- “Repeal the Second Amendment,” demands Bret Stephens, showing little knowledge of history or reality, but plenty understanding of anti-gun cliches.
- “Come and take them, Bret Stephens,” responds David Harsanyi.
- And D.C. McAllister says we need more men with guns. And more masculinity.
- But Republican congressthings will rush to throw bump stocks under the bus and the NRA will join them. (Still — sigh — it could be worse.)
- Eating their own. It was probably inevitable, but social-justice pecksniffs have turned their intolerance on the ACLU.
- I don’t often agree with The Nation but the Equifax apology tour is indeed an insulting charade.
- Ardently pro-life R-party congressthing won’t run for re-election after asking his secret mistress to get an abortion.
- Once upon a wall: an existential urban fairy tale.
Leftist hacks such as Stephens are really promoting tyranny. What do you expect for the New York Slimes!
And then… there are some like Bill, solid freedom blogger, calling for the idiots to repeal the 2A… for vastly different reasons, of course. Kill the Second Amendment: Let’s Get This Party Started! by Bill Buppert – http://zerogov.com/?p=5368
Not going to happen, of course, and I’m certainly one who would rather not start a war… but it will be interesting to see what happens if they bring the war to us whether we want it or not.
Bret Stephens is an idiot. I agree with Harsanyi and McAllister. NRA may just get my resignation. And I’m ordering a couple bump stocks this weekend, just because someone wants to tell me I can’t have one, so I’ll have two or three. They’ll be part of my ‘estate’. Ha!
The intent of the second amendment is that military weapons like machine guns, mortars and field artillery be common enough that any sufficiently large city (and not very large at that) should be able to field a fully equipped infantry battalion. Why is this relevant today? I give you Las Vegas where a lunatic of some stripe was able to spend a long time shooting at unarmed targets. In a society where ownership of military grade weapons is common the security at the casino and the concert venue would have had weapons capable of returning effective fire and not just side-arms. The problem in Vegas wasn’t too many rifles it was too few.
The true political tragedy in all this is the turndown in what was a positive slope of pro-gun legislation.
Unable to post a comment, so this is a test.
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Still unable to comment – when I copy my comment into the box, the Post button disappears.
Pat
October 6, 2017 7:47 am
Unable to post a comment, so this is a test.
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Still unable to comment – when I copy my comment into the box, the Post button disappears.
I’ve had the same thing happen with longer posts. Pat, a work-around that I’ve used is, compose the post in an editor on your computer, then post the first sentence and click on the “Post Comment” button, then edit the comment (you’ll have 5 minutes to do so) and paste the rest of the post and click on “Save”.
That very thing happened to me yesterday as well. When I shortened the comment the Post button reappeared. Weird.
Also, in regard to that Denise McAllister article: I don’t remember the last time I saw anything in print actually extolling masculinity. It seemed very odd, almost like advocating for something *bad*. Weird indeed, that the Overton Window slipped so far.
Joel — It happens to me on your blog every time I try to post a longish comment. This is the first I’ve heard about it happening here. (Damn.) My solution has always just been to use a browser other than Firefox. But now that it’s happening here, I’ll hunt around and see if this is a known bug. Can’t have that!
Pat — I’ve emailed you.
It should be remembered that at the time the 2nd Amendment was written, the militia had BETTER firearms than the British military (as well as better sharpshooters). The long rifles were an advantage over “British issue,” an advantage that machine guns or bump stocks could utilize today against terrorists’ tactics, as Mark Leigh has said. I wonder how many terrorists or lone wolves would dare attack a crowd if firearms were in evidence at a concert, theater, or any public gathering?
The political cowardice of NRA is unworthy of gun-owners everywhere, and I hope their current decision to call for legislation against bump stocks will convince a few thousand more to drop their membership. Local gun clubs could sponsor education and target practice without NRA backing. In fact a national sponsorship is probably self-defeating; if several smaller firearm groups around the country, along with concerned media such as hunting/fishing/bow-hunting magazines, applied pressure across specific interests, the politicos would have no single “enemy” to put pressure on in D.C., and would have to pay attention in their immediate home bailiwicks or be voted out.
The liberal anti-gunners are being out-numbered and out-swayed every time an attack takes place and the outcry against guns resumes. Gun-owners are NOT going to give up this fight, and it’s only political idiots who refuse to recognize this. In spite of general social media who only mouth what they hear, it’s the people with money who can lobby against guns – and they are, by and large, “representatives” who can still be kicked out at some point. Every time an attack takes place, not just here in America but around the world, gun-owners are tightening their gun belts, and more people are buying firearms to better protect themselves – in spite of what the law “allows.” People are becoming more afraid of being killed while going about their business than they are of the government. It’s too bad the “terrorists” brought this about, but it’s past time people woke up to the fact that government can’t – and won’t – help them.
