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Assault weapons ban doesn't survive

thearmedgentleman:

terrametis:

Think—who are the people that benefit from this?

Yes, many people shout themselves hoarse about their right to carry firearms, but how many normal, rational people ever use their assault weapons?

In other words, how many people would actually miss the assault weapons if they were absent at a gun shop?

The people are supposed to steer public policy through their elected politicians; instead there are other forces who in turn try their hardest to shape public opinion while at the same time securing favors from politicians.

Pathetic.

You know, I would miss my grandfather’s service rifle he touted back in Korea. I’d also miss my SKS, which was first designed in 1944. I’m sure I’d also miss the vast number of historical firearms dating back to the late 19th century simply because they can fit a bayonet or have a pistol grip. I’m sure a lot of people would miss their Ruger .22 carbines, their Mini-14s, their Remington semi-auto hunting rifles, their First-World-War Mauser pistols, and the other thousands of historical or civilian-built firearms that you’ve arbitrarily dubbed weapons of war, despite many of the firearms on that list having never seen action; and the ones that did probably last saw action before Hitler blew his own head off in ‘45.

And let’s talk about rational people using ‘assault weapons’. I use an ‘assault weapon’ a 1955-built Soviet SKS carbine for target shooting because it doesn’t break the bank. Why is it considering an assault weapon? Because it has a folding bayonet. Do you really fucking expect someone to use a bayonet in a massacre? It’s asinine to assume so.

‘Assault weapon’ is a political term that does not describe any type of particular firearm. It describes something that looks scary, and is used in less that 300 murders annually, out of the roughly 8,000 gun murders in the United States annually. The fact that you assume ‘assault weapons’ to be a problem is laughable at best.

And I find it truly pathetic when people like you spout out uninformed and baseless dribble promoting prohibition. Look at how well the drug war is going if you want to see how effective a firearms ban would be.

Dysfictional: Gun Insurance

peashooter85:

dysfictional:

First thing, why on earth would americans need to have more than one gun? Why have a gun at all? I don’t think any massacre has been prevented by anyone with a concealed weapon, despite many claims otherwise.

American needs mandatory gun insurance on a per gun basis that will make giving up guns…

You make this sound like you are proposing a reasonable proposition to keep guns out of the hands of those who should not have them, but some key phrases really tip off you hand.  For example; “that will make giving up guns the responsible thing to do.”, which implies that all gun owners are in essence irresponsible for being gun owners and should turn them in.  “First thing, why on earth would Americans need to have more than one gun? Why have a gun at all?”, which shows your attitude that absolutely no one should have a gun for any reason whatsoever.  I believe that your attitude about gun ownership might be biased by current trends in the media to depict all gun owners as “gun nuts”, a stereotype which fits some but not all gun owners.  I for example have over 20 years experience with firearms, I am a target shooter, hunter, and antiques firearm collector.  I have been shooting since the age of seven, and have never had an accident, and take the utmost care to make sure that my firearms stay out of the wrong hands.

Not all gun owners are staunch absolutists, in fact many if not most feel that some reasonable restrictions need to be put in place.  I for instance do not feel that the idea of everyone being armed, teachers being armed, armed guards being placed everywhere is necessarily a reasonable policy. To me that is about as unreasonable as calls for wide-sweeping bans. I recognize that not all people are part of the gun culture, are comfortable with owning a gun, or are comfortable with a heavily armed society. That is reasonable and I don’t want to push my culture on others. I also feel that among some gun owners there is a very flippant attitude about gun culture, where people talk about having absolute rights but not responsibility.  There is truth in the saying “guns don’t kill people…”, but it needs to be recognized that guns are dangerous objects in the wrong hands.  I many or most states a person can purchase a firearm without having to demonstrate any knowledge in handling it or that he or she has sound mental capacity to do so.  A person with no experience with firearms, other than watching TV, can buy one without any restriction unless he or she has a criminal record, that is a recipe for disaster. 

