I think some of you are unaware that guns that look like pens. cellphones, etc. are highly restricted in the US, under the same laws that regulate the ownership of shortbarreled shotguns and rifles, grenades, RPGs, etc.
This is why there’s no real market for them here. If one is going to jump thru the hoops and pay the tax, why not get something that is actually fun to shoot instead?
Well, that and criminals don’t think they’ll get caught. Partially because they tend to be stupid.
People are scared of a lot of things. shrug
So true. The players never change and the posts are usually interchangeable. I suspect we could grab random posts out of assorted gun threads and no one could tell the difference.
Dio, “the media” glamorizing their twisted perception of guns and their owners doesn’t make them pro-gun. But there’s no way anyone will change their opinion at this point, so I’m not even going to bother supporting that statement
Oh, Una, don’t despair! I don’t remember who it was, so I can’t provide a cite, but I distinctly remember that at least two posters have said that discussions on this board helped change their minds about guns.
I’ve changed my mind about the subject some, too. It’s not just the board but that was one reason.
I do agree agree that the media can sometimes be very gun-phobic (three guns and a box of ammo is an “arsenal”? Puh-leeze).
However, I also agree that guns are waay too easy to get in our society. Personal experience: When my wife and I were living in Eugene, OR, a guy downstairs from us moved in (we found out later he was being “mainstreamed” from a mental-health hospice), and started acting very erratically - stomping and slamming doors all hours of the night, sobbing and screaming, pounding the walls, all kinds of shit. So after trying unsuccessfully to talk with him to see if I could help, I talk with the property managers, and they say they’ll take care of it (not telling us until much later that he was a mental case).
Long story short, before it was said and done, we had several run-ins with him - he accused me of making racist comments (he was black), he accused my wife of trying to poison him with Christmas baked goods:O, all kinds of crazy shit. We finally called the cops after he scared the crap out of my wife one day while I was at work.
The officer who responded was familiar with him, and when I asked about it, was told that he may have access to weapons since he had a years-old expired CC permit (this was told to us in confidence, since CC permits aren’t supposed to be public record in OR without a court order :rolleyes:), but since he hadn’t been convicted of a felony, or directly assaulted us, they couldn’t search his apartment for any weapons.
That right there changed the game for me - it went immediately from “oh, I could take this old guy if it came to it” to “oh shit oh shit oh shit, this crazy man will kill us”. I was afraid to go to work for fear of something happening to my wife; I was afraid every time I heard a bump downstairs that he would just start shooting into his ceiling.
He wound up getting carted off to jail after cornering me in a laundry room and directly threatening to kill me. He scuffled with the cops when they showed up, and that was all she wrote. And they found a handgun (but no ammo) in his apartment when they cleared it out (I only found out because the first officer I’d spoken with followed up out of courtesy).
Based on this experience (and the regular reportage of nutjobs going on rampages), I firmly believe that handgun and non-bolt action rifle purchases should be monitored and thorough background checks should be performed. As long as the NRA opposes this, I will oppose them. This has been a disturbing plank in the NRA platform, as it belies the wild-eyed belief that liberals (and by extension, I) want to take their guns away, or (as I read on one gun forum years ago) round up gun owners and put them in reeducation camps. :rolleyes: No, I just want to keep the big metals things that put holes in people out of the hands of the mentally unstable.
While guns are tools, they are tools designed to kill people - especially handguns, and the carbine/military-type weaponry that tend to be used in mass shootings, and purely coincidentally, tend to be favored by those types (at least the ones I know) who feel that armed revolution/total breakdown of society/terrorist invasion is a likelihood.
No one expects a Stealth Potato with a pen-gun.
[Crocodile Dundee]Now that’s a knife. And, also, a gun.[/CD]
It’s not just a felony conviction that is disabling in terms of firearms rights: mental health problems as adjudicated by a court of law will do it too. The fact that the guy had an expired concealed carry license is irrelevant – having the license doesn’t make it legal for you to own a firearm if there’s some factor prohibiting you therefrom. And, at least if the various enforcement agencies are doing their jobs, that’s precisely the sort of thing that’s supposed to come up in the background checks required for every purchase from a licensed gun dealer.
That’s not to say that the agencies are doing their jobs, unfortunately; it was just such a lapse that enabled Seung-Hui Cho to purchase the firearms he used in the Virginia Tech massacre.
The thing is, here in beautiful Oregon, one doesn’t need a permit or a license to own a handgun. Only for CC. Sure, Oregonians are subject to federally mandated background checks - if one buys a gun at a dealer, and not a gun show (of which there are many in OR) or from a private owner.
Not to mention the fact that the ATF rarely enforces the mandatory background check, and it seems pawnshops are somehow able to get around the issue due to loopholes in the “private owner” clause. Thanks, NRA!
In my case the expired CC license was an indicator he might have been armed, since he let it lapse, but he obviously kept his gun, or perhaps bought a new one.
I’m confused. Can you really go into a pawnshop in Oregon and buy without a background check? That’s very unusual.
I frequently laugh at people (especially around this place) who are so vehemently anti NRA. The wild eyed gun nuts view the NRA as a bunch of libtards working to take away our gun rights just to keep their own power in Washington. Keep bashing them from both sides and pretty soon a real pro-2nd group will get a little power and start doing the things people accuse the NRA of doing.
I just wanted to say Thanks to all the rabidly stupid anti-gun types this place draw like flies to shit.
Because of their contributions to this thread, and this Board, I was moved to go out today and pick up a Springfield Armory M1A.
As I’m typing this, I’m rubbing peanut butter on my nipples and masturbating, as I gaze lovingly at it.
Tonight, I’m driving downtown and trading it for a vial of crack to a drug dealer. In the meantime, I’m leaving it loaded and lying around a children’s playground.
Seriously: I’m shopping around for some furniture.
But I did buy the rifle.
Do you give yourself a mohawk yet?
You sure showed somebody, ExTank. 
And conversely, NOT having a carry permit doesn’t mean you can’t have a gun on your private property.
You talkin’ to me?
Sorry but that is just bullshit. Federal laws do not mystically “not apply” becasue one buys a gun at a “gun show”. If it was a dealer sale, it required a check. If it wasn’t, it didn’t. It mattered not where it took place. Thanks for adding to the sensation that spawned the OP in the first place.
Again, bullshit. The ATF takes FFL violations quite seriously. If you are convinced that dealers are not making the required checks, call the ATF. They will be up that dealer’s ass by the end of the day. If not, quit with the bullshit.
Regarding pawnshops, if they are FFL dealers, they have no exceptions to existing laws. If they are not licensed dealers, they are not subject to FFL rules and regs. You can thank the NRA all you want. The NRA supported the recent changes to Federal law requiring mental health to be part of the background check. Of course I’d hate to ruin your argument. Just keep blaming those kooks instead of facing reality. It’s much easier that way.
Perhaps the ultimate example of Hollywood’s depiction of this trope was an episode from the second series of “The Outer Limits”. Entitled “The Gun” and featuring John de Lancie and Stacy Keach, it featured an evil gun that cybernetically grafted itself to it’s user’s arm:
http://www.theouterlimits.com/episodes/season6/images/thegun_01.jpg
