After Operation Desert Shield and Storm, I was stationed at Camp Blackhorse in Doha Kuwait with the 11th ACR. We were an Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR), which basically means we were a self contained unit. For each squdron, we had 3 Cav troops- Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie, which had two platoons of cav scouts in Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and two platoons of M1A1 tanks, and a mortar section for each troop. We also had Delta Company, which was nothing but armor (tanks), then a howitzer battery, our own medics, etc. Basically, a Regiment has three Squadrons with the makeup I described, and an Air Cav squadron with attack helicopters.
Basically, our mission for decades had been in the Fulda Gap in Germany to act as speed bumps when the Commies rolled through the valley. Our job was just to slow them the fuck down before the Armor deeper in country could mobilize and counterpunch. We were the guys who spent decades running border control between the West and East Germany. We were there when the wall fell, and we were there for reunification day in Germany
Back to the story. When we were in Camp Doha in Kuwait, we would have rotations. Alpha troop (my unit), would go run border missions in Iraq while Bravo troop would do maintenance on their vehicles (the sand just killed tanks and wore down our equipment), while Charlie troop be in what we called Z-phase, which was running the security for our base. We had towers and gates and 12 foot walls, and armed troopers at every gate with mirrors to look underneath cars and plenty of folks to investigate people coming in as civilians to run base operations (cook, give haircuts, etc.).
So why am I telling you this? Because in the middle of one of the most dangerous regions in the world, even with clear Rules of Engagement, every time I went on gate duty, there was a piece of tape over my ammo clip on my M-16 and M1911 .45. Why? Because the most heavily armed military in the world did not want accidental shootings. If a situation arose, I would have to eject my ammo clip, remove the tape, and reinsert and work the action before I could fire.
This was in a combat zone. Yet I have spent the last two fucking days dealing with armchair commandos telling me they need unlimited firepower to be safe in… Connecticut.
If there are bigger pussies in the world than gun nuts, I don’t know who the fuck they are.
chines
Bravo.
srv
You remember the opening of the original Red Dawn? If those Jr. High kids had had guns, they could have stopped the paratroopers cold.
Maude
When someone buys an assault weapon, in the back of their mind is the idea that they are going to kill someone. not out of danger, but hatred.
I read that the gun nuts are buying weapons because they are afraid that their weapons will be taken away.
When those weapons become illegal, they will have to surrender them or they will be in serious trouble.
They will have the right to remain silent.
The Dangerman
I nominate the Westboro Church shits going to CT (although I’m not sure a shit is comparable to a pussy, to say the least).
ETA: Fuck! Digital Dungeon again; given all the Tunch action around here, I figured I could get away with the p-word.
LT
Tweeted.
Villago Delenda Est
They are not pussies.
Pussies are tough. You came through one on your way to the world.
They are wussies.
Suzanne
The biggest gun nut I know is my friend’s dad. He brought his concealed handgun to his granddaughter’s birthday party because the play center didn’t have a sign forbidding it. When Obama got elected, he made plans to build a panic room in his basement.
But he really really loves Jesus. So he tells me.
LT
@Maude:
That’s just not right, and not helpful. I loved shooting when I had guns as a kid – because shooting guns is just fun. Making such a blanket statement makes me want to get a pile of crystals and shoot them.
toma
Bob ‘Confederate Yankee’ Owens was blog-selling a custom made AR-15 after Clackamas. I assume he’ll be selling a nifty Bushmaster .223 tomorrow.
Angela
John Cole, sometimes I love you. This post is a work of art.
Dream On
Sometimes I wonder if gun nuts lost their personal pair of nuts, and are trying to compensate. Dig the incorrect camouflage on these fools. Stick to the football, baseball and hockey, guys. Those are the sociable choices.
Can I also add that Balloon Juicers posters are the smartest, funniest and most interesting that I’ve found on the web.
LongHairedWeirdo
Yeah, but John, you were just *soldiers*. That means you work for the *government* and we all know that private citizens can do better than the government at *anything*.
Civilians can surely be trusted more with guns without such cruddy safeguards. And besides, when has anyone panicked and done something stupid in their first firefight?
redshirt
I hear the military’s got some nice health care too. Fucking liberals.
Bnut
@Maude: Riiigghhttt.
Maude
@LT:
You used an assault weapon? Really?
LT
@Maude: Jesus.
Read my comment again. What the fuck?
Quaker in a Basement
God bless you, John. Posts like this one are why BJ is a many-times-a-day stop for me.
MattW
I wish I had a Constitutionally-protected hobby.
Yutsano
@Bnut: I personally go for the penile size compensation/¿Quien es mas macho? theory as to why most of them big moar powerful guns. But YMMV.
Incidentally the only person I trust around a gun is anyone with military training. They get learned real well how the fuck dangerous all weapons are.
Gopher2b
We need to pick a group and make it the anti-NRA. That is the first order of business. Is it the Brady campaign?
Flying Squirrel Girl
I learn something every day here. It’s why I lurk.
electricgrendel
Having seen the gory miracle of vaginal childbirth, I kind of take exception with the use of the word “pussy” in this context. Wingnuts aspire to the force and flexibility of the average vagina.
Call them testicles. Funny looking hangers-on who run away given the slightest chance and seriously cannot take a pounding the way a vagina can.
El Cid
And no business owner (outside Wall Street & big financialists) lazier, whinier, and more callous than the gun shop.
The same assholes whining about “Fast and Furious” went ballistic when Bush’s ATF suggested that gun shops fill in a form if someone bought large numbers of weapons, ’cause, you know, FREEDOM, and also, gosh, a form, imagine the labor involved.
Dream On
But John – were you ever held captive – tied to a table – by the Viet Cong/Phoenix Weekend Warriors in the Arizona Superstition Mountains? Did you break free and take care of business?
If you haven’t, what do you soldier boys know?!?
Believe me, you don’t want to miss this video. And dig the product placement on that blue shirt.
zach
Justice Scalia’s finding in Heller that trigger locks are plainly unconstitutional because they render your handgun inoperable and thus prevent self-defense is pretty laughable in light of your anecdote about employing trigger locks in a war zone.
From the Heller decision: “We must also address the District’s requirement (as applied to respondent’s handgun) that firearms in the home be rendered and kept inoperable at all times. This makes it impossible for citizens to use them for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional.”
This is how Scalia and Roberts imagined a trigger lock might get in the way of using a handgun for self-defense in the Heller oral argument:
Being required to wait three seconds before shooting someone is unconstitutional. How in the world do we expect this to lead to meaningful gun regulation in the post-Heller legal landscape, and why isn’t there a well-funded effort to repeal and replace the second amendment?
Bnut
@Yutsano: I have noticed that the same people who ask if I ever killed anyone are always the ones who want to see my guns when they come over. It’s a bipartisan affair, either right wing a-holes, or hipster douches. I tell them no, you may not see, and do women and children count?
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
G doesn’t own a gun, has never owned a gun, and isn’t particularly interested in them.
I’m sorry, was I bragging again? ;-)
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@LT: So, LT, how many assault weapons did you fire as a kid? ’cause that’s what maude stated.
different-church-lady
@zach:
Maybe I’m just living some kind of charmed life, but never once have I ever been concerned with the idea that I might be murdered in my bed.
honus
I said pretty much exactly what you said a couple of threads below when one poster wondered about a gun lock that would allow him to access the gun fast enough if an intruder was in the house.
Maude
@LT:
You got to grow up. The 20 children in CT didn’t have that chance. It was because a murderer deliberately killed them with an assault weapon. These children were shot multiple times.
A 6 round pistol is not an assault weapon.
LT
@efgoldman: Oh gee, okay. I shot our .22 and a 12-guage and friend’s rifles when I was a kid and it was fucking fun. And if we had semi-automatics we would have shot them and it would have been fun, too, because, as I said, without any secret codes or extra words in invisible ink:
How much more fucking obtuse could you possibly be?
P.S. This:
Is still incredibly stupid, and indicative of a critical thinking ability on par with that of seaweed.
El Cid
@LT:
Salt? Silica? Gypsum? Oooh — geodes!
This is a new fetish. Surely there’s already a website / forum devoted to people who get off on shooting crystals.
LT
@Maude: Fuck you.
Jesus, you are awful.
Jay
Is there a progressive alternative to the NRA? Weird question, maybe, but there has to be a space for gun owners bullish about keeping firearms out of the hands of crazy people, making sure gun owners are always up on gun safety, and ensuring that civilians never, EVER pack hotter heat than the cops or military. It goes without saying that the NRA doesn’t give three fucks about this stuff.
There’s got to be a high – profile progressive or progressive – leaner out there who could lead such a group. Jim Webb is probably a bit too ornery. Wes Moore would be great (I’ve seen him thunder in a couple of speeches, “I’m a gun owner, but it’s a travesty that it’s easier to get a gun than it is to get health care.” How true.). If y’all don’t know him, look him up. Young, combat vet, Rhodes Scholar, enthusiastic (unlike alot of NRA knuckle – draggers) about the pluralistic America being born every day. I get a woman who carries a gun because she’s worried about sexual assault (Goldie Taylor, a favorite around here, recently wrote that she long had these worries, til Newtown made her turn in her gun, a decision I’d never rip anyone on.). I get a family buying a gun after a home invasion or robbery. But what I get above all is responsible ownership and use of guns. Guns have lethal power, and without legal weight behind that power, our justice system is worth shit. So if we need more and better laws, cool. But being a gun owner and supporting these kinds of progressive changes isn’t/shouldn’t be incompatible.
Yutsano
@Bnut: I know two Iraq vets. Both are really sweet guys. I would never think to ask them if they have killed someone. I can’t imagine what kind of rude asshole would ask that.
Mmm…snark!
@Mnemosyne: Oh BEHAVE!!
/Austin
Dream On
This would qualify as a (Safe for Work) new fetish form: Package shots of beer-bellied angry man.
Personal note: I lived in Tucson AZ for 4 years. Those are Saguaro cactuses in the background, and they require many many decades to achieve those heights. Yes, they are often riddled with ammo, they die. Tragic, because they are the only peaceful icons in the video.
Gus diZerega
@Villago Delenda Est: Nice!!!!!!
LT
@Maude: I’ll rephrase. You obviously were – as all of us here were – devastated by the murders in the elementary school. Let’s recognize that about each other, and also that we’d both and all here like to find solutions to this.
Please don’t put motives or beliefs on me that you obviously know nothing about. I called you out simply on your mind-reading statement about people who buy assault weapons. It was a dumb fucking statement. You dont’ know the thoughts of someone buying an assault rifle any more than you do of someone buying a pair of boots.
And because you may already be writing it – no, I don’t own an assault rifle. I haven’t owned any weapon since leaving my family at the age of 18 30+ years ago. And I live in Australia – and am very happy that semi-automatic weapons are banned here, and wish they were banned or very severely restricted in the States.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@LT: A couple of months ago, I had my oldest two shoot the shotgun I own, along with my dad’s 22. I wanted them to know what it was like to hold one, just in case, and also know how to properly be around one, because this is Texas. After about 20 minutes, we went inside because everyone got their turn. I haven’t heard anything about them since.
I wonder if a requirement for gun owners should be the same as the Republican’s I know statement about the president: The people that are best qualified are those that don’t want them.
gbear
On Facebook, a guy was just trying to tell the St. Paul City Council president that firearms were comparable to pit bull dogs. What a fucking stupid argument. I don’t have comment rights on the site but I wanted to ask him the last time a pit bull took out 20 people at once. Pit bulls are already regulated in some cities more than firearms. It’s pretty much impossible to talk to these guys using logic and sense.
I donated $35 to the Brady Campaign To End Gun Violence this evening. Not sure what else to do besides make phone calls.
Ken Burd
I could not agree more. The chicken hawks are clucking.
honus
@electricgrendel: You all need to credit Betty white on this.
RareSanity
What floors me about a lot of these idiots, is that they think that they are going to be in perfect control of all of their mental faculties, when they’re put in a life or death situation.
I was arguing with one these nuts once, and as he was waxing poetic about how he would save the day, I just look up at him and said, “You wouldn’t do shit but probably sit there frozen with fear.” Of course, he was offended, but I continued with an explanation of why.
I told him that his suburban, upper-middle class, college educated ass, has no idea how you would react when someone, with the intention of killing you, raises a gun barrel and points it your way. They’re not a paper target, and this ain’t paintball. They have a gun in their hand, they’re pointing at you, and they intend to kill you.
I went on to ask him what the hell he thought all of the training that military and law enforcement officers must constantly take was for…and even some of them, after all of their training, can hesitate when the front of a barrel is looking at them.
These people watch too many movies, and too much TV. When shit goes down, it’s going to be nothing like any of them have pictured in their minds.
I don’t even have to have been in a war zone, or any other life or death situation to know that. All of these John Wayne types, should be required (at their own cost), to navigate one of those police situational ranges, where the wooden targets pop-up at them, and some of it’s dark, there are loud noises and sometimes lights flashing. By whatever the criteria for pass/fail is, if they fail it, no guns for you…come back in a month and try again.
Something to give these idiots the idea that life is not some damn video game or movie.
Bnut
@Yutsano: People are fucking stupid. It happened when I lived in Brookyln, and it happens all the time here in Nashville.
