How often are so-called “assault weapons” (as distinct from machine guns) used for criminal purposes by anyone other than government personnel? What is it about them that makes them so nasty? Have there been huge numbers of drive-by bayonettings?

The objection to the AWB isn’t so much that someone who might have bought an AR15 would have had to buy a version with an integral muzzle brake instead of a threaded barrel, but rather that if the government is allowed to ban some weapons for one set of arbitrary and capricious reasons, there is no reason it couldn’t impose any number of additional arbitrary and capricious bans to the point that it was impossible to find any weapon that didn’t fall afoul of some particular restriction.

Further, divide the number of “assault weapons” in the hands of people who are not on felony probation or parole, by the number of innocents killed by such people wielding such weapons. Pretty big number. Now compute the same figure for such weapons in the hands of the police. In whose hands are such weapons more dangerous?

This is a great argument for not letting children have firearms, but I fail to see how it relates to a responsible adult.

I have somewhat of a thing for mermaids. So when The Agitator posted this link about a double amputee who gets realistic-looking mermaid tail so she can swim, I was thrilled. A quick excerpt from the article:

"Good: double amputee gets pros…

Those who feel themselves to be uniquely qualified to determine whether their fellow citizens have the right to defend themselves rarely subject themselves to the same standards…largely because of a false a priori assumption of superior knowledge on their part equating to (equally false) superior judgment.

This usually manifests in situations in which the hypocrisy of such a position is laid bare by actual events. For example, the case of the late Carl Rowan comes to mind.

Rowan was a cultured rather than rabid promulgator of gun control…except when it came to his own safety, of course, in which he showed no compunctions against using an illegal handgun to defend himself against a home intruder. He was never punished for violating the law his ‘principles’ demanded he foist upon others.

Some animals are more equal than others, I suppose. Me, I’ll prefer the principles as enumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights before I subscribe to another human being’s beliefs as to whether I deserve to be able to defend myself…with whatever means I may have at my disposal.

ed. note: I cheated.

Much like a spoiled child, gun enthusiasts will cry when their favourite toys are taken away. I suggest they are made to sit on the naughty step until they can learn to play nicely.

Thanks for that shining example of the arrogance we ordinary Americans can’t let succeed. You and your ilk aren’t our daddies.

So Attorney General Eric Holder cites the violence in Mexico as part of the reason for the AWB – citing weapons that are not “assault weapons” (these are semi-automatic rifles made to look like full-auto assault rifles) and (except for heavily regulated antiques) are illegal for anyone but police or military to purchase or own in the USA.

Automatic weapons (machine guns), grenades, and grenade launchers were regulated by the National Firearms Act of the 1930′s, amended in 1986 to completely ban anything manufactured in 1986 or later.

For weapons manufactured before 1986, you can own them, but you have to pay a $200 registration fee and go through an FBI background check that takes months. That is, if you are a quite rich gun collector and want to buy an antique machine gun if you can find one at a dealer, you pay the dealer and he stores them while you send $200 and a long form off to the FBI and wait for the FBI to clear you. Getting a top secret clearance to read the technical documents of some of our best military systems only took six weeks, but the NFA investigation may take six months! If you want an antique grenade launcher, you have to pay $200 and send in the form for each grenade as well as the launcher.

Since new weapons are completely banned, scarcity has pushed the price of even the cheapest NFA items to several thousand dollars (versus about $100 to produce new AK47′s, for instance).

The drug gangs aren’t buying or even stealing collectors’ items. They might be smuggling weapons from China or planting people in factories to steal them, but most likely they just suborn Mexican police or military to “lose” their government-issued weapons. If such sources could be cut off (and they can’t), it would be cheaper to set up their own factories for AK47′s and grenades than to try to get NFA weapons. (Any machine shop could do it. There are Pakistani villages where local craftsmen will build an AK47 to order while you wait…)

Much like a spoiled child, gun enthusiasts will cry when their favourite toys are taken away. I suggest they are made to sit on the naughty step until they can learn to play nicely.

WTF?! My shoe “could” potentially be used as a “weapon” – But that doesn’t mean you got to kill a person just because they are in possession of a pair of shoes! Geezus, a pencil “could” also be used as a weapon, so “could” a plastic bag. So, where does the line get drawn? Sure, police should be able to act in self defense when they feel they are in life threatening and imminent danger…but getting potentially scratched by a stapler is no reason to kill a man! And the thing is, there’s no discipline or accountability in these types of cases…all they have to say is “errr, well, you see, I killed him because I felt “threatened” by the wet paper bag he was carrying”…and no matter how illegitimate the excuse, the result is usually nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

There has to be some way to keep these people from acting like paranoid homicidal maniacs…right now, as things are, I feel that the police are a bigger threat to freedom than the actual gun toting criminals.

“I am opposed to all attempts to license or restrict the arming of
individuals, such as the Sullivan Act of the State of New York. I consider such laws a violation of civil liberty, subversive of
democratic political institutions, and self-defeating in their purpose.”

“Whether the authorities be invaders or merely local tyrants, the
effect of such [gun] laws is to place the individual at the mercy of
the state, unable to resist.”

Bonus points granted for naming author and circumstance. Hint: Same man, same letter.

They are using fully automatic weapons in Mexico … not one pull one shot ‘assault weapons” in the hands of America.

The idiot is trying to scare the gullible. Nothing more.

Well, I tell you what Mr. Government Agent man … come and get my “assault weapons”.

And you ATF goons … I know you don’t do it because it is right or wrong … you do it for the rush.

Here:

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking:

What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family?

Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling in terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst; the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!” – The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The way things are looking, chance, the American public is going to “benefit” from a scarcity of food any day now…

Who stops at a single slice? Looking around, a little health hysteria might not be such a bad thing…

I’ve basically rejected both parties as worth voting for…the Democrats will always be a waste, and until they start embracing governors like Mark Sanford and Congressmen like Jeff Flake, the GOP’s got nothing to say to libertarians either.

And Ron Paul.

Anyone who is familiar with the AWB knows it’s bullshit and half the way they define a AW is through cosmetics. The AR-15 is one of the most popular target shooting guns today.

On the other hand, declaring an end the raids (yes, some happened after he took office, but the AG is outright saying that that will no longer be US policy going forward) is a HUGE deal that affects the lives of tons of people and potentially avoids all sorts of wrongful imprisonment. It means that the feds are backing off on the idea that they should override state law on med. pot.

I wasn’t referring to Balko so much as the person who declared that the goof issue made him hate Obama.

The point of the NYT article is that neither will a single slice of cake, and that (a few) people have gone from one extreme to the other.