bearister said:
From my cold dead hands, lads, from my cold dead hands!
..and you will be eating a couple of vintage potato mashers when you come for it:
And don't even get me started on my back up:
Happiness is a warm gun (Happiness bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Happiness is a warm gun, mama (Happiness bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
When I hold you in my arms (Oo-oo oh yeah)
And I feel my finger on your trigger (Oo-oo oh yeah)
I know nobody can do me no harm (Oo-oo oh yeah)
Because happiness is a warm gun, mama (Happiness bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Happiness is a warm gun, yes it is (Happiness bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Happiness is a warm, yes it is, gun (Happiness bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Well, don't you know that happiness is a warm gun, mama? (Happiness is a warm gun, yeah)
That Barrett .50Cal is too rich for my blood, but it must be a lot of fun to shoot. The StG45 is chambered for a round that I didn't even know existed, the 7.92x33. Shorter and wider than the Soviet 7.62x39 round that my SKS (Simonov, precursor to the AK) is chambered for, maybe giving a little more muzzle energy and tapering off more quickly due to the larger cross section.
One thing that hasn't really been discussed in this thread is campaign finance reform, which can make NRA money (and that of other big-money special interests) less vital to lawmakers. That's also unlikely.
88 has shown some data on firearm ownership and argued that a place like France has the same ownership rate as Illinois, with a much lower firearm homicide rate. That may be the case, but it matters who the owners are. France likely subjects firearm owners to much more stringent regulation than Illinois does, and, if France is anything like Canada, they clamp down much harder on handgun ownership than they do for shotguns and rifles.
Sanjay Gupta had a good article a week ago on how we might treat gun violence as a public health issue, and not a criminal issue, that I thought was very interesting. Tonight on CNN after the Town Hall meeting Don Lemon interviewed the father of a kid killed at Columbine who ran a program that was doing the same thing, proactive intervention in schools. Turns out that identifying and engaging high risk individuals gets results without even having to deal with the complexities of gun control, and addressing anger and isolation is more effective than chanting "mental health" and then doing nothing every time an incident like this occurs.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/05/health/gupta-stopping-violence/index.htmlI'd certainly like to see more nanny-state intervention with stringent background checks, licensing, testing, and a national database including ballistic fingerprinting. Also need to tighten the lax gun show rules, or get rid of gun shows entirely. Unfortunately, the NRA under Wayne LaPierre's leadership has been stoking fear among its members for three decades now about how any regulation is another step on the slippery slope towards the Big Bad Govt. coming to take your guns, which is why they'll never see a penny from me.
I have no problem with a comprehensive ban on assault-style weapons, but I fear that a lot of political capital will be wasted in the endeavor. Last time around they concentrated on specific models, which the gun companies quickly eluded, and on specific cosmetics that had nothing to do with what the guns could actually do. This time around the proposals I've seen grandfather in the existing stocks, and there are currently nearly 15 million AR-style rifles in circulation. These guns are used in relatively few sensational incidents, while the vast majority of gun crime is perpetrated with handguns (and many mass shootings too: Killeen, Charleston, Virginia Tech, and Umpqua come to mind). So when any potential ban goes into effect and the killing continues, the pro-gun crowd will look at the results and argue that gun control doesn't work.
There are over 300 million firearms in circulation. Any regulation or restriction will take a long time for us to see meaningful results. For my money, I'd like to see a Canadian model here. They've got a bit of the individualist frontier mentality like we do, but they regulate shotguns and rifles and severely regulate/restrict handguns. As a result, their per capita gun homicide rate is 1/6 of ours. I have no problem giving up my five handguns if it means that my family and I are a little better protected from somebody else having a bad day. If I want to shoot something specific, I can go to a range and rent what I want. If I think that I need protection for my home, there's really nothing better than a pump shotgun.