don't make fun. some of us take this seriously.

 

I think is all how we all grew up. All of us can agree that we love Corvettes and will probably own one until we die. I think the same goes for Gun owners. I am willing to bet that the majority of gun owners are responsible and law abiding folks. They take care of their property and safe guard its use from theft and other unwanted use.

My only arguement is automatic assault weapons with large capacity clips. Weapons like these were never meant (in my opinion) for general use. They were designed and meant to kill people.

I feel, no one is taking away your right to own and carry a gun. All they are tying to do is to eliminate military type assault weapons being owned by the general public.

I also think that most of you that defending this right, do not even own this type of weapon.

The consitution was written over 200 years ago. Times then were quite different than they are today. It was common practice to carry a gun everywhere you went, todays world is very different.

Again, the law says you can own a carry a gun, if that is what you want to do, then do it. But please do not go overboard and preach that we all should own and carry assault weapons. That is just carrying your point way too far.

 

the right to bare....arms?

 

Stan....you are entitled to your opinion. I am entitled to what the law says as stated in the constitution and backed up by supreme court decision.

Call me difficult/stubborn/stupid, but I don't want to give up one little inch RE: the NRA's stated position on gun ownership. Not an inch.

We both , everybody, want to solve the problem. But in all problem solving, you must clearly identify the problem, and than, all that follows flows from that. If we attack the wrong problem, we fix nothing and, in fact, may make the problem worse.

So......honestly....do you see guns as the problem ...and elimination/reduction of guns the solution.

It is extremely difficult to own a gun in Great Britain.........they have passed laws that make it illegal to sell a knife to someone under 18 and you can get 4 years in prison if caught with a knife............

Pretty soon it will be illegal to smoke, drink soda, or pray.......I know, I know, it can't happen here.

777

 

So we don't need 3 branches of government, voting, the electoral college, 2 branches of congress, the Bill OF RIGHTS!!! It's all irrelevant
or just one part?????

 

I was with you in spirit Nino.....too busy teaching permit classes.

 

Nino its not worth arguing with these ignorant people.

 

"Addicts"? Really?

I am a state law enforcement officer, I do not own a gun, but have many friends that do. They go shooting and collect them like guys collect cars, baseball cards etc.

There is no accurate description for assault rifle in my book, as many weapons can do the same job. Some duck hunting guns carry more than 7 rounds and are semi automatic.

There are plenty of gun laws on the books, but as Joe Biden noted: (paraphrased) We can't follow up on all the paperwork that people fill out.
So effectively, the government cannot control guns under the laws in place. I know a lot of gun owners that are going to be criminals when this is all said and done.

People like you ask, "why does someone need an AR-15?"

I say, "Why did Rosa Parks need to sit in the front seat?"

It was her right guaranteed by the Constitution!

 

I DARE YOU to give us the (gun) crime statistics for Great Britain - total murders and per capita !!!

Then give us the good ole USA stats LOL

 

the fun thing about numbers is you can skew them to make your case.

national, and even city, per capita is a useless measure.

go into neighborhoods.

compton vs. bel air.

brownsville vs. upper east side.

you get the picture....

or actually, the mass media does not, because, alas, it might undermine their agenda.

 

Coming soon to a home near you ...

NO SELF DEFENSE

Where We're Headed
By Robert A. Waters - 06.23.00

You're sound asleep when you hear a thump outside your bedroom door. Half awake, and nearly paralyzed with fear, you hear muffled whispers. At least two people have broken into your house and are moving your way. With your heart pumping, you reach down beside your bed and pick up your shotgun. You rack a shell into the chamber, then inch toward the door and open it. In the darkness, you make out two shadows. One holds something that looks like a crowbar. When the intruder brandishes it as if to strike, you raise the shotgun and fire. The blast knocks both thugs to the floor. One writhes and screams while the second man crawls to the front door and lurches outside.

As you pick up the telephone to call police, you know you're in trouble. In your country, most guns were outlawed years before, and the few that are privately owned are so stringently regulated as to make them useless. Yours was never registered.

Police arrive and inform you that the second burglar has died. They arrest you for First Degree Murder and Illegal Possession of a Firearm. When you talk to your attorney, he tells you not to worry: authorities will probably plea the case down to manslaughter.

"What kind of sentence will I get?" you ask. "Only ten-to-twelve years," he replies, as if that's nothing. "Behave yourself, and you'll be out in seven."

The next day, the shooting is the lead story in the local newspaper. Somehow, you're portrayed as an eccentric vigilante while the two men you shot are represented as choir boys. Their friends and relatives can't find an unkind word to say about them. Buried deep down in the article, authorities acknowledge that both "victims" have been arrested numerous times. But the next day's headline says it all: "Lovable Rogue Son Didn't Deserve to Die." The thieves have been transformed from career criminals into Robin Hood-type pranksters.

