benEzra
benEzra's JournalSince there are close to zero rifle murders annually annually in the entire state...
and none in Lexington, this proposal was asinine to start with.
If I understand correctly, it was a harmless Airsoft.
Meaning you could put your hand over the muzzle, fire it, and it wouldn't even injure your hand.
I wonder what the average sentence is for rape or armed robbery in New Jersey, because it is probably less than the penalty for possessing a toy that shoots harmless plastic pellets.
Colorado passed an unenforcable ban on any magazine over 15 rounds,
aimed squarely at gun enthusiasts and competitive shooters, which are abundant in Colorado. Statewide law enforcement vehemently opposed the capacity limit, which was passed by Bloomberg's people over LE objections, and most sheriff's departments have flatly refused to enforce it. That piece of idiocy ended Hickenlooper's hope of ever being a viable presidential candidate, which is a shame.
There was a bipartisan effort last year to at least raise the limit to 30 rounds, but a fundy lobbyist with NAGR or somesuch killed it.
Threatening to put your fellow citizens in cages because they live differently than you
*is* militarism of a sort, just aimed at your neighbor instead of somebody in a foreign country, IMO.
Advocating to change what troops do or do not do abroad, or opposing excessive LE use of force here at home, doesn't compel your neighbor to live by your beliefs. But threatening to put your neighbor in a cage because she or he peaceably chooses differently than you on gun ownership certainly does.
I don't care how you live your life; just live it to the fullest, and don't harm others.
That's totally fine.
It's when you want to force other citizens to live by your own choices that we have a disagreement.
Actually, the fundamentalists did hold social drinkers as responsible for drunk driving
and the ~50,000-100,000 alcohol related deaths annually. Just read the writings and speech transcripts of Carrie Nation, or Billy Sunday, or whoever.
The fundies were wrong, but that's the mentality people have when they get on a self-righteous moral crusade against what they deem sinful.
There is a huge amount of overlap between the rhetoric of the alcohol prohibition movement and the gun prohibition movement, in terms of rhetoric, hatred for responsible partakers of the "sin" in question, legislative goals, and apathy toward negative second-order effects of their proposed legislation. The alcohol prohibitionists viewed social drinkers who were blinded or killed by methanol-spiked alcohol as acceptable collateral damage, and sometimes praised as a lesson to "those people"; the extreme violence created by the "War on Alcohol" was viewed similarly. Much of that rhetoric and tactics carried over to the War on Drugs, the War on Contraception (remember the Comstock Laws?), and the War on Guns.
The only difference is that gun owners are a lot more organized and politically active than social drinkers were, which is why we have been quite a bit more successful even though alcohol prohibition and gun prohibition draw about the same level of popular support. It also helps that gun ownership and carrying is a specifically enumerated constitutional right, whereas alcohol consumption wasn't specifically listed because no one seriously thought it would ever be questioned.
A couple of years ago, I'd have been "meh" about it.
I have always felt that shall-issue CCW licensure is a compromise I could live with, satisfying both RKBA and the concerns of non-gun-owners.
Then, I went to renew my NC CHL again, that I've had since I moved here from Florida in 2003-2004, and found out that the state is now taking in excess of four months to issue your new permit, even though the background check requirements take only a few weeks and going past the already-excessive 120-day limit is illegal. At least in my county, NC is routinely violating that legal time limit, because the mental health records check that takes literally 5 minutes on an NC mental health records system wasn't being done because the agency doing them doesn't give a shit about legal requirements. And that to get an NC permit, you may end up paying upwards of $200 for the class and fees and losing a couple days of work to complete the process, pricing the working class right out of the picture. This directly targets the lawful and responsible members of the working class, while not addressing misuse at all. And the only way to carry during the illegally extended waiting period was to open carry, which I prefer not to do.
And then the Attorney General of Virginia announced he was unilaterally revoking the VA-NC reciprocity agreement, even though NC's training and licensure requirements are stricter than VA's, apparently as a personal favor to Bloomberg. Again, directly targeting the licensed, lawful, and responsible, and requiring open carry as the only legal alternative whenever I visit Virginia.
Meanwhile, criminals in NC *already* have permitless carry. If they want to carry a concealed gun today, they stuff it in their waistband and carry it. They don't care; why should they?
So, now? Yes, I'm all for "constitutional carry". Maybe it will help the gun control lobby stop setting its agenda based on hatemongering against gun owners, and pull them back toward the common ground that shall-issue carry licensure represents. If we have "constitutional carry", then prompt licensure easily accessible to the working class and based on reasonable de minimis requirements doesn't look so bad, does it?
300 million is a lowball estimate now,
and I'd estimate 99%+ are owned by people who can legally own guns under Federal law.
In the few states that require registration of protruding rifle handgrips or restrict post-Civil-War magazine capacities, or in a few jurisdictions where it is easier to get a gun on the black market rather than through legal channels, I'm sure the fraction of noncompliant ownership is higher. I'm not sure I'd lump an accountant with a 15-round Beretta in the same category as an armed robber or violent felon, though, even if you don't see a difference.
I know you want to make that percentage as close to 0% as you can get it, of course...
So you believe that income is strictly correlated with moral character, I take it?
And there should be an income test before you are allowed to own a gun? The working class need not apply?
FWIW, I used to live in a trailer park, the first year after I graduated from college and while my then-wife was still in school. I suppose we wouldn't have been considered "your kind" then; not enough green in our pockets.
You mean the same Maryland...
where the most popular civilian rifles in U.S. homes are now banned?
Yeah, all those calls to ban popular guns, curtail the ability of ordinary citizens to get carry licenses, and heavily restrict magazines and ammo are just NRA blather. No one *really* wants to ban "assault weapons" or over-10-round magazines, or guns without arbitrary feature X, no not at all...
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Gender: MaleHometown: Eastern North Carolina
Home country: United States
Current location: Eastern NC
Member since: Wed Dec 1, 2004, 04:09 PM
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