March 1, 2016

So your position is that parents shouldn't be allowed to teach their kids to shoot?

Or is it that teaching kids to shoot "riot guns" and "sniper rifles" and "assault weapons" is OK, but not pistols?

Question: What states in the USA *don't* allow parents to take their 14-year-old to the range and shoot a pistol under their direct supervision?

March 1, 2016

Oh, come on. If they killed 200 a year, you'd still be trying to ban them. (n/t)

March 1, 2016

Well, portraying the *least* powerful rifles as the *most* powerful...

is kind of a big screwup, if it were actually a screwup.

I would say that it's a deliberate misrepresentation when the gun control lobby does it, but that's just me. An AR-15 isn't just "not high powered"; it's one of the least powerful rifles on the market, and one of the least misused of all weapons.

You do know that twice as many people are killed by bicycles as are murdered using rifles, right? Even shoes and fists kill more people than rifles do, per the FBI.

March 1, 2016

So a convicted felon who can't so legally much as touch a gun or a single round of ammo...

who is then served a restraining order that makes him doubly prohibited, gets his girlfriend to illegally buy and give him a non-automatic, low-velocity, low-ish powered rifle, which he uses to shoot innocent people in a posted no-guns zone.

This proves that the most popular civilian rifles in U.S. homes must be banned and confiscated from non-felons and the mentally competent, even though rifles remain the least misused of all weapons in America (less than 300 murders/yr out of 12,000+), and even though banning said rifles wouldn't do anything whatsoever to address criminal gun misuse or mass shootings.

If you want to know how the U.S. gun control lobby has been continually shooting itself in the foot since the early 1980s, there you go.

February 27, 2016

This doesn't authorize kids to use guns without close parental supervision.

It just changes the rules to treat handguns like long guns when it comes to teaching your child to shoot, like every other state (AFAIK) treats them.

And if a law is too stupid to enforce, it should be repealed, or else you create disrespect for the law. Saying that parents could legally allow their child to shoot a 12-gauge (.729 caliber) shotgun or a high-powered .30-06 rifle under their direct supervision, but not a .22 pistol, was asinine. And misuse of guns by children, as well as allowing unsupervised access to children, is strongly addressed by other laws, not this one.

"But kids often shoot people by accident"

Not under their parents' direct supervision, they don't. Most "child with gun" incidents are when a very young or untrained child finds an unsecured gun when their parents aren't around, not when their parents are teaching them to shoot. And teaching your kids gun safety actually makes that kind of thing less likely, not more. Just like teaching your kids to swim makes them less likely to drown, and teaching them how to safely build, manage, and extinguish a campfire makes it less likely that they'll accidentally start a house fire and burn your house down.

Gun safety is a learned behavior, and is not well served by "abstinence only" education.

February 25, 2016

Ummm, disparate impact?

Not to mention that there is plenty of court precedent overturning similar bans on low-income residents owning guns, including in public housing, on equal-protection grounds.

This shows, again, that the gun control lobby's idea of "reasonable gun control" includes no guns at all, at least not in the hands of people who aren't wealthy enough or have the wrong color skin.

February 25, 2016

The "true purpose" of the bill is to prevent parents from being jailed

for teaching their child how to shoot, using a handgun instead of a long gun. Previously, Iowa had a weird law on the books that made shooting with your kids a crime if it was a pistol instead of a rifle.

I learned to shoot at a young age, under close parental supervision, using a .22 pistol and a .22 semiautomatic rifle. That would have been a crime in Iowa, even though I'm sure the law was universally ignored if people even knew about it.

How would you feel about a law that made it a crime to take your kids fishing? Anyone who opposed such a ban just wants kids to drown, right?

February 25, 2016

And since we are talking about rifles, the actual number is less than 300/year. (n/t)

February 25, 2016

All rifles combined accounted for 248 reported murders in 2014, out of ~12,000.

Murder, by State and Type of Weapon, 2014 (FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 2014)

[font face="courier new"]Total murders...................... 11,961
Handguns............................ 5,562 (46.5%)
Firearms (type unknown)............. 2,052 (17.2%)
Clubs, rope, fire, etc.............. 1,610 (13.5%)
Knives and other cutting weapons.... 1,567 (13.1%)
Hands, fists, feet.................... 660 (5.5%)
Shotguns.............................. 262 (2.2%)
Rifles................................ 248 (2.1%) [/font]

Two states didn't report, so the actual number is probably around 270. For all rifles combined---centerfire or rimfire, straight-stocked or "assault weapon", all of them.

February 25, 2016

The gun control lobby burned that bridge

when they decided to fight for banning Title 1 civilian guns.

Even the NRA was talking about being open to UBC's, sans registration, until the "assault weapon" fraud derailed the discussion, and ultimately derailed the entire gun control movement.