As the days wear on, the story takes wings. The national media picks it up, then the international media. The surviving burglar has become a folk hero.

Your attorney says the thief is preparing to sue you, and he'll probably win.

The media publishes reports that your home has been burglarized several times in the past and that you've been critical of local police for their lack of effort in apprehending the suspects. After the last break-in, you told your neighbor that you would be prepared
next time. The District Attorney uses this to allege that you were lying in wait for the burglars.

A few months later, you go to trial. The charges haven't been reduced, as your lawyer had so confidently predicted. When you take the stand, your anger at the injustice of it all works against you. Prosecutors paint a picture of you as a mean, vengeful man. It doesn't take long for the jury to convict you of all charges. The judge sentences you to life in prison.

This case really happened. On August 22, 1999, Tony Martin of Emneth, Norfolk, England, killed one burglar and wounded a second. In April 2000, he was convicted and is now serving a life term.

How did it become a crime to defend one's own life in the once great British Empire? It started with the Pistols Act of 1903. This seemingly reasonable law forbade selling pistols to minors or felons and established that handgun sales were to be made only to those who had a license.

The Firearms Act of 1920 expanded licensing to include not only handguns but all firearms except shotguns.

Later laws passed in 1953 and 1967 outlawed the carrying of any weapon by private citizens and mandated the registration of all shotguns.

Momentum for total handgun confiscation began in earnest after the Hungerford mass shooting in 1987. Michael Ryan, a mentally disturbed man with a Kalashnikov rifle, walked down the streets shooting everyone he saw. When the smoke cleared, 17 people were dead. The British public, already de-sensitized by eighty years of "gun control",
demanded even tougher restrictions. (The seizure of all privately owned handguns was the objective even though Ryan used a rifle.)

Nine years later, at Dunblane, Scotland, Thomas Hamilton used a semi-automatic weapon to murder 16 children and a teacher at a public school. For many years, the media had portrayed all gun owners as mentally unstable, or worse, criminals. Now the press had a real kook with which to beat up law-abiding gun owners. Day after day, week after week, the media gave up all pretense of objectivity and demanded a total ban on all handguns. The Dunblane Inquiry, a few months later, sealed the fate of the few sidearm still owned
by private citizens.

During the years in which the British government incrementally took away most gun rights, the notion that a citizen had the right to armed self-defense came to be seen as vigilantism. Authorities refused to grant gun licenses to people who were threatened, claiming that self-defense was no longer considered a valid reason to own a gun.

Citizens who shot burglars or robbers or rapists were charged while the real criminals were released. Indeed, after the Martin shooting, a police spokesman was quoted as saying, "We cannot have people take the law into their own hands." All of Martin's neighbors had been robbed numerous times, and several elderly people were severely injured in beatings by young thugs who had no fear of the consequences. Martin himself, a collector of antiques, had seen most of his collection trashed or stolen by burglars.

When the Dunblane Inquiry ended, citizens who owned handguns were given three months to turn them over to local authorities. Being good British subjects, most people obeyed the law. The few who didn't were visited by police and threatened with ten-year prison sentences if they didn't comply.

Police later bragged that they'd taken nearly 200,000 handguns from private citizens. How did the authorities know who had handguns? The guns had been registered and licensed. Kinda like cars. Sound familiar?

WAKE UP AMERICA, THIS IS WHY OUR FOUNDING FATHERS PUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT IN OUR CONSTITUTION.

"..it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.." --Samuel Adams

 

First, let me correct you. AUTOMATIC rifles have been banned for decades. Noone has them.

Let me ask you this. Why is it OK for my wife to kill the intruder who may be about to rape her with a tiny pink SEMI-auto handgun that only holds 7 rounds, but it's NOT OK for her to kill the intruder who is about to rape her with a scary SEMI-auto black rifle that holds 30 rounds? How is killing the bad guy OK with one gun but BAD with another?

 

Here are some pictures of banned components. King Cuomo says that having these things on my rifle make it illegal. Someone please explain why each of these should not be used to kill the murderer that just broke into my house? How do these components making defending myself a BAD thing?

 

The only thing I found so far is...... within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had DOUBLED according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time. Strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia haven't made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres.

Oh...I did see where murder by crossbow was 10 for the US and 2 for Great Britain. This appears to be an area we need to watch and additional crossbow laws should reduce this considerably. Possibly a crossbow ban would be appropriate. I don't think there are 30 arrow magazines yet, so this should help.

