SURPRISE! They want Pump Action Guns Banned!!!

[MKSheppard]

But wait... I thought they only objected to deadly bullet spraying "assault weapons" and easily concealed "junk handguns"???

Reasonable restrictions my ass!

Wake up people!

Their ultimate goal is Complete disarmament of the civilian population!

http://www.freep.com/voices/columnists/ ... 020808.htm

LOCAL COMMENT: Why wait to tackle gun violence?
Germany's timely action should serve as example for America

August 8, 2002
BY DONNA DEES-THOMASES AND CAROLYNNE JARVIS

So far this year, 10 Detroit-area children were killed by guns. How can we, as a community and a state, stop this rising tide of gun violence?
Other communities that have stood at the dangerous intersection of young people and guns provide a good lesson. The similarities between school shootings in Littleton, Colo., and Erfurt, Germany, are striking -- troubled kids, access to guns and unbearable tragedy. Even more striking: the difference between the two countries' responses.

In Littleton, two teenagers gunned down 13 schoolmates and teachers before killing themselves. The law prohibited the underage Columbine High School killers from owning their private arsenal, including a semiautomatic weapon. But the consistent failure of state legislatures or the federal government to implement strong enforcement mechanisms - - like universal background checks, the licensing of gun owners and firearm registration -- made it easy for them to get their guns. All it took was a friend to pick up the murder weapons at a local gun show -- a friend who later testified that she never would have bought the guns if she had been subject to a background check.

In the Erfurt case, Germany's gun laws were also insufficient to keep firearms out of the hands of a disturbed youth. Despite a history of troubles at school, a 17-year-old was legally authorized to own the 9mm handgun and pump- action rifle that he used to kill 17 people, including students, teachers, a policeman and himself. He obtained a German firearms license with relative ease -- no psychological examination required.

But while nothing has happened three years after the Columbine High killings, seven weeks after the Erfurt shooting, the German parliament passed legislation that tightens the rules on gun ownership. The new laws don't preclude private ownership of guns, they just include common-sense measures: raising the age of ownership for firearms from 18 to 21; requiring that people under 25 seeking to purchase a gun pass a psychological examination; and banning pump-action guns.

This measured response to a horrifying crime is exactly what the United States failed to do in Columbine's wake. Yes, early on, the U.S. Senate passed legislation that would close the infamous gun-show loophole and require background checks for all gun sales at these events. But that modest effort withered in the House. More recently, Senate leaders, including John McCain, R-Ariz., have introduced new legislation to close the loophole, but it's likely that these bills will suffer the same fate.

Meanwhile, gun shows have become a reliable source of weapons used in crime and terrorism. In Michigan, Ali Boumelhem, linked to the terrorist organization Hezbollah, was convicted Sept. 10 of conspiring to smuggle guns and ammunition to Lebanon. Federal agents testified they saw him buying weapons at three gun shows.

At the state level, stronger gun legislation is caught in a tug-of-war between widespread public support and gun industry opposition. While states such as California and Illinois have imposed tougher gun laws and defeated efforts to loosen gun regulation, the majority have done little. Even Colorado, home to the Columbine tragedy, failed to act -- until outraged voters tightened gun-show regulations by referendum.

Some Michigan legislators, spurred by a well-funded gun industry lobby, plan to introduce legislation in the lame- duck session after the November elections that would allow concealed weapons in theaters, sports arenas and other public venues where they are currently banned. At the same time, they are blocking the introduction of legislation that would enable prosecution of illegal gun traffickers by mandating the tracing of all crime guns to identify when and where they crossed from the legal to the illegal market.

The daily litany of gun violence kills nearly 30,000 Americans, including 1,200 Michigan citizens, each year and seriously injure at least three times that many. The incredible ease with which guns are available helped give the United States the highest rate of gun violence in any developed country in the world. Our attitude towards guns and gun violence is shockingly casual. And as a nation, we are continuing to pay the price.

Nearly 90 Americans will die in our neighborhoods from gun violence, including suicides, today. And tomorrow, and the day after that.
If we want to bring a stop to the daily drumbeat of gun violence, we must learn from the quick German response.

