The ones I call “nuts” are the ones who are preoccupied with the issue to an irrational and obssessive degree. There are a lot more significant things to worry about in the world than whether or not they can be allowed to play with machine guns. I find the preoccupation childish and self-absorbed, and the rationalizations (like how they’re going to fight off the government) laughable.
It’s also not really comparable to reproductive rights or gay rights because those rights are important, and gun ownership is not. It’s just an anachronistic error in the Constitution that we are now stuck with (and must deal with the ramifications of), but which is not a right which actually matters.
The “ammunition shortage” is more of a perception than a reality, IMO. If you’ve been involved in shooting long enough, you’ll recognize that ammunition being relatively scarce and expensive is actually the normal state of affairs. When I was a kid, guns were commonly owned; but huge hoards of ammuntion were not. More typically, a gun owner would have a box or two of ammo for each gun. As a college kid, I owned several millitary rifles I never shot, my Carcano for example, because a box of ammo exceeded the cost of the rifle!
Reloading became popular in the 60’s and 70’s primarily as a way to be able to shoot affordably. In the very late 80’s, shooters began to benefit from a bounty of surplus ammunition imports. Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, even more surplus ammo became available along with new production ammo from former Soviet Bloc countries and China. In short, we had a decade or two of cheap and plentiful ammo.
Now, the supplies of surplus are largely exhausted. The new production stuff is more expensive due to war consumption and to increases in metals prices, but it is available.
So, it isn’t so much that there is a shortage as it is that there is no longer a glut. Obama deserves neither praise not blame for any of this.
Shooters will simply need to relearn skills like bullet casting and reloading if they want to shoot in large quantity. Those who enjoy things like going to the range and burning through 30 round magazines as fast as they can pull the trigger will be well served to concentrate on marksmanship and making every round count, instead.
Matters to you, that is. Others might disagree and say reproductive rights and gay rights don’t matter. I’m of the opinion they all do. The right to bear arms is just as much a protected right, and should be, as any other right of a free people.
Of course it’s protected by the Bill of Rights, and the Bill of Rights should not be tampered with (whatever is left of it after Bush, anyway), but that doesn’t mean it’s not antiquated and obsolete.
It’s still not the appropriate forum to use disparaging terms for those who disagree with you.
Besides, that’s not exactly what you said. You said it didn’t matter. If it didn’t matter why would SCOTUS take up the issue?
The Second Amendment is just as relevant as any other Amendment. When was the last time soldiers showed up at anyones house demanding a room? The 3rd amendment is still important though, isn’t it?
Gun control is not a strictly Republican issue, there are plenty of Democrats who don’t support it too. Obama is wise enough to know that gun control is not where he should be spending his political capital, and that the nation has far more pressing issues right now.
We’re only a year in, so I won’t say it’s off the table, but I would be surprised to see him attempt anything like another AWB. If he did, I think it would be a parting shot in the last days of his first term, should he not get re-elected.
Of course Obama is not going to please the Brady campaign. He has said all along that different gun law is appropriate in different areas. This is one area that Obama has done exactly as I expected. I am sure he understands why it would be nice to have fewer guns in urban areas, but he has acknowledged that what is appropriate for Chicago may not be appropriate for Alaska.
I think people are saying he is going to take away guns just because nuts will find this scary, that and they own stock in ammo companies.
Yet he and his AG both support a ban of certain looking weapons at the Federal level.
Look, I’m glad that he hasn’t done anything regarding gun control. I expect there to be a huge glut of ammo and severely discounted guns on the market sooner or later. The fact is however, that he has made it clear where he stands on the issue, especially concerning the AW ban, one of the most worthless pieces of legislation ever forced upon We The People. I am concerned that it is not a case of if, but when, the issue will be brought up again.
No it doesn’t. This is the biggest fallacy about the 2nd Amendment – that it gives citizens some kind of check on the State. It gives them nothing of the kind. Any half-assed “citizen militia” would be bugs on a windshield against the US military.
I know, I know, the fantasy is that the military will join the rebel cause. I find that implausible in the extreme, but if it does, then the citizens don’t need guns, do they? If the US military is on your side, then citizens with deer rifles are just going to be redundant and irrelevant, and probably in the way. If the military is not on your side, then all the small ordnance in the world isn’t going to help you. The armed civilians are irrelevant either way. The side with the military wins. The civilians just watch.
Just about anybody who thinks about this realizes taht the idea is NOT that the citizen army can rise up and crush the US Military. It can’t, not in a stand up fight.
But a US based insurgency against a hostile and occupying army (our own included) would be phenomenally effective. If you don’t think so, you are more delusional than those you are downplaying.
And yes, as a matter of fact I do believe a surprising amount of military grade hardware would find its way into the insurgency hands.
And the partisans in Yugoslavia, the Baathists in Iraq, the Mujahideen of Afghanistan… all just “half-assed citizen militias” who gave modern, well-trained, and efficient militaries an enormous amount of grief.
Sorry Diogenes, that argument is just patently false. Recent history is ripe with examples of relatively poorly-armed irregulars organized into highly-effective guerilla forces. Combine the notion of a well-armed citizenry with the fact that many of these half-assed militias will have a core group of ex-military veterans with combat experience, an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the standing army, as well as counter-insurgency and MOUT, and it makes for an intimidating force that no wise military commander would be inclined to treat lightly.
The real “fantasy” here is your idea that, when the shit hits the proverbial fan, these militias are going to be composed of right-wing neo-nazi bubbas who get off on running around the woods in hunting gear. I contend that these peace time militia movements will be very quickly marginalized and replaced by a group of “regular guys” who have reluctantly taken up arms against a government they once loved.