Understand we live in a not-perfect world. One of the best things we have going for us in our country is the constitution and the bill of rights. Yet even our best effort, with the best intentions, crafted by the smartest people, will not solve all problems. Things in our country are good but not perfect. The price for our individual liberties is sometime steep and result in collateral damage. The damage re: the second amendment is the death of innocents by bad people thru the use of guns.....the damage re: the first amendment is that individuals can **** on and desecrate the American flag.

When you get to heaven, things will be perfect.....here, not so much.

Trust me.....you won't lose weight if I take away your knife and fork.

777

 

Because when psychos like James Holmes and Adam Lanza decide to go for mass shooting spree in public, loss of life will be minimized. We just want the assault weapons banned and leave it to the military where they belong.

Its very easy to be pro-gun until you lose someone in a senseless mass shooting.

 

Ike- It's very easy to think that when you're uninformed of the facts. The FACT is that more homicides are committed in the US with handguns than with semi-auto rifles. The FACT is that more homicides are committed in the US with BASEBALL BATS than firearms. These are statistics published by the FBI.

Why aren't we banning baseball bats?

Why are psychos allowed on the streets? Preventing law abiding citizens from defending themselves with the best tool for the job will not prevent a psycho from doing anything. During the last ban, violent crime increased. When Australia banned rifles, violent crime increased. The problem is not the tool, it's the person.

If guns kill people, then spoons made Oprah fat.

Ike- What kind of assault weapon did McVeigh use to kill the children in the day care center in Oklahoma?

 

What I fear is the words "common sense" when uttered by the gov't as an excuse to further restrict liberties and freedoms or increase taxes.

Listen to the president's words and other pols, look for those 2 words....and watch as we slowly devolve.

 

Nino & Chuck, glad you guy's went, I tried but couldn't get off work. Obviously emotions are running high following the Newtown tradegy and it's natural to try and place blame and avoid another horror. However due to the massive wave of pure propaganda flooding the media by biased reporting and grandstanding by truly ignorant politicians the general publics knowledge of firearms is based on what they want people to believe. Propaganda is defined as "information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. The dissemination of such information as a political strategy." This is exactly what has happened since Newtown and is how the vast majority of the non shooting public has gained their information to form opinions on guns. Bad news sells, and politicians want to appear as if they really care. (as well as get revenge for the first useless assault weapons ban expiring)

Just a few examples of gross misrepresentations and sensationalized reporting:

Day One- Reported Adam Lanza used an "assault weapon" and high capacity "clips" to commit his carnage. This is what started all the rage against "assault weapons" and is the center of the current gun law debates. The fact is the rifle that Lanza used was in fact "assault weapons" ban compliant (yes, we already have an "assault weapons" ban in CT., it is virtually identical to the original federal ban that everyone is screaming about to bring back!). The firearm used is actually classified as a "sporting rifle" and functions like any other semi-automatic rifle, shotgun or handgun. However, because it still looks "evil" and is cosmetically similar to a real full auto military assault rifle it is much easier and effective to report it as an extra dangerous, has no place in society, nobody needs or should have one, only designed to kill people with a massive amount of "extra deadly" bullet spraying ability, nobody hunts with 30 bullets, needs to be banned despicable black rifle. Certainly more inflammatory than "sporting rifle".

As to the high capacity "clips" (just once I'd like to hear "magazine" by these so called educated reporters and politicians, (however our illustrious Governor Malloy now calls them "magazine clips") it has been grossly under reported that investigators at the scene found most if not all the magazines were not empty, many were over half full as the deranged shooter was dropping mags and reloading several times, investigators surmised this was done based on what he had learned from video games and he was so overcome with rage he never fully emptied his mags. So the high capacity magazines they want banned were not even fully utilized and the argument that maybe if he didn't have so many shots available in one magazine maybe someone could have escaped(If we could only save one life...) is moot. It only takes 2 seconds or less to reload as he obviously did, 10 bullets, 20 bullets, 30 bullets it doesn't and didn't matter. But the focus is on the magazine capacity, not how they were really used in this case.

Reporter Jim Shea of the Hartford Courant stated in a article in the Sunday paper "it's easier to get a gun permit than it is to get a drivers license". Really??? Again the general public reads this and thinks it's true. I don't remember being finger printed, character referenced, background checked by the FBI, having a clean criminal record, no history of mental disease or having been subject to a restraining order to qualify for my drivers license. But good people reading the Courant will say that's ridiculous, it's easier to get a gun permit than a drivers license? We should do something about that!