[Mr. B]

As the t-shirt says:

Guns don't kill people, people kill people.

The problems are not guns but society itself.

[Admiral Piett]

Their ultimate goal is Complete disarmament of the civilian population!

What is there of wrong with that?

[Solid Snake]

If we are completely disarmed, we will have no defense against the government taking away all our freedom, and they know it. Thats why some politicians are trying so hard to disarm us, using gun violence as an excuse.

[MKSheppard]

If we are completely disarmed, we will have no defense against the government taking away all our freedom, and they know it. Thats why some politicians are trying so hard to disarm us, using gun violence as an excuse.

I see yer from Chicago, Illinois. I bet you know all about this, what with
Mayor Daley and his CAGE unit, along with the FOID cards they foist onto
the rest of the state.......GRRRRRR

[MKSheppard]

Their ultimate goal is Complete disarmament of the civilian population!

What is there of wrong with that?

I will be as simple as possible for you:

CRIMINALS DON'T LISTEN TO THE LAW!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,59866,00.html

Thursday, August 08, 2002
By Glenn Harlan Reynolds


The trouble with lessons from history is that they often involve
little actual history.


Sometimes, the history was never there to begin with. Other times,
lessons from history are wrong because nobody has bothered to look at
the facts.

Where guns are involved, people are beginning to look. Bentley College
historian Joyce Malcolm looked deeply at the roots of America's right
to arms in a 1994 book published by Harvard University Press, entitled
To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right. That
book explained that the right to arms enshrined in the Constitution's
Second Amendment was not merely the product of a "frontier mentality,"
as some gun-control proponents have suggested, but the outgrowth of a
long and well-established English tradition favoring an armed
citizenry as a defense against tyranny.

Now professor Malcolm, and Harvard University Press, are back with a
book entitled Guns and Violence: The English Experience, which
addresses another English connection to American gun rights.

It is a standard observation in American and English debates over gun
control that England has strict gun controls and low crime rates,
while America has (comparatively) liberal gun laws and higher crime
rates. It is usually assumed that there is a cause and effect
relationship, with the low crime stemming from the strict gun controls
in England, and vice versa in the United States.

This turns out not to be the case. As Malcolm observes, violent crime
rates in England, very high in the 14th century, fell more or less
steadily for five hundred years, even as ownership of firearms became
more common. By the late 19th century, England had gun laws that were
far more liberal than are found anywhere in the United States today,
yet almost no gun crime, and little violent crime of other sorts. (An
1870 act, which was seldom enforced, required the payment of a small
tax for the privilege of carrying, not simply owning, a gun.)

Despite a well-armed populace, Malcolm reports, "statistics record an
astonishingly low rate of gun-related violence in the late nineteenth
century." How low?

In the course of three years, according to hospital reports, there
were only 59 fatalities from handguns in a population of nearly 30
million people. Of these, 19 were accidents, 35 were suicides, and
only 3 were homicides 3 an average of one a year.

Despite these rates, which Malcolm is right to call astonishingly low,
the British government decided at the turn of the 20th century to
begin a program of gun control that would ensure "that nobody except a
soldier, sailor, or policeman, should have a pistol at all." The
claimed justification was the "enormous" number of handgun injuries.

This effort was initially frustrated by popular resistance, but the
first regulatory law in this campaign was passed in 1903, requiring a
license for the purchase of a pistol. Such licenses were freely
available, though, and citizens remained well enough armed that when
(unarmed) London bobbies were chasing a group of armed robbers in
1909, they had no trouble borrowing pistols from passersby, while
other armed citizens joined in the chase. Rates of gun violence
remained low.

After World War I, the English government got serious. Though fear of
crime was (again) claimed as a justification for much more intrusive
gun controls despite no increases of any significance, the real
motivation -- as historical records make very clear -- was the fear of
armed labor unionists, and perhaps even Bolshevik revolution. Though
Parliament in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries had seen an armed
citizenry as a valuable check on tyranny, by the 20th century the
government was determined to disarm the citizenry so as to eliminate
any threats to its power.