Also, FWIW, I have done a few 3-gun events. It’s a great speed and skill event. It’s all about the competition, no different than skeet shooting at the Olympics. Yes, there are a few scattered nuts in the mix, but by and large it is former and current LEO and military who wouldn’t be caught dead with a CCW, open carry, or anything less than trigger locks, separate ammo storage and a good safe for all their weapons in the home. I guess I’m a Neanderthal though.
honus
@Dream On: The thing I notice in all these videos is that nobody is shooting back. That kind of thing can really affect your aim. As Major Sides used to say in military history class, it is hazardous to your health and can ruin your entire day.
Tim C
I would also point out I’m finding it quite ironic that the same people who have spent the last forever saying public school teachers like myself are incompetent nitwit parasites now think the ideal solution to school shootings is to give me a gun.
Really.
Really.
PurpleGirl
@zach: I was told by several gun owners/target shooters that if I wanted a gun for self protection at home, my best choice would be a pistol-handled shotgun, not my .22 Marlin rifle. Rifles and handguns, they told me, require you to be good at aiming; the shotgun would be easier to shoot from the hip (as it were). But I never did get the shotgun.
LT
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): TPM’s letter today about the über fetishization of guns is really good on that.
And same with me. At about 11 or 12, we got to go out back and shoot the .22. Probably a little older for he 12-guage (double barrel). I spent many hours over the years after that in the woods, with friends or by myself, with the .22.
zach
@PurpleGirl: Elsewhere in the Heller ruling, Scalia notes that handguns are better for self-defense than long guns because you do not need much upper body strength to lift them, they are harder to knock out of your hands, and you can call the police with one hand while using the other to point your gun at a robber. Seriously.
Mandalay
@Bnut:
Post of the day!
honus
@zach: As for Mr. Original Intent Textualist Scalia, the words “well regulated militia” appear in the Second Amendment. The words “self defense” appear nowhere in the Second Amendment or elsewhere in the Constitution. So where does this “core purpose” come from? An “emanating penumbra” of rights, perhaps?
Mister Harvest
@LT:
If I’m buying a hammer, it’s to hammer things. If I’m buying an assault weapon, it’s to kill people. It’s what the tool does.
lacp
@Yutsano: Of course you wouldn’t ask them if they had killed anybody in an illegal war. That would be just too, too and very, very. So gauche; so impolite; so uncivil.
Mark S.
@zach:
So the 2nd Amendment is a generalized right to self-defense? I’m surprised such a textualist as Scalia would read it that way. When he’s dealing with rights he doesn’t give a shit about (which is basically all the rest of them), he generally gives them the most narrow reading possible.
Just Some Fuckhead
It’s not a very far trip from thinking you need an arsenal to protect yourself from an imagined danger to killing a bunch of people that you imagined as dangerous.
You call them pussies. I call them marginally crazy and put them on a fucking watchlist.
Mister Harvest
@Mark S.: Scalia is only a textualist only when it suits him. If the text doesn’t support his argument, he can find a way of getting it done.
Yutsano
@Bnut: My brother has a saying: people iz dumb. It’s how I survive my job half the time. It’s still an amazingly tacky thing to ask. It’s like asking a stranger about their sex life or something. I mean Jeebus.
Skeet shooting actually has a purpose: it was meant to keep gun skills sharp when bird hunting was out of season. That and it seems British noblemen get really bored easily.
Scamp Dog
@Dream On: The videos just kept getting sillier. My brother and I did a little bit of shooting with my Dad as boys and it was fun, but I don’t recall pretending I was some kind of action hero because I could put holes in a paper target with a .22. The sight of a bunch of paunchy middle aged guys running a few feet before shooting another gun looks just ridiculous. I’d laugh, but the fact that they’re being silly with deadly hardware takes the edge off.
Wapiti
@RareSanity:
I like that, I assume you’re talking for pistol ownership? (I generally have no problem with people who own hunting/target long-arms; I think pistol safety is what the country needs to focus on. And assault-style weapons, of course.)
CW in LA
@Mark S.: Hell, Scalia once said that torture is not cruel and unusual punishment as proscribed under the eighth amendment, because it isn’t punishment. He’s a monster.
RareSanity
@Wapiti:
Yes, for handguns…and I see no purpose for private ownership of assault rifles. If they want to use them for hunting, then they can rent them and then return them afterward.
Dream On
My father-in-law keeps intense guns. Lots of guns. In a safe – I think – but yeah, he really is as paranoid as they come. Burdened with Catholic Guilt/Shame, which is all a weird combination. Not helped by the fact that he admired Romney’s devotion to charity, and said he was “a good man” – yeah, this guy creates his own reality. He’s increasingly angry and I think pent-up with the disappointments of life. And he lives in a very nice California area. Perhaps near you. Sleep well.
Allen
A former acquaintance of mine got a job that required a bit of travel wanted to get his partner a .357 for personal protection. When I told him no one outside of the movies can accurately shoot a .357 he got all pissed off. Got even more pissed when I told him a better choice would be a shotgun like my short barreled Mossberg pump. Four shots without one chambered.
And even more pissed when I showed him my .357 Colt Python and my M1911A1 .45. Thought he was going to cream his pants. That’s when I decided most guys form New York City who never learned to drive has no right to own a gun.
Scamp Dog
@Bnut: That does put a different spin on it; I had been thinking of them as pure gun nuts. Still, starting from a table pretending to be tied up does seem a bit much…
Mnemosyne
@lacp:
Next time you see your grandfather, ask him how many people he killed in WWII. He may not take the question as well as you seem to think.
Mister Harvest
@Allen: I decided it was stupid of me to be anti-gun when I really knew nothing about them, so I had one of my gun-positive friends take me to a range. I spent a long afternoon burning through ammo.
And at that point, I knew that the idea I would ever use a gun properly in self-defense in any real life situation was insane.
Matt
David Atkins (posting over @ Digby’s) hit this particular nail on the head:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/sacrificing-thousands-of-kids-on-altar.html
It’s not about “personal protection” in the day-to-day sense for a lot of the hardcore, it’s about some kind of bizarro “Atlas Shrugged” vs. “28 Days Later” scenario featuring the RW bogeyman “moochers” wandering the streets looting.
Or, to boil it down further, it’s about a bunch of people who DREAM of growing up to be George Zimmerman one day. At most times and in most places, people who had an active fantasy life that revolved around killing people might get help; here in America, we give them a CCW permit and a right to “Stand Their Ground”…
mai naem
Scalia is one of those mofos who if one of his family members was massacred like the Connecticut people,he would be all in favor of super strict gun control. Of course, he lives in a world with 24/7 police protection including checks for anybody who comes into his work area. There was a piece in Wa Monthly about how prison reform will happen now because of a few conservative legislators who’ve done time and now OMG! they realize who screwed up prisons are. It’s always about them.
zach
@Mark S.: “So the 2nd Amendment is a generalized right to self-defense? I’m surprised such a textualist as Scalia would read it that way.”
Scalia never limits himself to the plain text of the relevant law. He generally picks and chooses from all writings relevant to the issue that were the sorts of things that people wrote and read at the time the law was passed. The Heller opinion contains a bunch of references to some generally understood right of self defense. Of course, if Scalia were of the polar opposite opinion I am sure he could’ve found equally originalist precedent for doing so… I got a degree in cinema studies in college which was great fun because you decide what your thesis is going to be and then figure out the images/scenes/etc in the film that support your position. It’s a fun intellectual exercise because you can always make almost any argument, but it’s a pretty rotten way to pretend that you have the one true interpretation of American law. It would be cool to see a law professor rewrite Scalia’s notable opinions of the past few years but change the citations to come to exactly the opposite conclusion with the same originalist logic.
Scalia avoids the militia question entirely and doesn’t have a very good rationale for doing so. This is necessary because the logic he employs to justify a universal right to handguns but not automatic weapons would not work in the context of a militia but works alright for home defense.
PurpleGirl
@efgoldman: My friend took me to the Sportsmen Center at Westchester’s Blue Mountain Reservation (a county park). I usually shot a .22 rifle but a couple of times he let me try a handgun or a more powerful rifle. Yikes, yes, there’s kickback which you don’t anticipate and shooters have to get used to and use padding for protection.
Thursday
Nice look at life inside a camp – thanks for it.
I think the biggest problem is the lobby group – the NRA-ILA – doesn’t tell its members what exactly it opposes. Most gun owners are actually good with things like forbidding people charged with violent crimes from getting a license, or background checks before purchase. But the NRA doesn’t work for its members so much as the gun manufacturers, who know perfectly well what they want…
Yutsano
@lacp: You know that little voice in the back of your head? The one that says MAYBE I shouldn’t publish this? Yeah, you should try listening to it more often. It lessens your chances of being perceived as an offencive asshole.
Matt
@honus:
Maybe – if “emanating penumbra” is Scalia’s pet name for his own asshole.
Wait.
Ew.
Allen
@PurpleGirl: I agree, close counts with shotguns.
honus
@Mandalay: “How do you shoot women and children with that thing?” “It’s not hard, you just lead them a little less.” Michael Herr, “Dispatches” conversation with a door gunner in Viet Nam.
Viva BrisVegas
@zach:
What if you need to text?
Am I misremembering, or did Scalia actually muse on the Second Amendment, just after Aurora, about how he was reconsidering the definition of “arms” to include shoulder launched missiles? Or was that just the Onion?
Dream On
@Scamp Dog:
Yep. But is this not creepier?.
Bnut
@lacp: Ask away clown shoes.
pseudonymous in nc
Having moved to The South, I spent time with friends who were brought up in The Culture And Heritage Of The Rural South (i.e. killing squirrels with .22s, blowing shit up with black powder) and I went to the range with them and shot a couple of guns. Fine. I can say that I’ve done it to people who start the Gun Conversation. Don’t have any desire to do it again, don’t want a gun in the house.
Fuck Scalia. You just know that he has the same fantasy of blowing away a Those People that the nuttiest gun nuts harbour.
I want the conversation to pivot now, and for the people who want to keep their metal-propellors to be the ones who negotiate the terms, otherwise they’re to be treated as accessories to child murder. A conversation that reaches the point of “arm teachers” is one with no reply other than “fuck off and come back when you’re not stupid.”
priscianusjr
John,
Then maybe combat vets and cops who have to face heavily armed crooks, can lead the most effective charge against the NRA.
David Koch
@honus: It’s also in Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S06nIz4scvI
Allen
@efgoldman: I wouldn’t want want to be in he same country with him and gun.
GregB
Is there any chance the folks in Anonymous could tell us just how many of these recent well armed lunatics were NRA members?
It seems most of the purchases of these guns have been legal.
So it would seem that there is the probability that the NRA has a really high percentage of stewing murderers waiting in the wings.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
Or he might shock you by telling you something about war you don’t want to hear; my grandfather had some truly horrifying stories about WWII. His description of the aftermath of the Battle of Falaise Gap would be enough to turn just about anyone into a pacifist.
honus
@Allen: The nice thing about a .357 is that when you miss the intruder in your house, you can kill your neighbor who is asleep in his house next door. Hell, a .357 will shoot through most of a car and kill a person.
Geoduck
@PurpleGirl:
Also much less chance of bullets punching through a couple of plasterboard walls and killing one of your neighbors.
honus
@Matt: “emanating penumbra” is sort of a legal in-joke. I figure Burns will be along shortly to explain to everybody in typically arch terms.
PurpleGirl
Somewhat OT but may relate to the idea that NYC men who don’t drive shouldn’t own guns: One Friday I was taking the train to Peekskill and had bought a few magazines for the trip and the weekend. Since my friend was into guns and bow hunting I decided to get some materials in those areas so I could get ideas about his hobbies. The man seated next to me kept glancing down at what I was reading. Guns and Ammo was okay, when I began the bow hunting mag he sort of blanched and I took out the crochet magazine so he’d be more at ease about who he was sitting next to. Those modern bows do look like torture devices.
PurpleGirl
@Geoduck: Yes, that too.
honus
@David Koch: Yes, because Full Metal Jacket was in part based on Herr’s book and Herr was a screenwriter for that picture. There are a number of scenes in FMJ pretty much directly from Herr’s work.
Big Daddy
We have about 86 guns per 100 people here in the US. Clearly, our current system is not working or we would not have 9000+ Americans per year murdered with these guns. We’ve got some really smart behavioral scientists, mental health doctors, legal experts, and economists in this country. I wish the President would commission a team of them to study this problem for the next 12 months and then take 3-4 more months to write their report and issue their proposal. Then we should have a national debate on the proposal and vote on it.
I think access to guns must become much more restricted. (I am personally in favor of banning all semi-automatic weapons but don’t think that would fly, at least not initially.) Private sales should be outlawed and very tough penalties for violating these laws should be enacted. All sales should go through licensed dealers (to include re-sales by private citizens). Someone who wants to buy a gun should have to pass an extensive criminal background check and prove they have no history of mental illness . . . and that no one else in their residence does either. Then, once they complete a multi-day training course (that they pay for) during which they are once again evaluated for mental illness – they can buy their fully registered and permanently marked firearm. I know we cannot solve the problem immediately. Such policies might take years or decades, perhaps, to make a big dent. Ideas such as this might be dumb – but let’s at least assemble a team of non-partisan experts to study the problem and see if we can define a solution that significantly reduces the violence.
kuvasz
No wonder its referred to as the Gun and Pecker Club.