Surfing TV I came across a liberal talk show "The Ed Show" whoever that is. He showed film footage of someone firing a fully automatic true M-4 assault rifle blowing up a bunch of fruit and water jugs with huge effect with a voice over "THIS IS THE GUN THAT WAS USED AT SANDY HOOK" Non shooting people across America are being deliberately misled and naturally would assume the "assault weapon" the government wants to ban is just like the one being shown. Of course nobody should have one, my God, why do those gun nuts want to keep these weapons of mass destruction, THEY SHOULD BE BANNED!!! (Full auto weapons were effectively banned in 1934 and are extremely regulated today.)

Retired Hartford Police Chief Bernie Sullivan said "no one needs more than six shots to stop a threat, if you can't stop a threat with six shots you're a lousy marksman", evidently implying all anyone needs for self defense is a 6 shot revolver. Of course people think, hey if the Police Chief says this is all you need then why does anyone need more than 6 shots? Maybe we should ask his officers walking the beat why they carry .45 semi-auto pistols with 10 shot magazines as well as 2 reloads for a capacity of 30 rounds if all they need to stop a threat is 6 shots, or is it because they are such lousy "marksmen".

Politicians are shouting you don't need assault weapons for hunting, well duh, when was the last time you heard of someone hunting with a MACHINE GUN, doesn't happen. Again the term assault weapon is being confused with the real thing, a military fully automatic assault rifle. AR-15 rifles are in fact used frequently for hunting everything from Deer to varmints, coyotes, wolves, wild hogs and many other types of pests and game. One shot at a time, just like any other rifle. Besides, the 2nd amendment wasn't designed solely for hunters.

And of course the rallying cry of the ban movement heard everywhere, "Assault weapons are only designed for the mass killing of people as quickly as possible and have no useful purpose in society"

Well, AR-15 variants(Assault weapons under the current ban terminology, still semi-auto however), are used in many applications from casual target shooting, formal shooting competitions of many styles from long range accuracy to 3 gun matches to tactical training and more, to pest control on property to home defense and many more legal uses. So they are in fact used just like many other styles of rifles and are no more deadly, evil or scary just because they look like something they are not. And as far as home defense they are actually safer for use in the home (I know, the uninformed are saying how could that black evil rifle be safer in the home???) It is because the bullets designed for the rifle tend to fragment when hitting a solid object like a wall or 2x4 and are much less likely to over penetrate the walls of a home as handgun bullets do.

And the question of "need". This is Corvette Forum, we all have Corvettes, cars that are capable of 150, 180mph or more, why do we need cars that can go that fast? Maybe they should be banned....all anyone needs is a 4 cylinder for transportation. It's not a question of need at all. It's about freedom to choose as long as you don't hurt someone else, and it's the same as the choice whether or not to own an "assault weapon", a term for something it's not, made up by our legislators to demonize a particular style of rifle in an effort to persuade the public they are doing something to stop evil when in fact it has been proven a ban does nothing, and that is why it was allowed to expire on the federal level. It was deemed "statistically insignificant" by the dept. of Justice in reducing gun crime after being in force for 10 years.

Ultimately, all good people, pro-gun, anti-gun want to live in peace and protect our children. Some of us believe we need to protect ourselves and wish to exercise our constitutional right to do so, others are content to depend on the government and police to save and protect them. Adam Lanza was criminally insane as were the other mass shooters, as is any one really who kills someone else, gun or no gun. Obama said himself, "no single law or set of laws can deter evil, but we can try" Well as far as gun laws are concerned we've tried 20,000 times here in America, laws didn't stop these mass shooters because they were insane and you can't legislate insanity. Owning a firearm is a choice and a right, and a choice and right that should not be taken away based on the wishes of the misinformed, misled and brainwashed public and politicians.

 

Very very well said. Good job with the details. If just ONE anti-gun zealot reads and COMPREHENDS what you've written, you've made a huge step in the right direction. I read every word ... too bad most opponents won't.

What do you hear about a DC rally?

 

Thank you, I got carried away with the length and realize many will not read it all. Don't know any details about a DC rally. My main point is there are so many outright lies, inflammatory remarks, gross misrepresentations and selective use of facts being dumped on the American people and that is how they are forming opinions on gun control issues. It has been evidenced in this thread, "ban those automatic military style assault weapons", etc. The general public doesn't know much if anything about guns except what they see or hear in the media. Of course if our elected "leaders" say it's true it must be true. If clergy, teachers, politicians, Hollywood celebrities, talk show hosts, editors in local papers etc. all say the same thing it must be true. Problem is the vast majority if not all have no experience with firearms and they all formed their opinions on the same lies and mistruths being spread now, so the panic and emotions continue to gain credence and escalate. Sadly we all want less crime, banning "assault weapons" or high capacity "clips" will do little or nothing to stop the next madman, but will make those who think it will feel better. And that is just what "feel good legislation" is all about. Problem is, it is attacking the 2nd amendment, ironically by grossly abusing the 1st.