Also, Heston is no longer the NRA President. He Stepped down a month or so ago and a guy named Kayne Robinson was elected in his place.
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/136/nation/New_NRA_president_lacks_Charlt:.shtml
"The right of the “states” to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated
If the founding fathers meant “states”, they would have said so, they were not stupid nor illiterate.
A bullet from any common deer rifle, even the 100 year old 30-30, will go thru most police “bullet proof” vests.
Furthermore, with the standard defensive firing procedure of “2 shots to the chest, 2 shots to the head”, a bullet proof vest is of little value.
Regarding assault weapons, this from the Brady web site
Yep, you need 100 rounds of ammunition in your weapon for self defense, or for target practice.
Regarding assault weapons banning: from another Brady page,
Yep, the NRA is fighting for our safety. No closed minds there, nosiree.
Sorry MSU 1978, but from way back there has been an “unofficial” truce declaration on GD’s in GD to not use blatant pro- or anti- sites.Not that I’m telling you what to post, please, it’s just a credibility issue for either side…
My apologies, BF, I was unaware of any such custom. I shall likely have no difficulty proving the truth of the Brady site quotes through more neutral sites when I get some time.
Nor should you be aware of any such custom, for it does not exist. If BF has a problem with the factual assertions in your sources, the ball’s in his court to prove them wrong.
Geez, minty, IIRC, you were one of the parties who thought this was a good idea. I don’t have a problem with posting from either side, but it helped eliminate the he said/she said bickering on who’s side was right. The crux was to eliminate the hyperbole and try to get to the meat of the issues. Please correct me if I am in error.
Yeah, actually I do need high capacity magazines when I’m doing target practice at the range because I have to pay for range time, and it’s not cheap.
The going rate for one hour of range time is $35 at the range I frequent. Loading magazines at the range then becomes extremely expensive if it doubles the amount of time I spend at the range, considering that I’d pay the range $70 for two hours instead of $35 for one hour if I loaded some 20 round magazines instead of the same number of 10 round magazines. I’m not made of money, and I already spend enough of it to go into a safe and controlled environment to do my target shooting.
Lord knows we need to keep a law that was passed to save us from guns that the US Department of Justice said were used in .20% of gun crimes. (To be fair, I have seen a number as huge as 1%. What will we ever do?)
MSU 1978:
That door swings bothways, my friend.
Philly Style:
Ahhh…another “enlightened” mind, questing truth, knowledge and wisdom chimes in.
militia:
Pronunciation: m&-'li-sh&
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, military service, from milit-, miles
Date: circa 1660
1 a : a part of the organized armed forces of a country liable to call only in emergency
1 b : a body of citizens organized for military service
2 : the whole body of able-bodied male citizens declared by law as being subject to call to military service
[quote]
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The Classes of the militia are:[ol]
[li]the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and[/li][li]the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.[/ol][/li][/quote]
Well, golly gee willikers. Huh. I’m in the militia! Since its put down in federal law, (one might even say, regulated, yes?), then I guess I could further say that I’m part of the well-regulated militia.
Being a person, the plural of which is people, I suppose that I have the right to keep and bear arms.
Huh. Imagine that. How’d that happen?
Back to MSU 1978 with this gem:
Actually, it is efficient. You see, most gun ranges, even public ones, charge by the hour, not counting the odd “specials” they run on discounted range time. Now I suppose I could just step out into my backyard, post a target on the side of my neighbor’s house and begin blasting away 10 rounds at a time, but I don’t think that this is a particularly neighborly act.
So I shoot, safely and legally, at shooting ranges. That usually charge by the hour. Since I’m paying them to shoot, not stand there on the firing line reloading my 10 round magazine(s) over and over again as I burn through a couple hundred rounds of .223, I have aquired many 30 round magazines, and load them at home before going to the range.
I shoot because I like to; I’m not practicing to “blow away” hundreds of people, mow down the kiddies in the schoolyard, or to shoot up the army or the cops when I get tired of paying my taxes.
I also swing away at batting cages, and (golf) driving ranges, because I like to exercise precise physical control in one locality to produce an effect in another locality. Whether I’m hitting baseballs, golf balls, or putting bullets through targets anywhere from 25 yards to 300 yards away, it’s pretty much the same thing.
A physical and mental discipline to produce a desired effect.
John Harrison: well, you know, Sarah Brady says every little bit helps. :rolleyes:
minty: it has been customary since The Straigth Dope was on AOL to not use blatantly pro- or anti- gun sites in GD debates. As BF said, it helps to curtail the “my expert is more expert than your expert” BS.
Although I think that, given the politicized/polarized nature of the national-level debate, finding a truly neutral cite is next to impossible. However, I think that it is fairly safe to say that the Brady Bunch, in whatever incarnation they are currently in, and the NRA have their own partisan agendas. As such, they are acknowledged to be much more biased than other pro- or anti- sites.