Dissatisfied Customer
This is the best post I’ve ever read. Right outta Thunderdome, John.
Kyle
@redshirt: @mai naem:
This is the right-wing mentality – “It’s not a problem unless it’s MY problem.”. Their tribe consists of their family and a few friends and work associates; everyone else is expendable and they don’t care how much they suffer.
While those of us not on the rightard nutcase end of the political spectrum imagine how to build rules and a society so that the largest majority are treated fairly, they’re angling how to grab more shit for their tribe at the expense of everyone else.
priscianusjr
Folks, get in touch with Congressman Ron Barber.
http://www.change.org/petitions/congressman-ron-barber-take-the-lead-in-congress-to-address-the-epidemic-of-mass-shootings
Villago Delenda Est
@RareSanity:
This.
“It sounded like firecrackers”
That’s what an M16 being fired, IN THE REAL WORLD, NOT IN THE MOVIES OR ON TV, sounds like!
They don’t know what it sounds like.
Allen
@Mister Harvest: I agree. Gave up guns over 30 years. Would have had trouble hitting he inside of a barn from the inside. Got pretty good with the .45 though (good trainer). But couldn’t hit jack shit with the .357. Then I figured out than nothing will change the mind of someone who wants to hurt me like the sound of a 12 gauge being jacked home.
celticdragonchick
@Maude:
I actually enjoyed shooting rifles and machine guns in the army. I bought a similar rifle because I…like to shoot. I have never seriously thought that I would use an SKS in my own home (and I would not in any event because the 7.62*39 mm round will go through the wall into the next townhouse. I have something else if I have to deal with a home invasion…and that is fairly unlikely)
Snoopy
@LT:
Of course I do. Boots, they’re made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do.
Assault rifles, they’re made for killin’, and that’s just what they’ll do.
celticdragonchick
@Geoduck:
Yep.
Mike G
@Allen:
I’ve often wodered if just having the “jacking a shotgun” sound effect on a smartphone, or just the loading mechanism, would be an effective deterrent, presuming you can’t be directly seen by the would-be assailant at the time.
dandi
Well, the writer is entitled to his opinion, but a lot of combat vets, including some I’m sure he served with, come home and continue to enjoy shooting sports, collect weapons, and yes, keep some of them close at hand for self defense. I wouldn’t exactly label them “pussies”. You’re welcome to do so though, preferably face-to-face with them. If you have the nerve.
Villago Delenda Est
@CW in LA:
Scalia also cited Jack Bauer in an option, about torture, and the efficacy thereof.
A fictional character.
Nemo_N
Would someone please think of the gun enthusiasts?
celticdragonchick
@Snoopy:
Um, no, I did not buy my ‘assault rifle’ to kill anybody. I enjoy shooting, and it is fun to shoot.
I am certainly interested in keeping it (and others) away from wackos who want to kill kids at school and people in theatres and malls, however. I do think it is time to start licensing owners, mandatory safety training and mandatory gun locks or safes.
trollhattan
@Dream On:
Can I at least get an area code? (Please be 619)
lahke
I think that the right approach is to copy the anti-abortion strategy, and pick off little pieces with each bit of legislation, the way that they’ve gone after the most contentious issues around choice.
Since even NRA members are in favor of not selling guns to people on the terrorist watch list, you start with that requirement first, and then next close the gun show loophole. It will probably take years, but look at how abortion access has been eaten away–no reason we can’t apply the same strategy to gun control.
celticdragonchick
@Nemo_N:
There is absolutely zero chance of anything changing without cooperation from gun owners. Personally, I am fucking terrified about my kid at school at this point, and this is too Goddamned important to let it turn into another liberal vs red state debacle. Some things have to change, and insulting gun owners will not bring that change about. Gun owners have to be shown where it will be to their benefit and safety to introduce regulations that will not punish them but will do something to keep all of us and our children safer.
Allen
The most scared I’ve been, short of being shot at, was when some dipshit blew security at building I was waiting to get into and we had Jeeps full of Marine security with mounted M60s show up.
amk
@LT:
Most idiotic comment.
handsmile
@honus:
According to a comment on an earlier thread, burnspbesq is kickin’ back with this family, so permit me (with less arch):
The phrase “emanating penumbra” is derived from Justice William Douglas’ opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the landmark Supreme Court case that established a constitutional right to privacy. By a 7-2 majority, the Court invalidated a Connecticut law that had prohibited the use of contraceptives.
trollhattan
Evidently, folks have so much ammo they don’t have anywhere to store it.
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/15/5056972/calif-mall-on-lockdown-after-shots.html#storylink=cpy
Just dandy.
Nemo_N
@celticdragonchick:
Yeah, well, if pointing out that their hobby is well below the lives of children equals insulting them, I’ll keep “insulting” them.
PurpleGirl
@trollhattan: Right after Obama was elected in 2008, a lot of gun owners began to buy up ammo before the President banned ammo sales or something. A serious lack of ammo resulted.
pseudonymous in nc
@celticdragonchick:
Gun owners lost the right to take umbrage when their cohorts started blowing away kids.
What, they’re not your cohorts? Then you need to do a better job of differentiating yourself. Off you go.
Chris
Maude I know have never bought a weapon with the idea to kill out of hatred….but I am sure every time you bake one of your famous apple pies it is with the thought of choking your husband on an apple chucnk, with malice in your black heart. Plus I know for a fact that every time a drinker buys a car they intend to kill. Silly statements. ignorant statements. I bet you have never even held a gun.
In so far as John Cole, thank you for your service. Seems silly that you would be forced to do that in a combat zone, but I served too and I know how the military is.
Personally I love my guns and I am no pussy for it. I believe your anger is pointed at the one asshole that caused all of this rather than pointing it at me, but then I have never sought unlimited firepower. And I support gun control. I reject the attempt to ban semi auto rifles, particularly assault rifles which are no more dangerous than hunting rifles.
My 2 cents.
CW in LA
@celticdragonchick: Yeah, well, their feelings have long since become a public menace, and it’s not like they’ve been particularly amenable to appeals to their senses of reason or the common good. I’m keen to try making them pariahs at this point.
amk
@Nemo_N: While the children will outgrow their fantasies, the gun nuts never will.
Allen
@Mike G: Smart phone wouldn’t cut it, lack of fidelity. Ipod hooked into a good stereo. And a closed door.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@celticdragonchick:
Were you insulted? Here is the world’s tiniest violin, playing just for you. Go fuck yourself.
Will Reks
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Well, she happens to be right. Right now the gun lobby has a good majority of our elected leaders by the short and curlies. There are millions of gun owners, including hunters and hobbyists, who could be persuaded to support sensible legislation. They are not the enemy and it would be better to work with them as opposed to steamrolling over them. The vitriol from both sides only helps the NRA.
Quaker in a Basement
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Your moral certainty doesn’t magically change reality. There IS a 2nd Amendment that says the people may bear arms. There ARE people in this country who choose to avail themselves of that right. The United States Supreme Court HAS decided that the 2nd Amendment guarantees they may do so.
Like it or not, this is the terrain we travel.
amk
The saner ones are cashing out.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Will Reks:
Both Sides Do It! Yeah, right. Only one “side” is killing people, and it’s not gun safety advocates.
ETA: If you think that playing nice with these gun nuts will get you anywhere, you’re out of your fucking mind. They need to be crushed, politically, like bugs.
mandarama
@Chris:
Personally I love my guns
Nemo_N
It feels like gun owners are holding the US hostage (and some of the hostages are starting to develop stockholm syndrome).
Better give in to their demands before they shoot someone.
Bago
Can we make it a social norm to never repeat the name of the shooter in incidents like this. Infamy is a double edged sword. By erasing the name of the perpetrator, you reduce the incentive to perpetrate an act that would make a suicidal nut famous.
I mean,I have Jason and Jeremy’s ashes in the corner, but their killer %*&(&(? That name has been lost to time.
Bago
Can we make it a social norm to never repeat the name of the shooter in incidents like this. Infamy is a double edged sword. By erasing the name of the perpetrator, you reduce the incentive to perpetrate an act that would make a suicidal nut famous.
I mean,I have Jason and Jeremy’s ashes in the corner, but their killer? That name has been lost to time.
Mnemosyne
@Villago Delenda Est:
I unfortunately know exactly what gunshots sound like because a guy was murdered at the Whole Foods across the street from my old apartment, which faced the parking lot where he was shot.
Gunshots sound nothing like firecrackers, because the sound of firecrackers would not have made me instinctively fall to the floor like the sound of those gunshots did. They also sounded nothing like they do in the movies, but I knew what they were from my (very brief) target shooting days.
Mnemosyne
@Will Reks:
If they have not been persuaded by the deaths of 20 kindergarteners, nothing will ever persuade them.
magurakurin
@Yutsano:
hmmm, I get your point but…
MaryRC
Cole, nothing could confirm your theory better than this blog post by someone called Dan from Madison. Long story short, Dan has kept a gun in his home ever since the night he thought that he and his family were threatened by a strange guy who came to their door. What happened next was farcical, yet Dan firmly believes that he acted heroically. It takes the last commenter to point out that people like Dan and his wife who basically panicked and went nuts in this situation, running around screaming and waving baseball bats although the stranger was in no position to harm them, are the last people who should be trusted with a gun.
Raven
@magurakurin: Hell yes I know who Whitman was. M-14.
Raven
I am Adam Lanza’s Mother
It’s time to talk about mental illness
gwangung
You’re an idiot who can’t discriminate between the nuts and gun enthusiasts; the latter are fucking TELLING you that they’re OK with some form of gun control and safety, yet you’re treating them like the former.
Chuck Butcher
What you can do is start out from a great big emotional jag and propose really stupid things that will get a push-back that’ll make your head spin and neuter any actually useful proposals. You could do that and a hell of a lot of the commenters here want to.
I prefer reasonable and useful proposals that have some chance, but help yourselves. There are a couple people here that know anything at all about firearms – but since they do they must be ignored or ridiculed.
If you think left of center has problems getting anything done now, start this brawl on that basis and find out how quick you turn the country into rightwing wetdream land.
BTW, “assault weapon” in this context is horseshit media framing – an assault weapon is select fire full automatic (machine gun) to semi-auto (1 round per pull) high capacity short rifle and you need a automatic tax stamp along with its assorted nastiness to buy one. It is a military term to differentiate between battle rifles and the short small caliber high fire rate rifles. Battle rifles are damn near extinct now because they are heavy and their large rounds deny high capacity for high fire rates of fully automatics.
There are some ways to deal somewhat with what happened, but going fucking nuts will guarantee that you get nothing. BTW, Brady is damned near the flip side of the NRA and that will get you exactly nowhere. (they are about as useful as the NRA also in getting sane measures to happen) Yes, a trigger lock on a self defense weapon turns it into a decoration – or shitty club. Most people that go on and on about their self-defense weapon have no idea how badly they’re going to do with it in a real situation or how inappropriate their choice is. Just as most of you going on about trigger locks know absolutely spit about it.
Linda
There’s no question that there are gun owners who are ready for common sense gun regulation, and it can be proved by a survey of NRA members. I’m stumped as to why they still support the NRA with their membership cash, but maybe there are other perks involved. I don’t know since I’m not a member.
I did have to laugh about people in relative safety who insist on their need for a gun. There seems to be an inverse relationship between people in safety and the obsession with self-protection. When Michigan past a liberalized concealed carry years ago, my cousin who lived in a gated community in the middle of nowhere (where a committee protected the area from nonwhite window treatments) jumped at the chance to get her gun. My brother, who regularly drove through the inner city of Detroit, calmly waited for all the regs to come out to register and buy his weapon.
Chuck Butcher
Just to give some idea about ignorance, people running to and from shooting stations may look stupid, just as you look really stupid running like hell on a treadmill going nowhere – but here’s the deal, the idea is to create a physical approximation of high stress shooting situations which means getting the pulse up and the breathing up and the adrenaline flowing. Just so you know, this is why cops fire 80 rounds and hit their malefactor 3-6 times, it sucks for accurate shooting. A treadmill trumps running in the freezing rain and this trumps having somebody shoot at you while you’re learning to deal with it.
Chuck Butcher
@Linda:
The same thing happened with the NRA that happened to the GOP, they let the crazies get control and hung on out of tribalism. I ran away years ago when I saw the craziness as opposed to watching out for the 2nd. There are NRA safety and skills programs that are really useful and are poisoned by the stupidity of rightwingnuttery and paranoia.
All that said, there is as much paranoia and stupidity on the other side as within NRA.
I do have to wonder if either of your relatives is actually competent with their guns. One of the best ways to get someone to understand about what a gunshot means is to fill a plastic milk jug with colored water and shoot it with a hollow point – when it explodes in a shower you say, that’s what happens inside a person, you don’t get over it, it ain’t a movie – always be safe.
Chuck Butcher
@Linda:
Also, if you look at the NRA’s membership number and the number of gun owners they are REAL different. Per member numbers they qualify as a splinter group.
Will Reks
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Yeah, I shoud’ve known that’s where you would go with that. Point being you’re going to get nowhere with absolutist positions and we’ll be having this conversation again sometime soon. Good luck with the nut crushing.