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It worked, 1 paragraph at a time. Thanks to all!
I have to confess to being conflicted about bump stocks. I had never even heard of them before this week, and from what I (now) know they don’t seem to serve any real practical purpose. But of course, neither my personal ignorance nor my dismissal of their utility is any reason for them to be outlawed. Still, I wonder whether this is an issue worth going to the mat over. Fully automatic weapons have been illegal since the 1930s (unconstitutionally, in my opinion, but that’s not today’s issue), so outlawing a little gadget which (to some extent) replicates that functionality shouldn’t be much of a leap even for a gun “fetishist”. On the other hand, do we want to concede even an inch to the gun-grabbers? You know they won’t be satisfied, and will keep coming back for more. What to do?
I just can’t seem to work up any outrage over this, so unless someone can convince me I should be concerned I think I’m going to just sit this one out. I have more pressing things to worry about.
“On the other hand, do we want to concede even an inch to the gun-grabbers? You know they won’t be satisfied, and will keep coming back for more.”
I think that’s the heart of the issue. That and the way gun banners eternally find convenient scapegoats to want to ban after every mass killing.
I’ll let somebody else argue for the sake of bump stocks themselves.
But I have shot full-auto, courtesy of a friend who reads this blog (it’s not illegal; just taxed, licenced, and complicated). And while it was a ton of fun and a good learning experience, and definitely shouldn’t be so restricted, it doesn’t seem terribly useful.
Bret Stephens got a great many things wrong in his article, but I shall just respond to one. “From a personal liberty standpoint, the idea that an armed citizenry is the ultimate check on the ambitions and encroachments of government power is curious.” I did a little research, and a little math, a couple of days ago. This is what I found. There have been roughly 720,000 murders with guns in the U.S. in the twentieth century. R.J. Rummell, professor at the University of Hawaii, made the case in his book Death by Government that about 200 million people were killed by their own governments worldwide in the twentieth century. With the U.S. having about 5% of the world’s population, we should have expected about 10 million Americans to have been killed by our government in that time. That is roughly 14 times the number of murders by private actors. People say that that sort of thing could never happen here, in this progressive country. These government murders were committed in dozens of different countries, including very “progressive” nations like early twentieth century Germany. They even had socialized medicine starting in the days of Otto von Bismarck, the first major country to go down that rabbit hole. The difference in the U.S. is in our right to keep and bear arms. So it would appear that an armed citizenry was indeed the ultimate check on the ambitions and encroachments of government power.
Easier “Post Comment” workaround (that at least works for me):
Finish your post, put the cursor at the end of it, and press the “Tab” key.
I’m not one for conspiracies, but the Las Vegas shooting stopped pro-gun legislation in Congress, and the baseball-field shooting stopped pro-gun legislation in Congress. Both were aimed at conservative targets. (I know, but the Republicans are perceived as “conservative.”)
Back when I was teaching Infantry Basic Combat Training we had a demonstration showing that “spray-n-pray” isn’t nearly as effective as aimed semiauto against visible targets, even out at 300 meters.
There just seems to be a whole lot about this incident that doesn’t make sense. http://thefreethoughtproject.com/iraq-war-vet-police-delay-las-vegas-shooting/ There were cameras in the hallway outside his room, for example. If someone were acting alone, why would the person bother with that?
I had a friend say a long time ago that full auto is a way to turn money into noise. I toyed with the idea of getting a Class III firearm but decided it had no practical use for me as an individual and that it would just cause me to waste ammo in a survival situation or get me in serious legal troubles if used in self defense. There have been other devices, such as Tac-Fire (I’m not sure of the exact name and I can’t find it on the ‘net, so it may have been banned) which affected only the trigger mechanism. All of these devices, I believe, depend on the shooter’s holding the correct amount of pressure – not too much, not too little – to make it work. In a dynamic situation where incoming rounds are in play such devices will be difficult to employ at best. The only “practical” use I can envision would be shooting into a defenseless crowd.
A friend (now deceased) had another friend (who had significant heart problems and still smoked the last time I saw him) convert a .22lr rifle to also fire when the trigger was released, meaning two shots for every pull and release. He said he had a letter from the BATFE stating this was O.K. I still would rather have only one shot, both for moral and liability reasons.
You may have fixed the submission problem, for the above was accepted using Firefox on an iPad.
I just came across this; at 2:45 he discusses the time line which explains it more clearly and puts the responders in a much better light. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D7QUcDa_mEo
His videos of actual shootings and stabbing with his comments are really quite instructive https://activeselfprotection.com/?doing_wp_cron=1507389281.4661960601806640625000
“In this world riddled with evil, with growing centralized power, I want a good man with a good gun standing between me and those who want to strip me of my freedoms and my life.”
It is my intention to be that man till death! And after that have my sons & grandsons (& hopefully theirs to follow) be that man also.