I will agree that steps need to be taken, but when you make blanket statements lumping all gun owners together, implying that they are all irresponsible, and that there is no reason for anyone to have a gun in the first place, all you do is incense more hardline gunners, while alienating those who are willing to make some compromises.

“I don’t think any massacre has been prevented by anyone with a concealed weapon, despite many claims otherwise.” This is not true, there are many instances in which a weapon in the right hands was able to prevent an absolute tragedy. In 1997 a school principal with pistol stopped a gunman at his school in Mississippi.  In 1998 a restaurant owner with a shotgun was able to prevent a mass shooting in a middle school dance at Warren, PA. Around the same time as the Aurora massacre two teens tried to shoot up and rob an internet cafe in Florida, but was stopped by a senior citizen with a gun, the whole incident was caught on camera. The Oregon Mall shooting was stopped by a man with a concealed firearm. In Houston in Dec 17th, 2012 a shooter was stopped by an off duty sheriffs deputy who had a concealed weapon.  I’m not just cherry picking isolated incidences here, I could list hundreds, if not thousands of incidents where people have fended off attackers with a firearm, but alas I don’t have the energy, time, or writing space to catalog them all. The news likes to detail tragedies, they don’t report positive things because that doesn’t attract viewership, as dreadful as it sounds an incident were dozens are murdered is more newsworthy than an incident were the bad guy was stopped.  Of course there probably were time where someone failed to stop and attacker, where a gun in the hands of a good person wasn’t enough. Again I am not saying that everyone should be armed, that we should all take up guns and everything will be much safer, but the idea that it never happens or has happened is ridiculous. 

There is also a great myth that concealed carry permit holders are dangerous people, and that having such permits allows licensed killers on the streets.  Such was the supposition made by the Violence Policy Center, a gun control group generally considered the most radical among gun control groups by both sides of the issue.  Since 2007 they tally 370 incidents in which a concealed permit holder committed a violent crime. This data is taken from an actual counter they have called “Conceal Carry Killers”. So say its been five years since they started cataloging these crimes.  That is an average of 74 a year.  According to an MSNBC study there are six million conceal carry permit holders in the US today.  So break these numbers down: out of 6 million permit holders .0000123% will commit a violent crime.  According to the latest report from the US Dept of Justice Statistics, the violent crime rate of the country is 7.92 out of 1,000 people. Which gives a figure of .00792%.  In other words the statistics compiled by the VPC seem to suggest that conceal carry permit holders are among the most responsible and non-violent sectors of our society.  Much of this can be attributed to the fact that in many states you have to take various training in gun safety, proficiency, and law as well as mental health screenings.

Finally I will make the assertion that your attitude with firearms is just as dangerous as the most extreme group of gun nuts. To me you want to bury your head in sand to the fact that there is a strong gun culture in this country with over 300 million firearms, and say that it shouldn’t be so. This is a segment of the country composing somewhere between 40-50% of the populace. This attitude creates an aura of taboo around firearms, for many it is politically incorrect to talk about it.  Where I live everyone has guns, violent crime is low, and I have never in my lifetime heard of a gun accident, even though kids as young as 7 (such as myself) learn to shoot.  Why is this? Because here it is not something that is taboo, it is something people have a lot of experience with.  They are taught from an early age that guns are dangerous, they demand respect and care, they are not to be fooled around with.  Gun accidents mostly happen to the ignorant, a kid who has never seen a gun before finds one and tragedy occurs, someone with no gun experience buys one, poses like a gangsta on tumblr, and accidentally discharges it.  Or said person does not keep it safe, it gets into the wrong hands, and a tragedy happens.  Did you know that when I was in school gun safety and responsibility was a part of the curriculum? It was taught alongside drugs, drunk driving, and teen sex, seriously.  And once or twice a year a police officer or game warden would come in to talk about guns.  Now this has been cut due to political correctness, does that really make things better?

Again I am not saying that you or your family should take up the gun culture and become like me, but there surely are some compromises we can make, some better policies we can come up with than irrational statements and nonsense one liners.