Elizabelle
@Raven:
RE “Adam Lanza’s mother essay.” Terrific piece of writing. Thank you for linking.
Linda
@Chuck Butcher:
Re: my relatives. Both can handle guns in a calm situation. My brother has actually had to pull his out a time or two when driving a cab in Detroit, but nobody has had to actually shoot somebody with it.
Chuck Butcher
@Elizabelle:
I have my own good reasons for wanting to cry about her story and I have a dead son.
Chuck Butcher
@Linda:
If you’re going to own the things with some sort of reasonable expectation that you might need to use one – you have some real work to do or you should get the hell rid of it. Seriously. I own them and I’m good with them and I’m not kidding.
Linda
@Chuck Butcher: My brother can actually say that. I don’t own a gun for exactly the reason you cite.
Chuck Butcher
@Chuck Butcher:
There are actually some good training programs, but really what it comes down to is being able to instinctually aim (point) and practicing shooting with all the elements of accuracy fouled up. I’m sure not going to get into it in this kind of thread.
Chuck Butcher
@Linda:
smart you. the keyboard kommandoes make my eyes go red…
Keith G
Good lord the stupid in this thread is so thick. I love it (sarcasm) when my fellow liberals who rail against stereotyping, illogic, and other circular thinking from the conservatives do the same thing. If you attack someone soley because they own a certain type of gun, or because in general, they like the legal and safe leisure pursuit of shooting guns, you are not covering your self with wisdom.
As smart as you know yourself to be, don’t fall into the trap of judging large groups of people based on the action of a few. When GOP politicians and their supporters did that during the long campaign, it was pointed out very quickly here how wrong (and worse) they were.
When I read this little gem (and the several that were similar):
It occurs to me that maybe there is not that much difference in behavior between conservatives and some folks here.
Death Panel Truck
@Bago: You stupid motherfucker.
jhtrotter
“If there are bigger pussies in the world than gun nuts, I don’t know who the fuck they are.”
I dunno, maybe a guy who constantly professes his love for an obese cat and an intellectual disabled dog, who voted for Dubya. Twice.
So they treated you like Andy treated Barney, what’s the point? You were able to be discharged with both feet intact, after keeping us safe from all those mean Iraqis who attacked us on September 11th with smoking clouds and mushroom guns and aluminum cake and yellow tubes.
Oh, wait, you were on the wrong side of that whole national crisis too. Oops. I’m starting to see why they didn’t want you to chamber a round, with your most awesome decision making skills and all.
But nice rhetoric. Maybe this is what Rwanda in 1994 was like. You keep spewing and demonizing those bad people with guns, and maybe it will inspire the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi to rise up and smite those evil 100,000,000 or so gun owners who all bear personal resposibility for the murder of beautiful innocent little priviledged white babies. Should be an interesting battle, you being armed with your awesome wit and moral superiority. And them with, well, guns. Maybe you can bloviate them to death.
Or maybe you could finally grow the fuck up, drop the name calling and sarcasm and nonsense, and treat this like it’s actually a serious and resolvable issue and propose something meaningful. Besides maybe government mandated tape on a magazine.
Or not, merely a suggestion. My guess is you continue on as an 8 year old.
Hey, were you in Germany when the wall came down? Did you get David Hasselhoff’s autograph?
Raven
@jhtrotter: He was in the first Gulf war.
Craig
By an interesting coincidence, the ad on your website is for a Concealed Carry Report, which tells people how to carry a concealed firearm. I guess you don’t mind making some $$ off the gun trade either.
Hypocrite.
Raven
@Craig: The ads are individualised and pulled down based on YOUR usage.
Keith G
@Raven: An expressed rage that is based on an imprecise apprehension of the facts is never pretty.
Raven
@Keith G: I know, I do it all the time. mclaren, are you up yet?
chopper
@Thursday:
i’ve barely shot, but the first time was at a range with a 12 gauge. and apparently i’m a savant when it comes to a shotgun. at least with clay pigeons. the idea that i’d be anything more than a complete shaky mess in a real situation against people is fucking laughable.
chopper
@RareSanity:
also, their reaction is going to be nothing like the epic fantasy they’ve created in their heads when their secret inner ninja decides to erupt in an orgy of batman-style vengeance. instead they’ll be sitting on the ground in a puddle of urine just like everyone else.
Judge Crater
@jhtrotter: Gun control in the U.S. is a “serious and resolvable issue”? Hardly. It’s a no-man’s-land where logic and common sense have long since been driven underground. And driven underground by fanatics like those in the NRA.
I suspect that when the gruesome details of this shooting are made public, that the revulsion we experience now will be multiplied many times. This shooter, according to the medical examiner, used his Bushmaster assault rifle to simply mow down 20 first graders, trapped in their class room. We don’t know yet how many rounds he fired, but it could have been more than 100 (high velocity, military-type projectiles).
If the gun-nuts, and there are gun-nuts, can justify having weapons with this kind of lethality available to the public, then we can simply accept that we are a nation of savages.
Keith G
My Dad was a vet who spent his formative years hopping from Sicily to Italy, a bit of a break in England, than a short trip across the channel to France and beyond.
Mustered out in ’45, he took a job in a factory in his home town, Toledo. But eventually he took over his father’s gun smithing business. He had four brother and all of my uncles were also Army vets. Two of them helped out with the business.
Every morning when I awoke in the big old farm house I grew up in , I walked past a locked gun cabinet as I went to the kitchen. My first gun was a 410 double barrel.
I grew to love the smell of burnt powder. It reminded me of “Turkey Shoots” with my Dad and uncles. Mastering the intricacies of a new (for me , a hand me down) gun was always a fun challenge.
Like my dad before me, I am for the tightest gun control that we can Constitutionally manage.
chopper
@jhtrotter:
oh yeah, just like Rwanda. also I took a shit this morning, I’ll tell you it was worse than the holocaust
Raven
@Judge Crater: Mowing down implies some kind of spray. This dude went from person to person and shot them from 3 to 11 times each.
Raven
@Judge Crater: Mowing down implies some kind of spray. This dude went from person to person and shot them from 3 to 11 times each.
Taylor
@jhtrotter:
Maybe it’s because I’m working with Rwandans who are trying to rebuild their society after the 94 holocaust, but I find this comment particularly appalling.
For your information, asshole, the Hutus could have been much more efficient in their slaughter of the Tutsis had everyone had an M-16 in their closet. Instead they had to work with machetes, which obviously slowed things down a bit.
If everyone, Hutu and Tutsi, had had an M-16 handy, it’s not hard to imagine what the result would have been. Just take a look at Somalia.
Citing gun ownership as a preventative measure against genocide is surely a new rhetorical low.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
I do recall one of the folx who dropped his lifetime NRA membership when the head of the Organization characterized ATF personnel as “Jack-booted thugs.” Yep. None other than George H.W. Bush.
Elizabelle
@Chuck Butcher:
I’m so sorry, Chuck. I think you’ve mentioned or alluded to that previously.
magurakurin
@Craig:
Come back when you learn how Internet advertising works.
Bob h
If I were considering a school for my kids one thing I would want to know is whether any of the faculty are gun-nuts or married to one. With the dipshit Nancy Lanza in mind.
Lojasmo
@Allen:
When I owned a gun, I was quite accurate with a .38 revolver. Is a .357 harder to shoot?
Serious question.
jhtrotter
@Taylor:
And yet that’s not what I did. But thanks for playing.
I was citing Mr. Coles divisive and enraged rhetoric as being similar to what preceded the genocide.
It’s always a thrill to be able to engage in mature and productive discourse regarding serious issues threatening our society with articulate and insightful people like yourself.
honus
@handsmile: Of course as an attorney I’m familiar with Justice Douglas’s emanating penumbras, but thanks for the succint and excellent explanation. The irony is that conservatives like Scalia have hated and ridiculed Douglas’s reasoning ever since, yet he is relying on even more ridiculously derivative reasoning in Heller.
Aimai
@celticdragonchick:
I don’t see why it is incumbent on people who are not the problem ( people who are not gun iwners) to coddle the hurt feelings of incompetent, recalcitrant, paranoid gun owners who allow their hobby to be used by the NRA to facilitate murder.
Your need to own guns does not trump societies need to keep guns out of the hands of incompetent owners and crazy family members. Lanza used his mothers guns to kill her. Many an elderly gun fetishist has adult relatives with mental health problems, or is beginning to lose the mental capacity to store the guns properly.
This is not the fault of non gun owners. You guys have a hobby and your inabity to police yourselves and your toys and the NRA is literally killing us. So get used to having people insult you. It’s literally the most we can do given the way the gun lobby stymies our efforts at protecting ourselves.
Honus
@handsmile: Of course as an attorney I’m familiar with Justice Douglas’ emanating penumbras, but thanks for the succint and excellent explanation. The irony is that conservatives like Scalia have hated and ridiculed Douglas’ reasoning ever since, yet he is relying on even more ridiculously derivative reasoning in Heller.
Aimai
@celticdragonchick:
I don’t see why it is incumbent on people who are not the problem ( people who are not gun iwners) to coddle the hurt feelings of incompetent, recalcitrant, paranoid gun owners who allow their hobby to be used by the NRA to facilitate murder.
Your need to own guns does not trump societies need to keep guns out of the hands of incompetent owners and crazy family members. Lanza used his mothers guns to kill her. Many an elderly gun nut has adult relatives with mental health problems, or is beginning to lose the mental capacity to store the guns properly.
This is not the fault of non gun owners. You guys have a hobby and your inabity to police yourselves and your toys and the NRA is literally killing us. So get used to having people insult you. It’s literally the most we can do given the way the gun lobby stymies our efforts at protecting ourselves.
Ramalama
I have stopped being incensed about people calling other people pussies and it being a bad thing. My poontang and I have taken the ball and gone home.
Mustang Bobby
To quote myself, The NRA has become the Westboro Baptist Church of gun owners, and Wayne LaPierre is their Fred Phelps.
Keith G
@Aimai: Well that isn’t the wisest thing you have typed, but I do realize that is is an emotional issue and some types of humans respond more with emotion than with logic.
Oh, did I just use stereotyping and bias to advance an proposition?
I believe I did.
Does that type of communication reduce such an argument to drivel?
I know that it does.
Keith G
@Ramalama: You have balls too?
So sorry, it was there I needed a snarky break in the seriousness.
This is B-J.
chopper
@jhtrotter:
this sort of sarcasm reminds me a lot of the stuff hitler said back in ’33.
Taylor
@jhtrotter:
Ah now I understand. You were equating people sickened by gun fetishization, and its consequences, in our exceptionalist society, with the Hutus exterminating the Tutsis.
Well that’s all right then.
Or have I missed your carefully argued point again? It got a little lost in the urinating on Herr Cole.
Guy
@Lojasmo:
I’d say it depends on the gun. I have a SW 686 with a five inch barrel that can fire both .38 and .357 and the difference in blast and recoil is stark. However, the gun has enough heft that if I take my time between shots I can be just as accurate with the .357 as with the .38. I imagine that a snubbie or other small frame revolver would definitely be harder in .357, not to mention more uncomfortable.
jon
@Craig: The ads I get on this site are for Soma panties or Amazon. Where are you doing your Christmas shopping?
jp7505a
Nothing will change on gun control. If you have one party that is willing to drive the world economy into depression, then there is NOTHING you can say or argue that will reaach them. Unfortunately the other party has the spine of an sponge.
Buckyblue
@RareSanity: one of the stories out of the Giffords rampage was of a guy thar was across the street when he heard shots. He was carrying so pulled out his weapon and was going to ‘help’. He saw a guy running toward the scene and took aim at him, but then didn’t pull the trigger. He tho’t he was the shooter. It turns out he was unarmed, was running toward the action, and was eventually the one who apprehended the shooter. Did I say unarmed before? The guy with the gun didn’t do shit to help, not a damn thing. This story actually comes from the guy with the gun, who seemed socked at how difficult it is to tell the good guys from the bad guys in thse situations. Thank god he didn’t pull the trigger. These cowboys think it’s the Wild West and they’ve got the quickest draw.
jhtrotter
@chopper:
Complete bullshit. Austrians are horrible at sarcasm.
Handy
“If there are bigger pussies in the world than gun nuts, I don’t know who the fuck they are.”
Eggggzactly.
GMVictory
I was in GW1 and in the Military Police. We had so many clearing barrel incidents (soldiers discharging a round after improperly clearing their weapon) that the Brigage Commander ordered that anyone who punched a round into a clearing barrel would have gate guard duty no later than the next day. Our CO had to pull a guard duty shift for screwing up like that.
I also recommend the gun enthusiasts not get aggravated over the comments since these folks are not talking about us. They are talking about the gun nuts and fools who are ruining it for everyone else. The ones who don’t just fanatasize, they believe they will act as a gun-toting superhero on par with the Punisher or the Crimson Avenger “when the time comes.” When the “graboids” punch through the basement wall, the monsters won’t find an easy lunch dammit!
I’ve been coming to the site for awhile. I like this place. I don’t comment much but I hate to see reasonable folks getting bent while talking past each other. Of course, no one hurts you like the people you like or care about can.
