run them on the radio and television. Ford mentioned gun safes but if you live in an apartment or rent, that's not a realistic option but what you can do is lock the magazines up separate from the gun. You can pull the bolt or bolt carrier out of a rifle and lock that up. You can pull the slide and barrel off a semi automatic pistol and lock those up. All you need is a smaller safe for the magazines or gun parts. Most people need a small fire proof safe for their documents anyways. The thing is people aren't aware of what they can do and really just running some announcements would do some good and probably save some lives.

[BigBadBrian]

While we're talking guns, I'm thinking the US military, and hence NATO, should go to a 6.8mm round vice 5.56. Too many troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are saying the 5.56 doesn't have enough knock-down power and just "doesn't get the job done." Whaddya say?

[Nitro Express]

I don't know if all the dad's in our neighborhood took the same gun safety classes. Like I said, we used to have gun and hunter safety taught in school and our local rifle range was owned and maintained by the US Forrest Service. That was back in the days where the US Federal Government wasn't so anti-gun. They provided shooting ranges and made surplus rifles available. I think the thinking was they wanted a population of trained marksmen available in case they were needed if there was a war. The thinking now is 180 degrees different. All our dads pretty much secured the weapons in the house the same way. You never touched the guns without permission either or got into the ammo or the wrath of God would fall on you and there would be hell to pay. It was was a biggie. Even bigger than getting caught with porn.

Anyways, most people had bolt action rifles and shotguns. A few people had handguns. The modern military looking stuff really wasn't that popular then. It was mostly hunting rifles, shotguns, and target shooting rifles and pistols. Everyone stored the rifles with bolts out of them, the ammunition was locked up in a separate part of the house and handguns were usually locked up in a strong box. Some people had big gun cases or gun racks but there was no ammo in the guns, no magazines in them or the bolts were out of them. That was the standard way of keeping them in the house.

The houses were usually unlocked. Nobody locked their doors and nobody I knew had a gun for defense. That was looked at as being paranoid but then hey, we lived in an area nobody felt they need to lock the front door.

But there was consequences for your actions when you were a kid. Kids were scared of their parents and teachers. The principle might paddle you, you might have to stay after school and write a big essay on why you shouldn't have done what you did. I threw a kids baseball mitt in a mud puddle and stomped on it and totally ruined it. I was dragged to not only apologize to the kid but his parents and had to earn the $40 to buy him a new one. It was $40 I had to work for and $40 I could have enjoyed. I cringe to think of what would happen if you spray painted public buildings and got caught. They would have cained your ass and I'm not kidding. Fear of being caught was a huge deterrent and the adults commanded respect and weren't the silly immature parents we have now. The adults were not your buddy, they loved you but if you fucked with them they would clean your clock and make your life hell.

The result was you could leave the front door unlocked with a bunch of guns in the house. LOL!

I think a lot of it was the dads at the time grew up through the great depression some served in World War II or Korea. They had to grow up sooner than the baby boomers did. The spoiled and fluffy hippie dip mentality was not there and there was little patience for spoiled misbehaving immature and unresponsible brats. They let you know it too.

What we are seeing now is the fruit of the baby boom meathead generation. what a fucking mess.

[Nickdfresh]

Assault rifles have the option to go full auto so technically an AR-15 isn't an assault rifle nor is a semiautomatic only Kalashinikov an assault rifle. They are semi-automatic carbines and rifles that can take a large magazine. Now you have semi-automatic rifles that look like regular hunting rifles but they won't take a big 30 round or larger magazines. The AR and AK styled weapons shoot small calibers. .223, 762x39, 5,45x39. The reason is such weapons are designed to be effective out to 300 meters and not long ranges and the smaller rounds allow you to carry more rounds.

No, they're not "carbines." Carbines fire pistol, or pistol style ammunition or are shortened rifles. The AK's 7.62x39mm is not a "small caliber," it's a full caliber shortened round and the 5.56mmx45 is a high velocity small caliber bullet. The reason they have shorter ranges than old bolt action rifles is that anything more than 300 meters is completely useless in 90% of combat situations. The M-16 style rifles are effective out to upwards of 600m actually though.