(Source: dividebynull)

NRA PRESS CONFERENCE

NRA PRESS CONFERENCE

12/21/2012

The National Rifle Association’s 4 million mothers, fathers, sons and daughters join the nation in horror, outrage, grief and earnest prayer for the families of Newtown, Connecticut … who suffered such incomprehensible loss as a result of this unspeakable crime.

Out of respect for those grieving families, and until the facts are known, the NRA has refrained from comment. While some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectfully silent.

Now, we must speak … for the safety of our nation’s children. Because for all the noise and anger directed at us over the past week, no one — nobody — has addressed the most important, pressing and immediate question we face: How do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works?

The only way to answer that question is to face up to the truth. Politicians pass laws for Gun-Free School Zones. They issue press releases bragging about them. They post signs advertising them.

And in so doing, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are their safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.

How have our nation’s priorities gotten so far out of order? Think about it. We care about our money, so we protect our banks with armed guards. American airports, office buildings, power plants, courthouses — even sports stadiums — are all protected by armed security.

We care about the President, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by armed Capitol Police officers.

Yet when it comes to the most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family — our children — we as a society leave them utterly defenseless, and the monsters and predators of this world know it and exploit it. That must change now!

The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them. They walk among us every day. And does anybody really believe that the next Adam Lanza isn’t planning his attack on a school he’s already identified at this very moment?

How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame — from a national media machine that rewards them with the wall-to-wall attention and sense of identity that they crave — while provoking others to try to make their mark?

A dozen more killers? A hundred? More? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?

And the fact is, that wouldn’t even begin to address the much larger and more lethal criminal class: Killers, robbers, rapists and drug gang members who have spread like cancer in every community in this country. Meanwhile, federal gun prosecutions have decreased by 40% — to the lowest levels in a decade.

So now, due to a declining willingness to prosecute dangerous criminals, violent crime is increasing again for the first time in 19 years! Add another hurricane, terrorist attack or some other natural or man-made disaster, and you’ve got a recipe for a national nightmare of violence and victimization.

And here’s another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal: There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.

Through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here’s one: it’s called Kindergarten Killers. It’s been online for 10 years. How come my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn’t or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it?

Then there’s the blood-soaked slasher films like “American Psycho” and “Natural Born Killers” that are aired like propaganda loops on “Splatterdays” and every day, and a thousand music videos that portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life. And then they have the nerve to call it “entertainment.”

But is that what it really is? Isn’t fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?

In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes — every minute of every day of every month of every year.

A child growing up in America witnesses 16,000 murders and 200,000 acts of violence by the time he or she reaches the ripe old age of 18.

And throughout it all, too many in our national media … their corporate owners … and their stockholders … act as silent enablers, if not complicit co-conspirators. Rather than face their own moral failings, the media demonize lawful gun owners, amplify their cries for more laws and fill the national debate with misinformation and dishonest thinking that only delay meaningful action and all but guarantee that the next atrocity is only a news cycle away.

The media call semi-automatic firearms “machine guns” — they claim these civilian semi-automatic firearms are used by the military, and they tell us that the .223 round is one of the most powerful rifle calibers … when all of these claims are factually untrue. They don’t know what they’re talking about!

Worse, they perpetuate the dangerous notion that one more gun ban — or one more law imposed on peaceful, lawful people — will protect us where 20,000 others have failed!

As brave, heroic and self-sacrificing as those teachers were in those classrooms, and as prompt, professional and well-trained as those police were when they responded, they were unable — through no fault of their own — to stop it.

As parents, we do everything we can to keep our children safe. It is now time for us to assume responsibility for their safety at school. The only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Would you rather have your 911 call bring a good guy with a gun from a mile away … or a minute away?

Now, I can imagine the shocking headlines you’ll print tomorrow morning: “More guns,” you’ll claim, “are the NRA’s answer to everything!” Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools. But since when did the word “gun” automatically become a bad word?

A gun in the hands of a Secret Service agent protecting the President isn’t a bad word. A gun in the hands of a soldier protecting the United States isn’t a bad word. And when you hear the glass breaking in your living room at 3 a.m. and call 911, you won’t be able to pray hard enough for a gun in the hands of a good guy to get there fast enough to protect you.