Because the 1903 act requiring firearm licensing had not resulted in
strict limits on gun ownership, the populace was not much threatened
by the 1920 Firearms Act. The act met with much less resistance than
the early popular resistance to the 1903 law. But the 1920 Firearms
Act began the trend toward the near-complete disarmament of the
formerly well-armed English citizenry. This disarmament continued by
gradual sub silentio changes in administrative policy. For example, in
1938 the government made the unannounced decision that pistol licenses
would no longer be issued to individuals who wanted a gun to defend
their homes. Additional legislation followed. As Malcolm puts it:

Parliament passed a comprehensive firearms statute that eliminated the
right of individuals to be armed. It was the culmination of fifty
years of effort by British governments of every political stripe. The
announced rationale by the ruling coalition government was, as usual,
an increase in armed crime, yet statistics in London show no such
increase. . . . Private Cabinet papers make clear that the
government was afraid not of crime but of disorder and even
revolution, the same fears that had fuelled government control
measures in the past.

By 1953, the English were effectively disarmed — and compounding
the insult, courts began prosecuting people for previously legal (and
even encouraged) acts of violence in defense of persons and property.
In the future, only the police were to use violence, and even they
tended to be quite lenient toward violent criminals.

In a "coincidence" that will surprise few readers who are familiar
with the work of criminologists like John Lott and Gary Kleck, English
crime rates almost immediately began a steady rise, for the first time
in 500 years. The overall crime rate in England and Wales is now 60
percent higher than in the United States. And it wasn't just crime in
general: Gun crimes became far more common as well. As Malcolm notes:

The peacefulness England used to enjoy was not the result of strict
gun laws. When it had no firearms restrictions England had little
violent crime, while the present extraordinarily stringent gun
controls have not stopped the increase in violence or even the
increase in armed violence. By opting to deprive law-abiding citizens
of the right to keep guns or to carry any article for defence, English
government policy may actually be contributing to the lawlessness and
violence afflicting its people.

Malcolm is commendably cautious when discussing the connection between
stricter English gun laws and higher rates of crime. But at the very
least, she has demonstrated that the history of English gun control
does not support the commonly made claim that English crime rates were
(formerly) lower in England because of stricter gun controls. The rise
in English crime has coincided with the growth of governmental
intrusiveness where firearms are concerned. The history is entirely
consistent with the findings of Lott and Kleck: that disarming honest
citizens produces more crime, not less.

What's more, the English experience provides a concrete example of
American gun owners' worst fear: A patient political establishment
steadily whittling firearms rights away over a period of decades
through means both open and covert as circumstances permitted, in
order to bring the citizenry under more complete political control.
These are lessons worth bearing in mind whenever the English
experience is brought up as part of the American gun-control debate.

[Mr Bean]

Grrr and I was just consdering getting some more serious firepower, Most of the guns I've shot in my life don't belong to me, With the Exception of an old .22 Rifle I don't own any myself. But seriously, Its starts with education plain and simple

Take the classic example gun people like to hold up

What Euopean(And Asian with China taking Tibet,) has both the lowest crime-rate in general and the least amount of street crime?

Switizerland
Know what every citizin in Switzerland has?
And Assult Rilfe, They got the Milita Army idea right and have stuck with it for quite awhile
http://www.newaus.com.au/news124guns.html
A story on it

And a very fun quote

If this were so then Switzerland should be a war zoneIn this country every male between aged 20 to 42 is required by law to to keep firearms, including pistols, at home

And a less fun but telling quote

In 1997 Switzerland recorded only 87 premeditated murders and 102 murder attempts. The interesting thing is that only 91 of these offences involved a gun, though out of a total of 2,498 robberies and attempted robberies 546 involved the use of guns. Of particular interest is that nearly 50 per cent of these offences were committed by foreigners

[The Yosemite Bear]

*Looks at mother's ancestors*
Ok, this one robbed Highways before becomming a respectable Merc/Bounty Hunter during/After the Civil War.