Rosie Outlook
@Tim C: Yes, but these were public school teachers in a rich white area.
honus
@handsmile: As an attorney I’m familiar with Justice Douglas’ emanating penumbras, but I was too tired last night for a serious analysis. Thanks for the succint and excellent explanation.
The irony is that conservatives like Scalia have hated and ridiculed Douglas’ reasoning ever since, yet he is relying on even more ridiculously derivative reasoning in Heller.
Elizabelle
@jp7505a:
Yup, that’s why the party that is fine with another Depression won the White House.
Sheer laziness on your part.
Of course you’re going to get run over if you let the creeps who do turn out run the field.
There are more people who want to see safe elementary schools and public places free of gun violence than there are people who spit from the mouth talking about their right to own any gun they want.
We have to get off our asses and work and push back.
unsympathetic
who exactly are you defending, trotter? There is no situation worse than what just happened. All the snarky assertions of freedom are an epic fail– your bloviating personal attacks are not worth more than kids’ lives.
All kinds of happy talk about gun ownership will not prevent the next school shooting — regardless of how ridiculous the “if only” fantasies are created. And besides:: I know far too many small teachers who, if they were packing in school, the only result would be children disarming the teacher.
Kirbster
My own cynical self believes that the whole Second Amendment of the Constitution was about trying to fulfill the requirement to provide for the common defense on the cheap. The national government would have to pay for a national navy, but could saddle the states with the cost and responsibility for the army (in the form of militias) and make it sound positively noble.
I think the so-called founders would be shocked by the absolutist interpretation of the Second Amendment (i.e., that everyone should be entitled to own and flaunt a personal arsenal) and by the incredible destructive power of modern firearms.
4tehlulz
Sunday morning lineups are out – No NRA spokesmen (though Gohmert will provide something truly offensive I’m sure). They’re scared this time.:
On NBC’s “Meet the Press”: Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy (D), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
On CNN’s “State of the Union:” Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy (D), Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Rep. Chris Murphy (D-CT); Stephen Barton, Aurora, Colo. shooting victim.
On “Fox News Sunday”: Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX).
On ABC’s “This Week”: Malloy, Blumenthal, Murphy, Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Donna Edwards (D-MD) and Mayor Pedro Segarra of Hartford, Connecticut.
On CBS’ “Face the Nation”: Malloy, Connecticut state police Lt. Paul Vance, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX).
Rosie Outlook
@Allen: Hee. One time I heard strange noises at the back door, figured it was a lost kitty or puppy. Angling towards the door, imagine my surprise to see the shadow of someone whose hands were placed so that he might be fumbling with the handle. Probably a drunk, thinking he was at his own house, but one never knows, so, since I lived in a neighborhood that was, shall we say, not high on the priority list of the overworked police department, I took the old smoke pole down from the top of the fridge and played my Midwestern burglar alarm: the sound of two shells being jacked into a 20-gauge. The dude went away.
Elizabelle
@4tehlulz:
They should be scared.
Dead schoolchildren and teachers changes the situation. That mass murder of innocents, and the Aurora theatre shootings, could have happened anywhere. None of us is safe.
The Million Mom March sank without a trace, if memory serves.
No getting past this tragedy, though.
Bobby Thomson
@Aimai: less polite than how I would have put it, but co-sign.
jon
License, registration, and insurance. Amputation of trigger fingers of all who don’t comply. If you don’t misuse your weapons, what do you have to fear?
Brian
AMERICA FUCK YEA
steveday
@Matt: When Fantasy Football loses it thrill is when the idea of an assault weapon- and “Red Dawn”-are tempting replacements.
In the 1940’s-’50’s one could buy a very realistic six shooter cap pistol, and we played cops and robbers/cowboys and indians with them. But we outgrew our fantasies. . .
honus
@Chuck Butcher: The difference between an m-4 and what Lanza had is a firing pin sear. So “Assault rifle” is accurate, and not “media bullshit framing.” Your comment is typical NRA bullshit framing, trying to confuse the issue with technical talk to confuse people who don’t know much about guns. Ar-15 and AK47 variants are very much assault rifles. And pieces of shit for hunting, BTW. No real hunter would trade a good Model 70 in 7mm-08 for one.
chopper
@jhtrotter:
you make a very adulterous point.
your can-do attitude reminds me of a young charles manson.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Submitted for your consideration: A White House petition that reflects my views:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/immediately-create-compelling-voluntary-incentives-reduce-number-guns-homes-and-enhance-their-safety/ftm80lrX
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
chopper
@Kirbster:
if i were one of the mythical ‘founders’, what would really climb my prick is the crazy superhero gun-nut fantasy cargo cult going on in this country.
Del
@Craig: You don’t want to know the ads I’ve got up right now ;-).
I’ve only ever fired three weapons in my life: a .300 magnum bolt-action rifle for practice and deer hunting, a 9mm pistol at the range, and a 20-gauge squirrel hunting. Personally I never saw the point of the pistol, but anyone that tries to say that the rifle or shotgun are in the same category as the pistol are missing the damn point. They’re tools, and intention is everything. I have no intention of ever shooting at someone and I don’t even keep ammunition in the house for my locked rifle anyway. I use my gun to hunt and to practice at the rifle range to ensure a clean kill each season. It brings food to the table, that’s it. I’m hardly alone in this position, especially in the midwest where I grew up.
Multiple times on this very thread I’ve seem people steamroll others who are calling for sensible regulation and safety training because the person getting steamrolled mentioned that they own a gun. Everyone here on their fucking soapbox screaming about how all gun owners are culpable and that we’re all crazy quasi-murderers with e-peen issues? Yeah, you’re not helping. If you can’t figure out why maybe, just maybe, your argument tactic is a failing one you’ve got no chance of helping the situation. You’re as bad as the NRA nutters and you’re helping them more than yourself every time you talk like that.
honus
@Chuck Butcher:
“If you think left of center has problems getting anything done now, start this brawl on that basis and find out how quick you turn the country into rightwing wetdream land.”
As far as gun laws, with stand your ground, immunity for gun dealers and manufacturers, statutory automatic awards of attorneys fees, restoration of gun rights to felons, and virtually universal concealed carry rights with no real qualification, it’s pretty much that already. I really don’t see where we have much to lose.
chopper
@honus:
don’t forget that mandatory trigger locks are unconstitutional, since it means you have to wait 3 seconds before you shoot someone.
Jack the Second
@different-church-lady:
Yeah, it’s all about perimeter control. If the intruder gets to your bedroom without being detected, you’ve already failed repeatedly.
chopper
you have to remember, when it comes to sensible gun legislation we’re climbing everest here. there’s a lot of crazy laws and judicial interpretation out there that gun nuts got enacted that have to be stripped away before we even get to the point of sensible legislation.
Kilgore Trout
@Bob h:
Nancy Lanza was not a member of the faculty.
EriktheRed
I was in Alpha Troop, too, but in the 2nd ACR.
Our mission in Germany was pretty much the same, too, except we had the tri-zonal point (West Germany, East Germany and Czechoslavakia all met) in our zone.
I didn’t go on border patrols that much myself, cuz I was a REMF, but our guys had to put tape over the magazines just the same way.
Villago Delenda Est
@Judge Crater:
Never forget that the NRA is actually a lobby for gun manufacturers.
This is about moving product, about insuring profit. Firearms are a durable consumer good. They have this bad tendency, from the manufacturer’s standpoint, of not wearing out, and needing replacement. So, you need to find some method to generate further sales.
FUD is how you do it. “Obama is going to take away your guns!”
The NRA was founded after the Civil War to make sure a domestic market was created for weapons and ammunition manufacturers. The military can only use so many firearms. Create a body of gun enthusiasts who will buy product, and you’re set. But then again, these things are durable…you buy one, and it doesn’t just fall apart or melt away and need a replacement. You need to get them to buy more. Things like background checks impede the movement of product, and thus the gathering of profit.
Incitatus for Senate
There is a lot of outraged butthurt from gun owners, but fuck them. You’re worried about a home intruder? Get a fucking dog and a Taser, the pistol ones cops use. Love target shooting? Get a good air rifle.
Del
@chopper: It’ll be a long fight, no doubt about it. Doesn’t make it any less pursuing though, and it’s a big reason we need to get organized on the issue. The gun nuts have free reign because they’ve taken over one party and propagandized their way into a pretty strong position with industry money. It’ll take a lot to change that, and a good place to start is making common ground with hunters and using our combined outrage at this shooting to start a major push back. Put the AK and AR15 crowd on the defensive, because they’re the problem.
EriktheRed
@Yutsano:
Damn straight.
“Keep your weapon pointed downrange at all times”, and woe to the poor puke who didn’t follow that.
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est:
Interesting comment. Never thought about guns as (overly) durable goods before.
We made it difficult for Big Tobacco, and for polluters. People are pushing back now on junk food (calorie counts posted; supersize soda bans). None of that happened overnight, and all makes for a healthier, safer society.
We can win this one.
kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Don’t forget their lobbyists in media.
I sometimes listen to the morning cable shows on my car radio to see what bullshit lie they’re pushing, but I may not be able to stomach the chirpy, grinning zombies tommorow.
I suspect they’ll go with “school security”. That’s both profitable and guaranteed not to offend. Never mind that the school was locked down with all the security bells and whistles one could reasonably purchase.
I’d bet money it will be “school security”
Davis X. Machina
Revulsion and a quarter will buy you the morning paper.
From the McDonald and Heller Court, I expect gun ownership to become one of the ‘rights implicit in the concept of ordered liberty’ and their owners found to be victims of prejudice against discrete and insular minorities.
gogol's wife
I’ve already written an outraged letter to the NYTimes, about Chunky Reese Witherspoon’s column on the Newtown massacre, which never mentions the word “guns.” It’s all about the “blindly cruel cosmos,” doncha know. Dostoevsky would have flamed his ass to kingdom come.
beltane
@Incitatus for Senate: Without a good detection system, i.e. a dog, all the guns in the world won’t do anything to stop a home invasion unless you’re a hyper-vigilant crazy person who never sleeps, showers, makes love or listens to music.
Oh wait, I think I just described 90% of Fox News viewers.
Bobby Thomson
@Del: That was a perfectly reasonable position THIRTY YEARS AGO. But funny thing is, those “responsible gun owners” have been about as visible as unicorns. You don’t want to be lumped in with a bunch of mouth breathers? Stop letting them speak for you. You’ve had plenty of time. Frankly, this all smacks of bull shit. Every single fucking time, there are apologists out there, “Oh, think of the responsible gun owners.” Fuck the “responsible” gun owners. They’ve abdicated responsibility for far too long. You want to keep your hobby? Clean it the fuck up. Otherwise, not our problem.
And frankly, you’re wrong. Gun control is unpopular because it’s substantively unpopular among gun owners and not because gun control advocates have hurt their fee fees. The civility argument is just a play for the usual useful idiots.
kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
The change in language in teachers is making my head spin. Their “life’s work”, caring for their “young charges”.
My goodness. These are the same people who were greedy, lazy, stupid scumbags just last week?
Media and conservatives just realized that teachers have to TAKE CARE OF children all day. Protect their physical well-being. Prior to this tragedy they saw them as “those people who administer standardized tests” I guess.
Bobby Thomson
@LT: God, you really are a stupid shit. Maude wrote:
She didn’t write, “when someone buys a firearm.” When someone buys an assault weapon.
So you responded:
The only blanket statement here is yours, equating all firearms with assault weapons. Otherwise, your argument makes no sense. Maude’s statement was about assault weapons, not all firearms. So either the guns you shot as a kid were assault weapons or you are putting words into her mouth that aren’t there to make a deliberately dishonest point. (Gee, what a mystery.)
And then, when people give you the benefit of the doubt and question you on how many assault weapons you shot as a kid, you get all huffy and accuse them of a lack of reading comprehension?
So, to recap, you really are a stupid shit.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Bah. Apparently I can’t follow directions.
Try this URL to access the White House petition:
http://wh.gov/RFTH
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Rex Everything
Just want to say that this is a truly great post. Right on, Cole.
Mnemosyne
It does kind of amaze me that 28 people are dead, including 20 kindergarteners, and yet gun owners still think of themselves as the real victims here and demand that the rest of us appease them before they’ll think about maybe accepting some kind of regulations, if they’re in the mood and we’re nice to them.
Jesus H. Christ.
jhtrotter
@Taylor:
Well, it seems quite likely that you miss a lot of things. But the part where I was pissing on JC’s ignorant rant was a good catch, so you aren’t a completely inept reader.
But yeah, equating the behavior of people who use a tragic incident to react in an emotionally enraged manner by falsely demonizing a huge portion of their own society as having similarities to events leading to Rwandan genocide, yeah, I did that too. So good for you, you’re 2 for 2, you’re not as slow as your first response made you seem.
I can try to post smaller words in purple crayon for you in the future, if that will help.
smith
@kay:
Probably. Even though the shooter shot his way through a window to get into the school – no one buzzed him in. Short of getting bullet-proof window glass for schools, there was little way to defend against someone shooting your windows out.
The responses will be: more security in schools and arm the teachers/have armed security officers in schools.
Mike Lamb
For the poster upthread that suggested a trigger lock turns a gun into an expensive club–taking that at face value, what we are really saying is that we’d rather make a mass shooting easier to achieve, than run the risk of a homeowner being killed because he couldn’t get the trigger lock removed in time to confront an intruder. That balance seems out of whack to me.