FYI - it's true you can carry more ammo, but the rifles themselves were lighter and more compact allowing for quicker reaction during ambushes or when a patrol stumbled into an enemy patrol. They are also vastly more controllable when fired on full auto, or when fired rapidly on semi-auto in prolonged combat...

Not the best weapons to go deer hunting and in most states using such small rounds for deer hunting is illegal. You need to have more velocity and a heavier bullet than the 7,62x39 soviet. I would say the smallest you want to go is a 30-30 winchester at short ranges and then use something in the 30-06 range for longer distances. Those are proper deer hunting calibers.

The real issue is magazine capacity and then of course if you can change out the magazine with the push of a button you have a quick reload. People get too fixated on what the gun looks like. The last assult rifle ban did nothing about magazine capacity. It focused on what the gun looked like and forbid having a pistol grip, a flash hider, and a bayonett lug. As long as the gun looked more like a hunting rifle you could slap a 80 round wind up drum on it.

No, there was a ban on weapons that could take a magazine of more than 10 rounds for a while. It was allowed to expire under Bush IIRC. And WTF do you mean "look like" as ammunition capacities and quick reloading capability are what make military style assault rifles effective at killing lots of people at combat ranges. I was trained in the Army NOT to use full auto and to use semi in almost all combat situations. Many states have limitations on the ammunition capacities allowed while hunting anyways and your points are mostly the typical bullshit aphorisms stated by people who have the mindless NRA-zombie cum all over their face. The M-14 and Mini-14/AC556 both look more like traditional rifles but still feature high capacity magazines of 20 or 30 rounds. The .308 M-14 was (mostly) issued as a semi-automatic rifle to US troops during the 60's and actually still is to an extent as a 'designated marksman weapon' to BBB's previous point about the 6.8mm crap or whatever...

...
I just see a realistic solution is limiting the magazine capacity...

That was already tried once, see above. I don't have the exact details, but for a while all rifles had limitations an magazine capacities. But unfortunately this cunt's didn't, as he was able to shoot lots of children without reloading sadly...

[Nitro Express]

Yeah the gun control in Mexico is sure keeping the citizens there safe.

[BigBadBrian]

The Gun Control Thread

I'm starting this thread so as to not muck up the Newtown Shooting thread. If the mods want to merge this thread with that one, then so be it.

Put your gun control ideas, comments, and comments about the Second Amendment to the US Constitution (what it does or does not say) here.

What should it take to purchase a gun? What classes, background checks, etc. should be involved? What restrictions should there be? Should certain, or even all, firearms be banned? Should there be a restriction on the number of firearms a person can own?

[BigBadBrian]

AMENDMENT II to the US Constitution

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

[fraroc]

It's one thing to own guns responsibly and to be in favor of the second admendment. I have absolutley NO issue with that. But what I don't like is when people's first reaction to the shooting is "dem bleedin' heart liberals are gon' take away our guns!" And that's all you care about. In that case, I would say that you don't give a shit about the 20 children that died, your priorities as a human being suck, and you have absolutley no heart or soul.

[ELVIS]

They Have Blood on Their Hands

Larry Pratt


A gunman whose name we do not need to memorialize took advantage of our gun control laws to slaughter some 20 children and seven adults in a Newton, Connecticut elementary school.

In addition to the gunman, blood is on the hands of members of Congress and the Connecticut legislators who voted to ban guns from all schools in Connecticut (and most other states). They are the ones who made it illegal to defend oneself with a gun in a school when that is the only effective way of resisting a gunman.

What a lethal, false security are the Gun Free Zone laws. All of our mass murders in the last 20 years have occurred in Gun Free Zones. The two people murdered a couple of days earlier in the shopping center in Oregon were also in a Gun Free Zone.

Hopefully the Connecticut tragedy will be the tipping point after which a rising chorus of Americans will demand elimination of the Gun Free Zone laws that are in fact Criminal Safe Zones.

One measure of insanity is repeating the same failure time after time hoping that the next time the failure will turn out to be a success. Gun Free Zones are a lethal insanity.