a Train Robber,
A bootlegger

hell I will have to conceed that point

[Stravo]

I have never seen such violent reactions (on both sides of the issue) concerning a right that I think is overblown AND outdated. Its obvious to me from reading the consitution that the second amendment right is there to make sure that we have a militia, much like the ones we had in the war that formed the US. The men who wrote the amendment were typically from an agragrian culture and a nation that was still considered the wild frontier, so yes, having a gun was usually a neccesity. But I do not think that Joe Blow living in a tenement in NYC or Chicago or (insert mid to large city name here) has a RIGHT to own a gun...he doesn't NEED it. He is not going out to hunt rat to feed his family NOR is he joining any militias. (Unfortunately, in my mind militias in the modern day US are PRECISELY what the founding fathers did not want - private armies with private agendas.)

NOW, to be clear, do I beleive in the total disarmamnet of the population? Frankly I'm on the fence on this one. WHile I think that the excuse is that we must remain armed to avoid the tyranny of the government is nearly laughable, if this governemnt wanted to take anything from us...trust me they could. At the same time what is wrong with a disarmed population - most eurpoean nations have diarmed populaces and I don't see the governments running roughdshod over there? I think the heart of most gun lovers is simple...they like guns. They think they're cool like a sports car. Otherwise how in the world do you justify NOT banning things like assault weapons??? Do ANYONE NOT in the amry NEED an assault weapon?? Handguns are fine and dandy, but then you have guys that want to use teflon coated bullets, etc. WHY? If its for self defense, what are you defending the home from...BORG?! A plain old handgun will do quite nicely for that...IMO NO ONE NEEDS assault weapons or high powered rifles. Thats my stance on it.

That stance has significatly changed BTW from years ago when I was devoutly anti-gun and thought all NRA folks were just INSANE. One of my best buddies is a gun lover and he had many compelling arguments as to why he enjoyed his right to bear arms and he won me over enough so that I now sit on the fence.

Anyway My two cents....

[MKSheppard]

A plain old handgun will do quite nicely for that...IMO NO ONE NEEDS assault weapons or high powered rifles. Thats my stance on it..

How do you define "high powered rifle" ?



That round can kill at ranges of a mile, and it is a COMMERCIAL
HUNTING ROUND!

They will not outlaw hunting rifles. They will instead, outlaw "Sniper Rifles".

As for "assault rifles", they are weaker and less powerful than a standard
hunting rifle, but they are SCHWEET to shoot!

[Pablo Sanchez]

Now all the liqour store robbers in Germany will be using .30-30 lever actions and Gewehr 98s, since they can't use daddy's Mossberg any more

[MKSheppard]

Now all the liqour store robbers in Germany will be using .30-30 lever actions and Gewehr 98s, since they can't use daddy's Mossberg any more

AHAHHA, perhaps, but then again, there is the black market....

[Stravo]

A plain old handgun will do quite nicely for that...IMO NO ONE NEEDS assault weapons or high powered rifles. Thats my stance on it..

As for "assault rifles", they are weaker and less powerful than a standard
hunting rifle, but they are SCHWEET to shoot!

That is the heart of the matter isn't it, gun lovers...LOVE their guns (perish the thought) so they fight like mad for their rights to own one. It's just like the SUV lovers fighting like mad against laws trying to establish higher mileage effieciency requirements (thus in effect banning SUVs) I don't think that's an evil or twisted reason, but please don't couch it in terms like Protection from the government. Nope , you just want to shoot a gun. And that's fine and I belive your right as an American.

[Admiral Piett]

If we are completely disarmed, we will have no defense against the government taking away all our freedom, and they know it. Thats why some politicians are trying so hard to disarm us, using gun violence as an excuse.

Bullshit.Dictatorships do not work in the way the NRA tells you.A dictator is not a single madman who takes power and against which the armed population will rebel.Dictators have usually a certain amount of popular support and more often than not fanatical followers that will support them.
If everyone is armed even dictator's supporters will be armed and your NRA style freedom fighters will not have an easier time in a state where the population is armed than in a state where it is not.