So why is the idea of a gun good when it’s used to protect our President or our country or our police, but bad when it’s used to protect our children in their schools?

They’re our kids. They’re our responsibility. And it’s not just our duty to protect them — it’s our right to protect them.

You know, five years ago, after the Virginia Tech tragedy, when I said we should put armed security in every school, the media called me crazy. But what if, when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday, he had been confronted by qualified, armed security?

Will you at least admit it’s possible that 26 innocent lives might have been spared? Is that so abhorrent to you that you would rather continue to risk the alternative?

Is the press and political class here in Washington so consumed by fear and hatred of the NRA and America’s gun owners that you’re willing to accept a world where real resistance to evil monsters is a lone, unarmed school principal left to surrender her life to shield the children in her care? No one — regardless of personal political prejudice — has the right to impose that sacrifice.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no national, one-size-fits-all solution to protecting our children. But do know this President zeroed out school emergency planning grants in last year’s budget, and scrapped “Secure Our Schools” policing grants in next year’s budget.

With all the foreign aid, with all the money in the federal budget, we can’t afford to put a police officer in every school? Even if they did that, politicians have no business — and no authority — denying us the right, the ability, or the moral imperative to protect ourselves and our loved ones from harm.

Now, the National Rifle Association knows that there are millions of qualified active and retired police; active, reserve and retired military; security professionals; certified firefighters and rescue personnel; and an extraordinary corps of patriotic, trained qualified citizens to join with local school officials and police in devising a protection plan for every school. We can deploy them to protect our kids now. We can immediately make America’s schools safer — relying on the brave men and women of America’s police force.

The budget of our local police departments are strained and resources are limited, but their dedication and courage are second to none and they can be deployed right now.

I call on Congress today to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school — and to do it now, to make sure that blanket of safety is in place when our children return to school in January.

Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation or anything else, as soon as our kids return to school after the holiday break, we need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work — and by that I mean armed security.

Right now, today, every school in the United States should plan meetings with parents, school administrators, teachers and local authorities — and draw upon every resource available — to erect a cordon of protection around our kids right now. Every school will have a different solution based on its own unique situation.

Every school in America needs to immediately identify, dedicate and deploy the resources necessary to put these security forces in place right now. And the National Rifle Association, as America’s preeminent trainer of law enforcement and security personnel for the past 50 years, is ready, willing and uniquely qualified to help.

Our training programs are the most advanced in the world. That expertise must be brought to bear to protect our schools and our children now. We did it for the nation’s defense industries and military installations during World War II, and we’ll do it for our schools today.

The NRA is going to bring all of its knowledge, dedication and resources to develop a model National School Shield Emergency Response Program for every school that wants it. From armed security to building design and access control to information technology to student and teacher training, this multi-faceted program will be developed by the very best experts in their fields.

Former Congressman Asa Hutchinson will lead this effort as National Director of the National School Shield Program, with a budget provided by the NRA of whatever scope the task requires. His experience as a U.S. Attorney, Director of the Drug Enforcement Agency and Undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security will give him the knowledge and expertise to hire the most knowledgeable and credentialed experts available anywhere, to get this program up and running from the first day forward.

If we truly cherish our kids more than our money or our celebrities, we must give them the greatest level of protection possible and the security that is only available with a properly trained — armed — good guy.

Under Asa’s leadership, our team of security experts will make this the best program in the world for protecting our children at school, and we will make that program available to every school in America free of charge.

That’s a plan of action that can, and will, make a real, positive and indisputable difference in the safety of our children — starting right now.

There’ll be time for talk and debate later. This is the time, this is the day for decisive action.

We can’t wait for the next unspeakable crime to happen before we act. We can’t lose precious time debating legislation that won’t work. We mustn’t allow politics or personal prejudice to divide us. We must act now.

For the sake of the safety of every child in America, I call on every parent, every teacher, every school administrator and every law enforcement officer in this country to join us in the National School Shield Program and protect our children with the only line of positive defense that’s tested and proven to work.

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