Bobby Thomson
@jhtrotter: Fuck off, shrimp dick.
Rex Everything
@different-church-lady: Jesus, dude, I was walking down the street one day and saw a newly-opened gun shop on the corner. This is in Jersey fucking City; not hardly gun country by any stretch. Not legal gun country anyway. So I went inside.
The owner really wanted to sell me a gun, and really wanted me to see the need for owning one. He put a massive Smith & Wesson in my hand, encouraged me to aim it and pull back the hammer and swing out the cylinder and shit, while he spun the following yarn:
“You’re in your bed with your woman next to you, sleeping, and some lunatic breaks into your apartment to rob you, and there he is, standing by your bedside, holding an ax, panting as he looks at your woman while she sleeps, and you wake up hearing him panting, and there he is raising his ax up over you two. And on the bedside table next to you, you either have one of these, fully loaded, or you have nothing at all. Now, which would you prefer?”
He went on to tell me how Hillary Clinton wants to do her best to ensure that the crazy ax-wielding burglar chop me and my woman into bite-size pieces.
I’m thinking, dude! You just revealed your inner life to me, and the inner life of gun nuts generally, to a degree that 10,000 hours of textbook study could never do! Ax-wielding burglars! This is how those people think. Being prepared for this wacky Hollywood incident that’s less likely than getting struck by lightening while fighting off a Siberian tiger that just escaped from the zoo.
Like most city dwellers, I’ve had break-ins. I’ve caught burglars in my apartment. They’re not ax-wielding rapists; they’re either reckless kids or people so poor & desperate they’ll risk imprisonment to grab something they can pawn.
This guy’s whole political life, his whole conception of his citizenship in a democracy, is rooted in a pure fantasy that bears no resemblance to the world we live in. And it’s a fantasy that encourages—rather, necessitates—a paranoid, hostile, alienated, “fuck thy neighbors” mentality. It’s laughable, but it gets people killed.
If our country can get over this shit it will be a miracle.
Citizen_X
@dandi:
New to this place, ain’tcha? I wouldn’t expect Cole to hesitate two seconds before blurting out such a thing face-to-face. I’d be surprised if he hasn’t at some point already.
@Bobby Thomson: Is shrimp dick (like the name!) a new troll? (Could we be so lucky?) His style seems unfamiliar to me. Does troll textual analysis reveal that he’s actually Derp or someone?
Oh, sorry. That bit of snark was the equivalent of the Cambodian genocide.
kay
@smith:
If these idiots seriously promote arming teachers and that idea gains any traction outside of media personality- corrupt politician- land I will sit in the lobby of my public school until they carry me out.
I often watch video survelliance that comes from a local high school, because I represent juveniles. We ALREADY HAVE school security. Could they possibly, just this once, acquaint themselves with some facts about the real world the rest of us live in before conducting another fake- debate?
I am begging here. I cannot bear another fake-debate.
pseudonymous in nc
@Keith G:
So, what’s their proposal? We’re not listening to “more guns!” or “arm teachers!” or “kids in bulletproof vests”, so let’s hear something that isn’t stupid.
Kay
@smith:
Besides that it’s ridiculous, besides that we can’t turn parks and shopping malls and theaters into fortresses, it’s also bad for kids. It is bad for kids to teach them that they have to be fearful and “locked down” and unable to exercise ANY personal autonomy or discretion every minute of every day. Why stop at schools? Kids go lots of places. Let’s lock them down everywhere. They’ll all require an armed adult escort, everywhere. It’s so crazy to me the lengths that we will go rather than regulate the weapons. We will regulate everything and everyone else, happily, just so long as we never,ever reach the weapons.
Kay
@smith:
Oh, and I’m not paying for guns for public school teachers. They may think they’ve found a new market, but I’m not paying for that. I have to draw the line on weapons I’ll pay for, because this marketing scheme they’ve come up with is, of course, endless. We’d have to arm every public employee, bus drivers, judges, the whole works. I’m drawing it at “police”.
JP_101st
Yo, Balloon Knot, since when is Doha a “combat zone”?
Please, tell me about all the firefights you were in there.
And you only had your ammo taped because it was stupid regs and you’re an idiot. Nobody in a situation where they are really going to have to shoot has their ammo taped.
I say this having actually been in a combat zone (Iraq) and being a gun owner, though not a gun nut.
As far as calling people “pussies”, that’s cute on the internet. Chances are you’d never run your suck like that around any gun nuts or other vets that own guns…in fact, I’d bank on it.
celticdragonchick
@Nemo_N:
So you would rather get personal satisfaction that actually try to solve the problem. Fuck off.
We need to solve this, and your personal snark fest is not going to help it.
celticdragonchick
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Backatcha.
You are just as much part of the problem, because you want to fuck over the people who also want to be part of the solution.
Many, many gun owners agree with some form of sensible controls. You just want to sit at your computer and flame them. Go suck on a bag of salty donkey dicks, pal.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@Lojasmo: Seems to me it was nearly the same gun (.38 Special and .357 Magnum) It’s been so long ago that I don’t remember. Just longer bullets LOL. Both as accurate as any goddam handgun. Hated the Customs-ordered 9 mm from S & W, but Glocks were out of the question since our masters received no remuneration from that company. Feller named Kelly was Commish at the time (Now Chief of Police in NYC). Ask him.
J.P. Travis
Dumbest column I’ve ever read. Fully-armed men with tape on their clips to prevent accidents are still fully-armed men able to defend themselves, and right after a school gets shot up is poor timing for making the case that self defense is a bad idea. We can only dream about how much better the outcome would have been Friday if SOMEBODY in that school was carrying.
Howe Felterbush
weird how the US Army stopped using the M1911 circa 1992. The tape over the magazines was a good addition to the fiction of the rest of the article. If you don’t believe others shouldn’t have a .223 Bushmaster or other “Assault Rifle” then that is your opinion. Look up what defines an Assault Rifle first.
BobS
@Allen: About 25 years ago I was out of town and my wife was in our rural home (no close neighbors) alone with our two young children (our German Shepherd dog had recently died and we hadn’t yet purchased his half-brother from a different breeder). Between 2 and 3 in the morning my wife was woken up by a pounding on the front door- it was a drunk-sounding guy saying through the door that his car had broken down and demanding to use the phone to call for help. My wife said she’d call, but he insisted that he needed to come inside to call for himself. She told him again she’d call and that he should return to his car. Instead he walked around to the back of the house and started pounding on that door. My wife had the presence of mind to grab our Remington 870 shotgun (which is, along with the Mossberg 500 the only single weapon anyone needs for effective home defense) and rack it loudly with just a door separating her and the potential intruder, who had the good sense to leave.
Bern
Wow, this guy sounds really incompetent. Hope he’s not in the military anymore. “I would have to eject my ammo clip, remove the tape, and reinsert and work the action before I could fire”< He probably needed to stay in the kitchen making lunch not doing 'Gate duty"
Jon
@srv: WOLVERINES. It’s what this s really about, isn’t it?
jon
Most corrections officers don’t carry guns. They walk around prison yards, maintain order, and have custodial responsibility to maintain safety. But they do it without guns. I work at a prison as a librarian, and I’m much safer there than I am at the public library.
Johnny Coelacanth
@MaryRC: That Chicago Boyz blog is a real treasure. My favorite comment was from “armed pastor” Donald Sensing:
Now that’s a comprehensive grasp of the teachings of Jesus.
burnspbesq
@LT:
No, it wasn’t. What legitimate purpose is there for a civilian to own a military weapon?
TK
Well said. When I was in Afg last year we weren’t allowed to walk around base in anything other than condition 4. Then outside the wire (we were logistics, grunts were another story), we were supposed to stay in condition 3 unless we were being actively engaged; even our turrets were like that (and watching a turret gunner fumble to get his weapon up while being shot at is a very uncomfortable situation).
And of course both rifle and pistol were supposed to be double locked every time I put them by my side to go to sleep back on the FOB.
Now back in the states, I can walk around with a concealed firearm in whatever condition I want. And yeah, I’ve had the same gun nuts tell me they have to keep loaded weapons lying around a house unsecured cause you never know when you might suddenly have to get up and use one, and it’s a dangerous world where we can’t trust the police to get there and save us, etc.
Why in a civilized country we somehow need untrained idiots in a higher state of readiness than I could have in an anarchist war zone where heavily armed men were actively trying to kill us just blows my mind.
dandi
@Citizen_X: I wasn’t talking about this “Cole” person, necessarily, but all the e-thugs in this thread who are agreeing with him so vociferously.
And BTW, while I’m here, I think I’ll call BS on his story about the “tape over the magazine while on guard duty”. Having a strip of sticky adhesive tape stuck over magazine and ammo and then jammed into the magazine wells of his weapons, especially in a hostile area, is such a boneheaded idea for reasons that ought to be obvious to even the most clueless gungrabber it barely merits serious consideration. Another giveaway is his reference to a magazine as a “clip”, which is a totally different device that hasn’t been used in standard issue U.S. small arms in decades.
Bu by all means, continue to enjoy his Kool-Aid. :)
dandi
@burnspbesq: Umm, because they want one?
Edward1811
John,
When were you serving, and where were you trained? Big Army hasn’t used 1911’s in years and no one I served with in Iraq would call magazines “clips”.
Also, tape is used on mags for round accountability, not to prevent a weapon from going condition 1.
John Cole
Whole lot of reading comprehension fail to go out of your way to call me a liar. I told you where I served. With A Troop of the 11th ACR in Fulda, Germany. I was trained at Disney Barracks, B 2/13, at Fort Knox.
And no, we also called them magazines, but most of the people who read this website don’t call them that and understand what a “clip” is.
Do you need my DD-214?
Edward1811
Reading this post again I’m throwing the BS flag on it. No one on a deployment would ever insert a mag with tape on it.
If you were doing this you were all sorts of jacked up. Hell, standing guard state side your sidearm would at least be condition 1.
John Cole
You simply have no idea wtf you are talking about. You just don’t.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bern:
You don’t get it, do you fuckhead?
All those restrictions came down from the chain of command.
They are fucking serious about weapons safety, even in a combat zone.
Edward1811
@John Cole:
I’m not saying you weren’t there, I’m just questioning why you would be inserting a taped mag. Did your NCOs know this was going on? I’d blame them for letting the command get away with that crap.
John Cole
You can throw the BS flag all you want, tough guy, but it is the truth. And you know what else is crazy- we didn’t carry our NBC gear. I’d lugged that god damned protective mask all over Germany, get to the middle east, and the tell us we don’t need it.
MaryRC
@dandi: I’d like to see you tell Cole that face-to-face. If you have the nerve.
John Cole
@Edward1811: We were ordered to do it. Trust me, we all thought it was stupid as all hell, but I was a PFC at the time and I just did what I was told. And we did have M1911’s. At OSUT at Knox we trained with 9mm, but when I got to Germany I was issued a .45.
jon
@dandi: So you’re saying what, exactly? That Cole doesn’t know of what he speaks? That he’s a liar? Or that he had boneheaded orders that were to preserve safety rather than the standard Blackwater “Shoot everyone and let the military clean up our fucking mess later” orders? You say you aren’t talking about that “Cole” person, but all of us who agree with him… then attack him. You’re reasoning is as slimy as your clear fear of criticism (“Oh, I didn’t mean those people, just those people, and not him, but he’s obviously full of shit…”) For a gun rights advocate and a guy who appears to enjoy “shooting sports”, I hope your aim is better with the guns than it is with your cowardly rhetorical refusal to say where you stand even as you purport to possibly-maybe disagree with… something or other. But since you can’t even say what, I’ll figure you’ll prefer to attack people rather than their ideas because your own ideas are so clouded that you probably haven’t even decided what they are yet. Aside from a desire to own guns, which is fine by me, you seem to have nothing to add to any conversation other than “You suck!”, provided you don’t have to be specific in the “You” portion of your hefty debate strategem.
dandi
@John Cole: As a veteran myself, I think I do. And the veterans I know who have actually been “in the shit” think it’s an idiot idea, too.
Edward1811
@John Cole:
Well I’d take the 1911 over the M9 any day of the week, so at least you had that much going for you.
I probably would have been breaking regs and chambering if I had been there, but hey, its a different time now.
Del
@Bobby Thomson: thirty years ago this was a viable stance? Well hell, I guess at 28 I shouldn’t be formulating my arguments in a way that will actually help and instead should be going for rage, right? It’s no like I grew up in a socially conscious and heavy enviromist community with a strong hunting culture, one that will gladly tell anyone calling us complicit in murder to fuck off, did I?
Tell you what, you can keep flaming and I’ll keep advocating assault weapons bans, strict registration and gun show regulation, and mandatory safety accountability. We’ll meet back here in 5 years and compare progress notes. Deal?
dandi
@jon: Your post is @MaryRC:
I doubt I’ll ever have the opportunity to meet Mr. “Cole” face to face, so the point is moot. But it is much easier for any of the tough guys on this thread who agree with him to find a local citizen who has both served in combat duty and owns personal weapons since their discharge, so they can experiment with the idea of confronting them and declaring them “pussies”. Get back to us with the results. Good night and good luck.
MaryRC
@Johnny Coelacanth: I liked this comment too:
Obviously one of Pastor Sensing’s congregation.