[Pablo Sanchez]

AHAHHA, perhaps, but then again, there is the black market....

That brings up a question I've had: What is the state of the European weapons market? In sub-saharan Africa you can get an AKM for the equivalent of twenty dollars. What about Europe? How much would an illegal FAL set you back? It can't be too much.

As an aside, I sometimes wonder about the modern European criminal--they don't seem to realize that you can get a Kalashnikov or FAL or G3 for a song, if you know where to look. It seems that only the paramilitary types, like terrorists and revolutionaries, have clued in. Except for those Russian Mafia types... they have easy access to any weapon you can think of. Imagine a doped up thug coming into your convenience store with an RPG

[Graeme Dice]

Bullshit.Dictatorships do not work in the way the NRA tells you.A dictator is not a single madman who takes power and against which the armed population will rebel.Dictators have usually a certain amount of popular support and more often than not fanatical followers that will support them.
If everyone is armed even dictator's supporters will be armed and your NRA style freedom fighters will not have an easier time in a state where the population is armed than in a state where it is not.

Since when is a dictatorship the only way to lose freedom?

[Pablo Sanchez]

Since when is a dictatorship the only way to lose freedom?

Yeah. A hegemony could take away your guns too! Or something.

[MKSheppard]

.......
.....

They're all the same rifle, the Ruger 10/22 with aftermarket addons
and stuff....they sure do look like "Assault Rifles" don't they?

The Brady Bunch got together with firearms literature and tried to
choose the "scariest" weapons to ban, and for some reason, they
were usually black and with pistol grips.....

[RayCav of ASVS]

As the t-shirt says:

Guns don't kill people, people kill people.

The problems are not guns but society itself.

OT, but funny

I love the shirt that one guy wore in Happy Gilmore

"Guns don't kill people, I kill people!"

[MKSheppard]

Since when is a dictatorship the only way to lose freedom?

Yeah. A hegemony could take away your guns too! Or something.

Actually, they won't knock on the door and confiscate them. They'll just slowly
tighten the laws and the bullshit regulations and hoops you have to jump
through...NFA articles are a good case study in point.

A NFA dealer has to pay $7,000 for a M-16, while the US government gets
it for $700.

[Stravo]

A NFA dealer has to pay $7,000 for a M-16, while the US government gets
it for $700.

Heavens!!! Oh the humanity!!! I can't own an M-16!! Its not like SOLDIERS are really the only ones that should be using them anyway.

We should start an NFA dealer telethon...top help save the poor starving NFA members that are going out of business because they can't sell military weapons to people who aren't in the millitary....

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

In what countries can you own automatic weapons (not just semi-auto civilian versions)?

[Sea Skimmer]

It all so stupid, by the gun grabbers twisted logic, every single person in Switzerland should be dead, since nearly every adult male has a full auto assault rifle and ammunition as part of the militaries reserve system

Yet in reality the country has less then 20 people killed by guns each year..

[Mr Bean]

Switzerland for one, But let me tell you trying to immgrate to Switzerland is hell in and off itself... They are VERY selective of who they let in.

Second Guns for lack of a better way of saying it are a great crime deterant.

Or in English Terms
IF you where a Mugger would you

Mug
A. The Cop on the street
B. The little old lady
C. The three guys with the "Guns don't kill people, I do" T-shirts and Rifle's Slung over thier Soilders
D. Stick to Robbing Anti-Gun Nuts
If you choose B you would be correct unless you where in Switzerland where you have roughly a 38% chance of getting shot by the Gun's She's carring
D of Course is the correct Answear

[SPOOFE]

Actually, they won't knock on the door and confiscate them.

Why not? They did it in New York City.

Heavens!!! Oh the humanity!!! I can't own an M-16!!

You can't own an AR-15, either (at least, not in California). Or a lot of other things.

Hey, guys, wanna do something fun? Ask a pro-control advocate to define "assault weapon". Ten bucks says he can't do it!