You may find that most gun owners/pro-rights groups distrust the CDC, since Congress had to censure them in '97 or '98 for sponsoring, with government money, blatantly anti-gun research. Both the AMA and NEJM are also suspect, as they have publicly announced their allegiance to the anti-gun cause (individual physician’s views notwithstanding). I tend to at least view their research (when presented) and judge it on its own merits, but, I fully acknowledge, with a certain skepticism.
Guys, I honestly have no idea where you’re getting this idea that it’s not kosher to cite a partisan voice in a partisan debate. If that’s the case, I invite you to retract every reference you’ve ever made to John Lott.
On the other hand, if you have anything that contradicts the factual assertions in the material MSU quoted–and those were completely banal and uncontroversial assertions, as far as I can tell–then by all means, post a rebuttal. Dismissing a straightforward factual assertion on the basis that it comes from–Oh, the humanity!–the Bradys is no rebuttal at all.
Thems fightin’ words, AD. All good serial killers are three namers…John Wayne Gacy, etc…
-Which made the “cop killer” bullet legislation all the more silly. Most of the laws wanted to ban the bullets by material and by power or performance (IE, could it go through body armor.)
Thus, had the law or laws passed, nearly all ammunition would have been banned.
But when the NRA fights such a draconian law, the media tells everyone they’re “fighting to keep ‘cop killer’ bullets on the street and in the hands of criminals! They must want to see police officers murdered!”
-That’s a technique taught to police officers and special operations types, in response to the ever-wider use of body armor.
When most of the “cop killer” laws were tried, in the late 70s and early 80s, the fact that officers even wore such armor was not very widely known. And the technique you describe was not very widely taught since very few bad guys wore armor.
Almost no bad guys learned the technique, since they neither take that sort of training nor really knew the officers had that sort of protection.
But when the vests were publicized during the “cop killer” media circus, it quickly got around to the the criminal element that hey, the cop might have a bulletproof vest! Leading the somewhat smarter ones to realize they ought to aim for the head or groin.
So basically, in order to make an anti-gun point about a non-event involving a product available only TO police officers, the media essentially took away one of the officers’ best “aces in the hole” that was proven to save lives.
Hoooooo boy. You have no idea how fucking wrong that is, do you?
First off, lets get the minor shit out of the way. I’m not a parent. I’m “only” 23, and not planning on having kids.
Second, you’re not exactly in a possition to be lecturing me about the “life changing experience” of a school shooting. Considering the way you talk about it, I doubt you’ve been in one. I have. I saw my friend shot in the back of the head and killed less then four feet in front of my face. A total of seven of my friends and aquaintances were shot that day. My brother had a bullet fragment lodge in his shoe, right against his foot. About 15 other students were shot, too.
He did it with a Ruger 10/22 (Well, all but one shot, the last, which was with a 9mm Glock). You know, the sterotypical “first gun,” a simple little .22LR rifle. The exact same make of rifle that I enjoyed going to the range to plink with.
So why am I not for the banning of all firearms? Because I don’t let panic and emotion (Much less, lies and misdirection) short-circuit common sense and reason. Considering your appeal to emotion, and the obviously poorly-thought mention of teflon bullets and TEC-9s, you aren’t even attempting to use either of those.
And you know what? I’m glad he had a gun. Why? Because his original plan was to take some of the various explosives he had made, take them to school with him, and detonate them in the middle of the crowd. Some were quite advanced, including one that was so powerful it would have caused “serious structual damage” to neighboring houses (In a fairly sparse area, his house was on a large plot) had it detonated. And he had planned on setting it off in the assembly that day, when the whole school would be gathered in the gym. I probably wouldn’t be alive now if he had done that. Instead, he took a gun.
…And if you can’t tell, I get really pissed when people start using school shootings as an example of how gun-rights people are supposedly being disrespectful or callous towards children by exposing them to violence just to further their political goals… When in fact, it’s you politicising what some children have gone through - myself included - to promote your opinions. For instance, implying that that one parent is an “evil” gun nut for still supporting the NRA after their child was killed, with the further implication that the NRA increases school shootings, is idiotic and wholey unsuported. And the implication that I am some “gun nut” encouraging school shootings when I helped to end one is not going to help you at all.
Such appeal to emotion has no weight with me, nor any of my friends that were there that day. Try supporting your views with something a little stronger than the tired “think of the children!” wail.
(As an asside, the more and more I learned about the NRA in the years since, the better and better it looks)
I never claimed that. I was just saying, that the first part of the amendment expressly said that a “well regulated” militia is neccesary for the security of a free State. It follows that the people (the militia) are subject to whatever regulations the Free State wants to implement upon itself.
If your average Joe wants to run around with a machine gun and his Free State’s regulations say otherwise, his Second Amendment rights aren’t being taken away.
However, if a State wants a militia to protect itself and the Federal Government wants to stop them, THAT would be a Second Amendment violation.
Thanks, Phoenix.
minty: show me where John Lott, an individual doing scientific/mathematical/economic research is specifically biased towards the pro-gun side of things.
