Virginia is a great state for gun rights. If anything we’re getting MORE rights than less, even from Democrats like Mark Warner.
But as far as the USA, after the Clinton gun ban, and with many of those same politicians still in Congress, it worries me.
I’m with you. I think it is the line that defines those core rights that is the difference between us. I saw guns get banned in 1994 through the same system you have faith in to protect your core rights. I just have a little less faith after now seeing the same people who voted for that ban claiming to be the friend of the gun owner.
Yes, some guns were banned in 1994. But “guns” weren’t. It was a bad law, but I can live with it. The attitude I am seeing of painting those people who are willing to support a candidate who is less than 100% pure on the “gun test” is a path that leads to overall failure as far as I can see. I appreciate this is an absolute for some, just as support for gay marriage is an absolute for others. The difference is my gay friends who cannot bring themselves to support a candidate who does not openly support gay marriage don’t think I am a traitor for supporting Obama/Warner.
That is great. I am happy for you. I really had high hopes with Bush as POTUS to roll back some bad legislation over the last eight years. Just goes to show that you cannot break down the issue simply by the D or R in front of a candidate’s name.
Why didn’t Warner run for pres?
That’s what I was saying - I oppose ALL weapon bans, but I’m not going to get my panties in a bunch about the AWB, and I won’t oppose a candidate just because they may support the AWB when they are on my side on a lot of issues that are a lot more important to me. A more comprehensive weapons ban could make me a single-issue voter, but not the AWB.
I understand, like I said. where that line is drawn is what separates us. The thing about the '94 ban that is so evil to me, and I am sick of typing it out, is that hundreds of guns were banned simply based upon how they look. Not their impact on crime, not their lethality, nothing else. An entire class of Congress and a sitting president thumbed their noses at the constitution to make it look like they were doing something. It is so frustrating to see other guns owners state that this was tolerable simply because they were not affected or did not own “assault weapons”.
Since it’s expiration, a few key words have been added to the legislation to reauthorize the AW ban, attempting to ban essentially ALL semi auto rifles and shotguns, banning transfers of said weapons and even banning transfers of hi cap mags. Not just the military look a-likes. Is this not the legislation that each of you are saying you would stand up against? Sure it has gone nowhere since released earlier this year, but Obama says he is in favor of the AW ban. Are we to believe that once the anti gunners have their party in control of the House, Senate and Whitehouse, these bills wont have a little more clout? It happened once, not that long ago. I don’t want to wake up one morning to see that the 2009 AW ban passed now banning future production of all domestic semi auto rifles and shotguns.
I am enjoying this debate and I am sorry if I get a bit heated. I also appreciate the fact that no one has questioned the size of my penis. It only took 5 pages in the UK thread to do so.
Read my post above. Does the threat of banning all semi auto guns, even .22’s, get you going?
Hey, I would stand up against the first ban; just not enough to make it the sole issue on which I determined my support for a candidate. Something has to directly personally affect a person, I think, for it to become a truely determining single issue.
Even if it got through the House & Senate (which it wouldn’t) the legal structure is different to 1994. It wouldn’t survive review this time.
No problem. All I want is that you remember we are on the same side. Hell, with all those semi-automatic rifles and high capacity magazines, I don’t want you pissed at me.
I haven’t heard anything about a ban on all semi-automatic weapons being added, and if it did, it would never pass. If I felt a candidate would succeed in getting a ban on all semi-automatic weapons, I probably would vote against them if it mattered (I live in Texas so my vote basically doesn’t count in presidential elections), but I don’t see that happening anytime in the near future. If they ban all semi-automatic weapons, then a very large percentage of weapons would become illegal, and it would be practically unenforceable. The reason the assault weapon ban was able to get passed is that a very small percentage of gun owners owned weapons that fell under that ban. I personally have only known one guy who had a weapon that would fall under the original AWB, and he was a nut who would probably be prohibited from owning weapons if he was ever convicted of some of the shit he pulled.
I know you’re joking, but all the people I know with large gun collections are smart, stable, well-informed people.
About half the people I know with large collections (i.e. more than 10 guns) seem off to me - not dangerous like the guy I mentioned in my last post, but a little obsessed with violence and with pretty oddball ideas about politics and government. I’m not saying that there is a direct correlation, but it seems that there is a certain type of personality that hoardes weapons. Plenty of people collect for other reasons who are perfectly sane (I know lots) but there are a lot of people out there who are a little crazy and own lots of guns.
Total bullshit.