The thing is, if I were alone in the house in the middle of the night and a stranger came to the door, I probably would have behaved like Dan and the missus: refused to let him in and dialed 911. I would like to think, though, that I would have refrained from the shrieking and flailing that went on in the Dan from Madison household that night. And I would have dialed 911 in order to get this guy some help … notice that Dan couldn’t understand why the cops didn’t arrest this guy? For the crime of making him wet his pants, I suppose. I still can’t believe that Dan chose to tell his story with a straight face, believing that he was a hero defending his homestead.
John Cole
@Howe Felterbush:
Even weirder is how I ended active duty in June of 1992!
Tom Mannis
No safeties on those guns? What’s your point here? That if the gun owners of Connecticut put tape on their ammo clips they’d be — what? Really, call me stupid, but please explain how your use of tape is superior to keeping a gun without the clip in it, or with a safety flipped on. As for being pussies, LOL, how many of the CT gun owners wear flak jackets and helmets?
Villago Delenda Est
@John Cole:
It’s amazing, John, what you can get these weapon-obsessed wussies to say right here in your own blog, isn’t it?
jon
@dandi: No, my post is at YOU. Again, you are trying to avoid being pinned down for anything. You are not only a coward for your inability to take any personal responsibility for your own words, but you don’t even have the ability to keep track of what you said. You are either a liar, a coward, or both. And good night to you as well. Hope your gun gives you a kiss on your hurt widdle fee fees before you cuddle up with your Chuck Norris body pillow.
Yoshi
@jon: A pathetic post like this only reveals truths about you, not dandi.
By the way, the people I know who were in actually dangerous situations overseas (versus the “danger” at Doha, which pales in comparison) would never dream of inserting taped magazines.
Just because your part of the Army had its head stuck in a dark place doesn’t mean it has any relevance to gun control.
John Cole
@Villago Delenda Est: It’s funny and sad at the same time.
Incitatus for Senate
I just want to thank the latecoming gun fetishists for reminding us what a bunch of insecure, stupid, violent pussies they really are.
Jay
@jhtrotter:
“beautiful innocent little priviledged white babies.”
That, right there, is your giveaway. You share with the murderer an inability to see the victims as human beings. Instead, you had to resort to a taunt.
The only thing separating you and the killer is the violence, but that doesn’t matter much to me because, as far as I’m concerned, you’re both going to hell on the same elevator.
Ruckus
When I was stationed on my first ship(during Vietnam, so wartime mentality for sure) for my in port watch I had to carry a .45 handgun. We carried it loaded with no round in the chamber. Rack the slide and you are ready to fire. At the end of each watch we had to take the gun out of the holster, remove the clip and lock the slide open so that we could hand over an empty gun. After about a yr some idiot who had operated the slide(loading a round!) fired the weapon inside the ship. No one hurt but from then on we carried an empty weapon. Still had to prove that it was empty to hand it over(and in front of witnesses for a while). So we became Barney Fife, carried a sidearm but it had to be loaded to be used.
Same as John.
But we are being told by the immature idiots with a gun fetish that the only way to safety is to carry a loaded, concealed side arm at all times. I call bullshit. Times a million.
MaryRC
@Tom Mannis: If you really think that the point John was making is that the use of tape is superior to keeping a gun without the clip or with the safety on, then read the post again.
Bobby Thomson
@Del: Where the hell are all you “responsible” gun owners while the NRA is trying to open up a new market for gun manufacturers in schools? Why aren’t you out there front and center yelling that that’s the dumbest fucking idea you’ve ever heard?
Chuck Butcher
@honus:
No shit? Yeah, and a car without an engine can still be called a car but it sure the hell doesn’t do what my car does. The WWII M1 Carbine would be called an assault rifle also other than the lack you mentioned. It isn’t called that because of its functions (well – and it looks sorta like grand-dad’s hunting rifle.
No, I wouldn’t use an AR15 for big game but wonderful for varmits and it is the rifle of choice for National Match shooting. I personally used an M1 Garrand for Nats but I also wasn’t real dedicated to winning.
Just to be real damn clear, I don’t see a good reason for mag capacity over 10 which in functionality is the real difference. Considering how many high capacity mags there are out there, I don’t how efficacious a ban on them is at the present moment though it would have an effect long term.
I will say it again, taking stupid approaches will be counter-productive to getting anything useful done. A couple GOP Sen candidates could tell you something about that topic.
Let me add, mag capacity is only relevant if you assume somebody will/can intervene during a re-load. Some people have an actual idea of their fear response – most don’t.
Mandarama
@Ruckus: Ruckus, I’m sure that one of our polite young visitors will come along shortly to tell you how stupid your superiors were for having that response to the on-board discharge, how they doubt the veracity of your anecdote, and that in fact you probably weren’t even in Vietnam anyway. They don’t seem to recall the war Cole served in, or think that where he served made him as manly as they are, so I am sure you can’t compete either.
Because somehow, it always turns into some kind of competition for guys like this.
Yoshi
@Mandarama: Because being on a ship on the ocean (or, for that matter, being on a safe base in Kuwait after the war was over) is totally comparable to being on patrol outside the wire in Afghanistan.
Why even bring up those stories in any kind of discussion about gun control? They’re completely irrelevant.
Citizen_X
@Yoshi:
Ruckus had written,
(my emphasis). Before that, you wrote, about Cole’s post,
This was about a post whose very first phrase is, “After Operation Desert Shield and Storm.” Anyone who is capable of minimal inference would have surmised, correctly, that that meant “After I SERVED IN Operation Desert Shield and Storm.”
You know, they have remedial reading classes for adults. You should look into them.
jhtrotter
@Jay:
Nice. Ok, see you there, we’ll talk. Bring Cole.
Del
@Bobby Thomson: You mean the whole “lets turn schools into more prison-like institutions” that the ‘school security’ nuts are calling for? I’ve been fighting that fight my whole life since I was in school. I helped stop my local school district from hiring an off-duty armed officer to act as a hall monitor my freshman year in highschool by arguing the sane position at a town-hall meeting the year Columbine happened. My family’s been instrumental in keeping that bullshit out of my local school district and, funny enough, we all hunt. If you can’t parse that difference, and you’re not willing to argue a position palatable to the midwest culture, you may as well start GOP-style voter supression tactics because it’s the only way you’ll win the argument.
brad
Posts like this are why I can forgive the burgeoning man-crush on Christie.
Well fucking said.
Ruckus
@Mandarama:
Yea it used to be called a dick measuring contest.
Only here it’s to see who has the smallest.
Realistic gun fanciers:
You’ve had your turn to control the stupid, deadly, asinine idiots who fetishize gun ownership and you have failed. Miserably. So no, I’m not concerned about your feelings. From polls of NRA members and even numerous posters here you want sensible, workable controls on guns. So stop siding with the nuts and join those who have the same goals. Get over the hurt feelings and help yourselves. Otherwise at some point(probably not in my lifetime but whatever) you will lose all that you so value. This obsession with guns can not last, because the nation will not survive with this attitude. Even in the old west people realized that a weapon in the home was different than a weapon easily used in a crowd. And passed laws against carrying inside of city limits, hired sheriffs to stop the senseless killing and survived better for it.
Join the forces calling for better more sensible gun laws, be willing to limit guns to those who prove they can own them responsibly. Your feelings just aren’t that important.
Ruckus
@Citizen_X:
Thanks!
BTW, underway no one carried sidearms with the exception of the guards on the magazines that had nuclear warheads in them. Their weapons were loaded even when ours were not.
In some foreign ports we had to hide our side arms under a jacket whenever we went outside to keep the citizens of those countries from complaining about armed military in their cities. This while on a ship with enough firepower in plain sight to level a medium sized town.
Laura
I came over here to share what one Armchair Commando said on my FB page when I linked to this post. Then realized that a bunch of other Armchair Commandos had shown up and were sharing the same level of “discussion.”
Ah, well.
jhtrotter
@Citizen_X:
Actually, JC says nothing about participating in Shield or Storm in his post. And correct me if I might be wrong here, but Doha did not exist until about 4 months post Storm, as it was in Kuwait, and the Iraqis might not have allowed that, being they were occupying the place and all. And the writer that you are disparaging was correctly pointing out that Doha at 4 months or more post Storm would require some serious dramatic license to suggest it being a most dangerous place, as it was post occupation Kuwait, and likely full of those wonderful oil producing Kuwaitis that we so love, and who likely appreciated us evicting those incubator unplugging Iraqis.
But hey, I could be wrong, and maybe I should take remedial reading. Maybe they have classes in hell, and I can take one with Jay.
YoBimbo
@Villago Delenda Est: Indeed.
mandarama
I knew all along that the “support the troops” rhetoric was meaningless marketing. Now I can see that the bumper stickers should have said, “support the troops who can prove that they’ve been in the most dangerous, most manhood-proving war theaters there are, and Vietnam doesn’t count.”
Longtime readers here know Cole was in the first Gulf war. As a comment reader, I think I can name our BJ Vietnam vets too. And we have another front-pager who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Are these stories pertinent to the current debate? Only in the sense that experienced military vets and former police officers are arguing that their experience with weaponry–much more comprehensive than most of ours, including my own rural upbringing using basic guns–has taught them that defensive fetishizing is a problem. And all of a sudden, several people show up behaving defensively, insulting older veterans by questioning their military bona fides, and most of all wanting to make the point that they are NOT pussies. I think just stating the last would be sufficient, but we women on the thread already established that it’s not a very apt analogy anyway.
If any of you new commenters are actually longtime lurkers who know something of people around here, by all means, say so. If you have something to contribute idea-wise, proceed. Otherwise, you’re seagulling the thread. I’m a mom of young children, I grew up with guns, and I’m still waiting for the sensible solutions that I keep being told responsible gun owners want. My granddad who taught me to shoot, hunt, and fish would never have understood this crap.
Yoshi
@Yoshi: As always, someone comes along to concentrate on irrelevant minutia. The point? Ignored due to head buried in sand.
Please, please, please, I dare you AND Ruckus, please assert that the frankly unremarkable, safe situations offered by Ruckus and John Cole as “dangerous” compare in any way to the danger of soldiers, Marines, and Corpsmen on patrol outside the wire in Afghanistan or Iraq a few years ago.
Please do.
I’m guessing you won’t because those “dangerous” situations were actually safer than a typical street corner in Compton. Disingenuous, melodramatic posers.
dr2chase
@PurpleGirl:
Shotguns are also good for snakes. A friend of mine reports that they are not good for raccoons in your attic, especially if you only wing the raccoon.
Deb Y
“This was in a combat zone. Yet I have spent the last two fucking days dealing with armchair commandos telling me they need unlimited firepower to be safe in… Connecticut.
If there are bigger pussies in the world than gun nuts, I don’t know who the fuck they are.”
Yes, yes there are. Maybe not bigger wussies but definitely BIG wussies.
YOU address gun safety/regulation/control issues from the position of someone KNOWLEDGEABLE on them. When I read ” every time I went on gate duty, there was a piece of tape over my ammo clip on my M-16 and M1911 .45. ” I know EXACTLY what you are talking about. And I know YOU know what you are talking about. Congrats…that’s two of us.
But a lot of people calling for gun control (which shouldn’t be a bad word but is) *don’t*. They don’t because in a country where access to gun education is among the best in the world they haven’t bothered. Maybe they are afraid. Maybe they just aren’t interested. Maybe it’s a principal thing (they have their own armchairs to occupy.) Whatever their reason, when they begin to speak the ignorance and fear shows up in their voice. They think that they are experts…and they just are.not. That makes them big wussies. No amount of skimming the internet to find facts they can wing like a 2 point conversion is going to change the fact they’ve never once held a ball…
This freaks out a lot of gun owners. In the end you have fear on BOTH sides. Fear is not a good basis for policy making.
The conversation NEEDS to be had. No one in their right mind should dispute this. But the people having it should know what they are talking about. Wussies should not be the ones having it. Care to volunteer?
Yoshi
@mandarama: Oh we appreciate the service of all who enlisted.
But no honest person appreciates, say, a member of a supply company claiming he was in the shit. Or someone guarding a camp in Kuwait after the war was over claiming he was in a “dangerous” zone.
You want to talk about “the troops?” Ask any servicemember who was in combat arms whether he considers those situations “dangerous” or appreciates Cole’s characterization of his situation as “dangerous.” Don’t claim what’s just not true.
Ruckus
@Yoshi:
You’re on.
First I never stated that I was in a dangerous situation, only that I carried a loaded/unloaded weapon during a time of war.
Second, what have you done? What branch did you serve in? What dangerous situations did you carry a weapon in? What do you do in civilian life that is dangerous from a weapons point?
Third, it is disingenuous of you at best to second guess that someone else’s service didn’t meet up to some bullshit standard. People have died in every fucking war ever and will continue to as long as we settle “disputes” with weapons. Most of the time they knew at least the grossest level of danger that war entails. And I know people who died in the service who were thousands of miles from a war zone. Flight deck operations is on of the most dangerous things to do and it doesn’t take weapons to make it so. And most that I know want no more of it.
So that leaves us with what started this whole post in the first place, an inordinate fascination with guns and using them in ways that are wildly inappropriate, like killing 27 completely innocent people, although an argument could be made that the mom was not so innocent. I’m not making that here btw.