Oh wait…he wrote a book about it didn’t he? In which he claims :rolleyes: that he didn’t have any firm opinion going in, but that he was somehow convinced by his (obviously) biased research that More Guns=Less Crime.
No, John Lott almost certainly had an agenda going into his little research project.
Ya know what? I read his book. He explained his research methodology in a fairly straightforward way, such that a reasonably intelligent non-statistical mathematician could understand the concept, if not the math.
And all I get back from the ballyhooers nay-saying his work is a bunch of arrogant, not-so-concealed intellectual condescension, along with crap like, “Well, you see, Lott didn’t control for the expanding coefficient of the fractional quotient of the sidreal non-sollopsistic portion of the non-gun-owning, non-criminal, false positives and true negatives. Only by doing that, and dividing what he knows about you, can he truly determine which cup actually has the Iocaine poison!”
Now, given some other stuff I’ve heard about him, I can kinda say that maybe John Lott ain’t the best poster boy for the gun rights movement. Then again, neither is Michael Bellesiles the best poster boy for Sarah Brady and her ilk, either.
MSU’s quote from the Brady Bunch kind of falls down on its own merits, and I would let it stand if there weren’t gullible fools out there falling for every word of it hook, line, and sinker.
So what was the damned point anyway? We banned alcohol once, and it didn’t work out so hot. We’ve banned drugs, and we ain’t doing so hot there either. We’ve banned certain kinds of guns, and yet the Bradys readily admit in their own press releases that them danged furriners have gone right ahead and :gasp!: figured out a way around a crappily conceived, poorly written law.
How dare they?!
Yes, so what? One has nothing to do with the other. The NRA never has supported mowing down game animals with fully automatic weaponry (well, they might make an exception for gophers and prairie dogs), but whether you have a 30-06 with one shot or twenty is largely irrelevant to hunting. If you have twenty deer tags, does it really make a difference if your rifle is a single-shot bolt action Winchester Model 70, or an M-1 Garand with 8 rounds, or a FN-type rifle with 20? 30?
Bottom line: if you get caught bagging more deer than you have tags for, you’re in deep kimchi Arkansas, and it has little to do with how many rounds your rifle can hold. Which has nothing to do with the NRA’s support of large capacity magazines, as they aren’t supporting them for hunting purposes. They’re supporting them on General Principle. See my previous post about range time, and the simple cost-benefit analysis of having several high-cap magazines pre-loaded before going to the range.
MSU’s Brady quote is a non-starter, and irrlevant.
“So what?” you’re going to say (it’s what you always say).
You’ll follow up with something along the lines of, “There’s no benefit to society in allowing high-cap magazines, and some nut case is going to go on a shooting spree and do damage all out of proportion to what a single person should be capable of doing!”
And I’ll say (or someone else will say it), “But look at the very real benefit of having more guns and larger magazine capacities will do for society! John Lott did some pretty impressive research on the subject.”
And you’ll say (or someone else will say it), “But John Lott is a fruitcake, and no credible researcher will touch him or his research with a ten-foot pole.” Meaning, presumably, that no anti-gun biased researcher will touch it with a ten foot pole.
And back-and-forth we (or someone else) will go until around page 5, this thread will just wither and die as everyone on both sides realizes, for the umpteenth time, that this circular debate is going nowhere because the pro-control side, in their ignorance and smug moral rectitude, will finally piss off all the gun owners, and the otherwise sympathetic non-gun owners, into just dropping the whole damned mess.
“Well Regulated Militia” my ass! ass! ass! We the people ARE THE WELL REGULATED MILITIA!
Just because our government, IAW w/ the wishes and persuasive arguments of Alexander Hamilton, doesn’t compel its citizenry to muster and be counted, to drill and salute once a month, don’t change that fundamental fact.
If the governemnt did require us to, I would just chalk it up as the price of living in a free and great society, put on my cammies, grab MY M-16A2, and go to drill.
Actually, the NRA supported the ban on Teflon coated bullets, despite the fact that the Teflon coating was just designed to get the bullet to fire better down the barrel, it didn’t even assist with armor penetration. What the didn’t support was the original ban, which would have banned the vast majority of rifle ammunition (you know, those hunting rifles the gun control crowd always says they have nothing against). So the NRA compromised in that case by supporting a ban on handgun bullets with steel or other hard cores (and Teflon coatings, despite the irrelevance) in order to get rid of the ban on pretty much all centerfire rifle ammunition. So, that’s one area.
Another area was when the '93 Brady Act was being passed - the NRA worked out a compromise there too. That terrible, terrible NRA pressed to have criminal background checks, which can actually hinder criminal purchases in some way instead of just a waiting period, which does nothing but inconvenience law-abiding gun owners. It’s actually rather amusing to see the Brady Bunch take credit for mandatory background checks today, since they fought hard against them in favor of waiting periods.
Can you support that assertion with any actual facts, or are you just going to treat us to yet another GC drive-by?