Most of the people I know with really large collections are of the somewhat older sorts. They’re a bit eccentric. Usually of the ‘Former policeman’ version, but some are the ‘Okay, Grandpa. But now we have civil rights, and really, it’s not polite to call people niggers.’ version. Basically, really conservative, fed by the NRA, but… well… they’re old, and once you make allowances for old, they’re not that eccentric.
And being a cop kinda sours you on human nature. Especially a cop in the Bronx in the 60s and 70s.
The more contemporary people with big collections are, while somewhat conservative, to the left of the Birchers, and generally nice people. And much more serious about gun safety.
There are also a lot of young people - by which I mean, people under 25 - who are getting into guns and rapidly developing collections of their own. It’s a whole new and different generation of the “gun culture.” These guys tend to be very left-leaning on social issues, sometimes identifying as libertarian, and a lot of them are engineering students and computer programmers - driven, left-brained, intellectual guys, who completely destroy the common stereotype of gun owners. I’ve got a lot of friends like this. They are without exception (at least in my experience) exceptionally nice people.
That’s my experience…I don’t know many people my age with large gun collections. I know plenty my age and younger who have a few - a rifle or two, a shotgun, maybe a couple of pistols, but only one guy around my age who has (or had, he sold off a lot of them) more than 10 guns, and that’s the nut who also carries some kind of Klingon weapon (I think he called it a batleff) in his car and followed a guy home and chased him into his apartment with it after he cut him off in traffic. Also pulls guns on people all the time and beat a guy up with a baseball bat in another road rage incident.
Define large collection and I will add my observations…
I would define a large collection as being more than ten firearms with a couple of exceptions:
An avid hunter and shooter who would need at least 6 or 7 different kinds of guns for the different kinds of game they hunt: i.e. they have their deer rifle, their deer shotgun, their small bird and skeet shotgun, their turkey hunting shotgun, their big game rifle, their really big game rifle, their target practice pistol, their hunting pistol, their bear pistol, etc. They travel a lot to hunt different kinds of game and they may have multiple weapons for one kind of game because of legal restrictions, i.e. they can’t use a rifle for hunting deer part of the year, or their area has a pistol hunting season that they want to take advantage of. If most of your guns are different kinds needed for different kinds of hunting, that plus a few extras could come to more than 10 and I wouldn’t really consider it a large collection - they aren’t collecting, they are building a toolkit for their hobby. I don’t think I know anybody with a large collection who falls into this category though.
They inherited a large number of the guns or ended up with them for reasons other than buying them for themselves. As an example, my Uncle Raymond had a large gun collection - he collected because he liked guns, most of them were never used for hunting or anything else. My cousin Vance has more than ten guns but he got most of them after Uncle Raymond died.
They are in the business of buying and selling guns, either professionally or as a side-thing. They have more than ten at a time, but most of them will be in someone elses possession in a year or two, and they’ve only owned a smaller portion of them long-term. My Dad bought and sold guns as a hobby, and there were probably times when he had more than ten, but I wouldn’t consider him a collector - he just knew a lot of people and loved finding a bargain on something and reselling it for a small profit. He also did the same with cameras.
By the way, I currently only own one firearm, a 12-gauge shotgun I bought for home defense. I do want to get some more guns that finances don’t currently permit, but I only can think of three more I would like to have - I want a large revolver for defense, a smaller automatic for my wife to shoot for fun/carry in her purse when going out at night, and a semi-automatic rifle for target practice/hunting/“if the shit goes down”.
One tends to accumulate guns over time. Therefore, the older collectors would tend to be the ones with larger collections. Simple!
For the first, you can’t go wrong with a Smith and Wesson .38 or .357. For the second, I’m not sure - your wife should probably try out several guns.
For the third, if you really want one rifle that’s for “target practice/hunting/if the shit goes down” it sounds like you want an SKS. There are a lot of rifles that are more accurate, but the SKS has a few huge advantages. First of all the ammunition is basically the cheapest cartridge there is besides .22. You can buy big cases of 1,000 rounds for like 200 dollars. But it’s a powerful enough round to hunt with, if that’s what you want to do. Silver Bear makes a very good, accurate, hollow point 7.62x39 round. If the “shit goes down” and you need that rifle for God knows what - the SKS is super-reliable and made of incredibly solid, nearly indestructible parts. It’s exceptionally simple to disassemble, and it can function under the worst sort of conditions. You can get one for about 250 dollars. It is about the only semi-automatic military rifle that can be had so cheaply, but it is in no way a “cheap” firearm in terms of its construction.