And a fourth point. You have no idea who I am or what I’ve been through. You may have a little idea about John from prior posts but it doesn’t look like that. In all fairness I do have to say the same about you. But you have assumed an awful lot of wrong info if what you wrote is any indication of how and what you think.
mandarama
Clearly.
They just aren’t as cool as anyone who’s been “patrolling outside the wire in Afghanistan.” Tell me exactly how those experiences make the servicemen and women you describe MORE qualified as authorities on how weaponry should be regulated stateside than the experiences of our resident weaker, lesser Desert Storm and not-really-real-Vietnam vets?
Cole’s original point is that stateside, suburban Americans seem more desperately attached to unfettered weaponry than guys in his military unit overseas were. Why are they? They freak out at the idea of any safety measures, while actual military personnel and law enforcement have to follow safety measures of various kinds. I keep getting told that assault rifles aren’t really different and shouldn’t really be called assault rifles, and yet when I see ads, that’s how they are marketed by their companies, so the term must have some appeal.
My brother and I were reviewing our memories about guns, from the late ’70s/early 80s, remembering what we were taught, and agreed that the results this crazy kid achieved could not have been duplicated with either the Remington 700 we learned to hunt with, or even the 30.06 our dad purchased later. Maybe the 12 gauge my granddad kept with buckshot could have done…you might could technically call that one a “riot gun.” But over a hundred rounds in a span of a few minutes? Who needs that?
I’ll admit that sending my little boys to school is causing me some anxiety, so I’m trying very hard to look at this issue dispassionately. I’m not even anti-gun. But I can see that a lot of Americans have feelings for their guns that I never saw among all the crusty old farmers, hunters, and outdoorsmen I grew up with. It seems perfectly reasonable to me to ask gun enthusiasts to accept stricter regulation, limits on the types of weapons one can keep at home, an end to gun-show purchasing, extensive background checking, training, and licensing. What’s your solution? Or, if you prefer, the valid solution we should accept from those with the _right_ kind of military experience?
Medrawt
WTF is with all this dick measuring over the proper adjectives for the various military contexts people have found themselves in? Are any of them supposed to relate to what it’s like being a civilian in the US? Are any of them supposed to relate to the proper weapons-readiness of a grade school teacher in the middle of class? I would not like to think, nor would I consider it necessary, that a teacher is maintaining the level of vigilance in re: her weapon that would be expected of a soldier standing watch during peacetime in a friendly country … which was the upshot of Cole’s point, whatever level of military engagement he was personally adjacent to.
Please excuse my intrusion, as not only am I not military, there are only two military men in my family, both noncombatants: one uncle who was enlisted Air Force in Desert Storm, one grandfather who was in the Navy, stateside, during WWII.
Ramalama
@Keith G: Yeah I set myself up for that one – no worries.
Bob
I was in the 11th ACR, C(oldsteel) Trp, and thought nothing was more stupid than having ammo in the back of my Jeep, locked with a metal railroad seal. Our German counter parts had multiple weapons, sidearms on their hips, rifles in the back of their vehicles, and sub machine guns strapped to the inside of their doors, all locked and loaded a round in the chamber. They were ready for the worst, they were prepared.
If something went bad we’d be depending on them to keep the wolves at bay while we dug out our ammo can, broke the seal and loaded our weapons.
I’m amazed they continued this in a war zone, AND it had nothing to do with accidental shootings, it has to do with accounting and logistics.
As long as the seal on the box, or the seal on the magazine isn’t broke nobody needs to count the round at shift change or at the end of the day. Total accountability for every single round without having to count them.
Yoshi
Please, the point is not whose military service was “cooler” or “more valuable.”
The point is that Cole’s Doha account above has absolutely no relation to anything about gun control in the United States, primarily because he wasn’t in any danger (as he implies). Neither does yours, Ruckus.
Jason
and@mandarama: But over a hundred rounds in a span of a few minutes? Who needs that?
Urban insurgents. Which of course is the real agenda here, the gun lobby has always been subconsciously concerned about ensuring that the Southern partisans in Civil War II are well-armed. This is also why Texas maintains its own air force.
Ruckus
@Yoshi:
And unless you live in a fucking war zone, which if you live in the US you most assuredly do not, you have shown us nothing about gun control, which is really about killing control.
We were pointing out that our military, which when you boil it down is all about killing people, has better control over the weapons that we used than civilians do in the US. That is about gun control. Or as I am going to start calling it, Killing Control.
Now if you are for killing, state that. I’m not for killing, not from drunk or irresponsible drivers, not from lack of industrial regulations, not from preventable disease and for sure not from people with a killing fetish.
Yoshi
@Ruckus: Our military doesn’t have taped magazines in situations where they actually have a reasonable expectation of using their weapons, Ruckus. Not that a random reader would know that from Cole’s disingenuous post. Or yours.
Ruckus
Way to obfuscate there dude.
I’m glad you know all the military situations there are or have been for the last 50 yrs.
It must be nice to be all knowing. Hows that work? Do you know everything or just the stuff you think you are informed about? Can you explain quarks? What’s the third thing to do when starting an open heart surgery? If the 18 wheeler you are driving loses it’s air pressure what is your response?
Oh and by the way how come if you know everything you haven’t answered any of my questions? No answers? Too difficult?
Yea I thought so.
I’m done with you. I only have so much breath left in this life and I’m not wasting any more of it with your bullshit.
Chris
@mandarama: @mandarama:
mandarama
if my comment sounds weird to you I know not how to respond. They are inanimate objects that are a big part of my life just as some people are car enthusiasts, I am a gun enthusiast. It brings me great joy to own, fire, clean, repair, and accessorize them. ultimately I enjoy the protection that a gun in my well trained possession affords me in my view of personal security as well. I love my guns. I also love my cameras, and I love my Apple products.
And wile your exposure to guns puts you in a different mindset, it is only a different mind set, not one of superiority or superior enlightenment. i am sure there are many aspects of your life that are not in mine, more power to you. i personally do not judge people in routine aspects of their life. Mine is fulfilling enough.
Also, I was in the military for years and specialized in management of their personnel weapons systems, my exposure is deep. And I found that work as a love for my guns rather than developing the love from the exposure to that work. So they always have and always will be a part of my life.
Your exposure sounds more utilitarian (if that is a word), and they are often just tools to some. And that is fine for them.
And I would never argue that guns are not dangerous, I have seen first hand the result of poor gun ownership that resulted in the loss of a very young innocent life. Guns are extremely dangerous. Anyone who would make that argument is not someone worth arguing with. Their role in my home and personal security are a direct result of their danger capability.
The issue for me here is that I respect and revere that danger. I am extremely safe with the handling of my weapons. And luckily I have no kids in the house so that potential danger does not exist in my life.
People who do not respect and revere that danger, and who do not secure or handle their weapons properly or get proper training and knowledge of their weapon present the real danger.
Sadly when someone loses control it results in the use of a weapon for something as inconceivable as Newtown. So very sad. In so far as the “assault rifle” issue, the bottom line is that it is just a menacing looking version of a hunting rifle. That same carnage could have been produced with a variety of hunting rifles or shotguns as well. There are many hunting rifles that differ from your grandfathers single shot bolt action. Many hunting rifles are semi auto and have high capacity capabilities. That is all I am saying. This paragraph obviously does not extend to fully automatic weapons, but rather the semi automatic variety such as used in the recent Conn and Portland tragedies.
C
mandarama
No, I understand that–weapons are quite different than they were 25 or 30 years ago. My granddad’s Remington 700 seems to have given way to ‘hunting rifles’ that shoot a lot more rounds, whereas we got chewed out if we wasted bullets. But I think people’s attitudes towards weapons are different too, and it seems worrisome to me. We can put quotes around “assault rifle” and say that’s only a media term, but I went and looked at some gun sales / auction sites, and even some manufacturers, and several had “Assault Rifles” as a click button category to peruse. Some used terminology like “increased combat capabilities.” Why use that marketing unless you know you are appealing to a demographic that fetishizes the concept of combat even though they are not in any kind of war theater?
I confess that I don’t at all understand a love of guns, though I appreciate you taking the time to explain what you meant. (I wonder if the people attacking John Cole here, or the people who were first to yell about this tragedy from the gun-lobby perspective, are as careful and experienced as you are. Their rhetoric suggests otherwise.) But the way I was taught to see guns was that their destructive capacity was a necessity and a somewhat burdensome responsibility, and when you needed to shoot there was probably something sad or messy with an animal involved. Most of my family who left home and went to more urban or suburban areas never owned guns afterwards. I haven’t. I do have small kids, and of course I resent the idea that their safety might be compromised by careless hobbyists who think owning a gun is cool. Perhaps we’re on the same page here, since regulations and training would require that others meet the standards you describe for yourself.
Stentor
Man, when I was over there in Riyadh, during Desert Shield, & then later Desert Storm, prior to deploying, the higher ups in our organization of the Marine Corps at El Toro had all the air wingers in 3rd MAW scared shitless that Saddam’s troops were going to punch through the infantry & over-run the airfields in Saudi Arabia. So I went over there with four non-issued weapons, a Remington 870 Wingmaster 12-gauge pump-action shotgun with an enlarged capacity, thanks to my Uncle John, who was a gunsmith, a Glock P-19 9MM with 10 magazines, 4 of them extended capacity, a Smith & Wesson 357 Revolver, & a 25-caliber pistol boot piece from some armorer I don’t remember anymore. I also took two cases of ammunition with me, with varying amounts of boxes depending on how easily I could see getting replacements. All of the weapons had been sold to me from a fellow jarhead who had recently received his federal weapons license, & I got every one of them at a great discount. I kept the Remington in the shop, the 9MM strapped to my hip, the 25-caliber pistol in my right boot, & the Smith & Wesson under the pillow in my tent. My M-16? It spent the entire deployment in the base armory because I couldn’t stand carrying the thing around with me trying to work on aircraft because I was worried it would fall over & dishcarge accidentally.
Although I used the range occasionally while I was there (we had everything on that base in SA) the majority of the ammo made it back with me, & when I hit my EAS, I got out, & sold off the guns & ammo one-by-one to pay for my college education to a local gun shop down the street. Like John, I took precautions to make sure my guns were always safety-on, no rounds in the chamber, shotun or pistols, & stored properly when I wasn’t carrying them. I mostly had to keep the 9MM with me all the time because the Marine Corps wouldn’t issue us airwingers sidearms, so I kept mine holstered to avoid any questions from the Zeros in our squadron. Plenty of other guys had to schlep their M-16s around base, but I was not one of them.
Chris
mandarama
Barring the less than eloquent orators on both sides of this issue, when we are all reasonable, then yes I imagine we are all closer together on this than we think. I have a great many anti gun and gun control advocates, and while we disagree wholly on some issues and banter frequently, we often times are not that far apart.
As I have stated, I am all for stricter sales. I do not fall into any of these restricted categories because I am a responsible law abiding citizen and I have guns. I plan to do nothing to jeopardize my ability to legally continue to be so. I do not mind background checks and cool off periods (even though I am not subject to a cool off period). If they want to tighten gun show sales, so be it. If I buy a gun there and have to wait 4 days for it to be in my hands, well that just makes day 4 more exciting for me.
I just do not want to be prevented from owning and carrying. That is my thing.
Thanks for being able to present your views respectfully, hopefully I have done the same.
RHH
Wait, you had a 1911 not an m9? You put sticky gooey “tape” on your magazines in 100 degree weather over simply not chambering a round?
I call BS you pog, if you served at all.
Stentor
@RHH: RHH who are you talking to? Me, John, or someone else. The correct word is pogue, or pogey, a pog is a little round flat chip of plastic. Besides, you could use tape in that weather, you just had to remember to remove it after a certain period of time, or else it would adhere to whatever you’d stuck it to. If you’re wondering if John served, he’s got pictures of himself in the sandbox on tanks in Doha, dumbass.
sagesource
@Kirbster: Look up the original version of the 2nd Amendment. It contained an explicit out clause for conscientious objectors. Proof positive that the framers were thinking about militias, not individuals.
Thomas
I enjoy target shooting, including with my AK-47. Yes, it’s a lot of fun. They’re great for killing lots of pumpkins.
Melfan
When my son was 4 years old he came home from a friend’s house and said his little friend let him touch daddy’s machine gun that was under the bed. I called the boy’s mother who said her husband (the doctor!) had promised that he would keep his gun collection locked up. If there were a single gun kept at my child’s school, in the teacher’s desk or even in the principal’s office, he would no longer attend that school, even if I had to homeschool (which I would hate.) This country is sick at its very soul. It was founded on slavery – the principle that some of us are less human than others, and that is still the fear that warps our society. Fear of people of another race, religion, or class corrupts democracy.
kabiddle
Thank you for serving your country, sir. And thank you for telling that story. Heh.
innocentbystander
@RareSanity: Perhaps show the person you were arguing with this video. Those who aren’t trained have absolutely no clue.
http://samuel-warde.com/2012/12/concealed-carry-permit-holders-live-in-a-dream-world-video/
justcurious
What you’ve described is surprising to me, given the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing.
Soonergrunt
@justcurious: It’s not remotely curious to anyone who was in the military in the early 90s, who isn’t bullshitting about it.