We must tell our elected officials that they are acting as the criminals’ friends as long as they continue to support legislation that only protects criminals, not decent people.

Oh, and we must also insist that these criminal friendly elected officials not even try to blame gun owners and our “gun culture” for what a criminal did. Had a few of us been available with guns at the Newton school, most of the victims might still be alive.

[ELVIS]

The Federal Government is Guilty Accomplice in School Shooting

This shooting is yet another tragic example of the failed, grotesque insistence on helpless victim zones where any crazed gunman can be assured of a large number of disarmed, undefended, helpless victims, all crammed into one place, where he can kill many children before an armed defender arrives from elsewhere.

It is disturbing and sick that the federal government so hates the right of the American people to bear arms, and so hates their natural right to self defense, that the government insists on making them helpless, disarmed victims for anyone who cares to kill them. And in this case, all of the teachers and staff were willfully disarmed by the Federal Government, by force of law and threat of prison, to ensure that they would be disarmed and incapable of saving the lives of the children entrusted to their care.

That makes the Federal Government complicit in the deaths of these children, and in fact an accessory to their mass murder, by forcibly disarming (with the very real threat of prison) all the teachers, all the staff, and any parent who may have been on school property. That stupid law guaranteed the shooters would meet no immediate armed resistance, which is exactly what is needed to stop such an attack.

In such a shooting (as in every criminal attack), seconds count, and the people best positioned to stop the attack are the people on the scene – the intended victims and/or their care-takers. In this case, that would mean the teachers and staff of the school who were responsible for the well-being of those children, and also the parents, who should have the ability to save the lives of their own children as they take them to and from school.

The police cannot, and do not arrive in time to stop such shooters from killing large numbers of people. They are a slow reactive force compared to an armed citizen on the scene. This should be common sense, as it is obvious that in the immediacy of a criminal attack, it is the intended victims (or their immediate care-takers) who are there, in position to put a stop to the attack, if they are capable. And being capable means being armed, trained, willing, and able to use deadly force, right then, right there. Anything less leads to what we saw here.

But no doubt the rabid anti-gun government supremacists will use this to further their agenda to disarm the American people, totally ignoring that obvious, plain-as-day truth. Anti-gun nuts trust the government with guns, but not the people, and insist that the lowly citizen must be disarmed and helpless in the face of murderous assault, and must wait on slow responding armed government employees, who will not be there when the attack starts, and most often can only really clean up the horrendous crime scene afterwards and maybe, just maybe apprehend a shooter who has chosen not to kill himself (as they usually do).

The bottom line is that these teachers and staff at the Sandy Hook Elementary School were incapable of keeping these children safe, and incapable of defending them. And one of the biggest reasons they were so incapable and unprepared to save the lives of the children entrusted to their care is because the anti-gun nuts and their fellow travelers in government insisted on disarming every adult in the vicinity, by threatening them with prison time – EXCEPT the gunmen, who don’t care about the law and thus were not disarmed. laws against carrying weapons in schools don’t stop evil men with murderous intent. Such laws only disarm the law abiding and virtuous, who are now rendered incompetent to defend the precious children in their care.

This is disgusting. And yet another reason to home-school. Why would you want to leave your children helpless, in the hands of adults who are themselves helpless, and incapable of defending them, by government decree? For all we know, one of the teachers may have been a veteran, with the training and skill to use a firearm if one had been available. But all the teachers and staff, whatever their ability with firearms, were stripped of the choice and chance to save the lives of these kids.

There are more good guys than bad guys in the world. But the good guys need to be able to stop the bad guys, and that means they need to be armed so they can stop the bad guys on the spot, without having to wait for “official” government approved good guys to respond. Trust the teachers with arms so they can save the lives of their students.

Until the adults are allowed to actually act like adults, and defend themselves and their students, this kind of willful killing will continue to happen, and the federal government will in each case be a guilty party to the conspiracy by ensuring that the targets are disarmed.

Until this changes, you should refuse to give your children over to government schools lorded over by a Federal Government so callous and indifferent to their safety and lives.


Stewart Rhodes,
Founder of Oath Keepers

[ELVIS]