Libertarian Punk. Keep your fucking hands off!

So, someone asked me today about “sensible” gun control. I maintain that no such thing exists.

First…

Most people who want to regulate guns don’t know much about them.

This comment on another post on this blog is typical:

I do believe that we do have the right to protect ourselves with a firearm like a shotgun or a rifle. The thing that I’m not convinced on is the need to own assault weapons like an AK-47 or an Uzi.

Here’s the thing: an AK-47 IS a rifle. And a pretty anemic one at that. Any .30 cal deer rifle has MUCH more destructive power. And range. And with a  scope, it’s pretty much a sniper rifle that could kill a man at a quarter mile. (And most deer rifles are .30 cal, it’s pretty cruel to hunt deer with anything smaller, you need to kill deer in one shot, or they suffer.) An AK-47 cannot kill effectively at a quarter mile.

Not that any of that is reassuring to anyone who likes gun control, but you will NEVER get guns out of the hands of the millions of deer hunters in America. Never.

Though the “sporting purpose” mentioned by many gun grabbers (as in “we want to ban anything that does not have a sporting purpose”) has nothing to do with the Second Amendment. The “sporting purpose” crap came from an American adaptation of a Nazi Germany gun control law.

Gun control is immoral because all honest, free men have an innate right to self-defense, on a one-to-one level, like a violent mugger, but also on a larger, “opposing tyranny” level.

The Second Amendment has nothing to do with shooting deer. The right to shoot deer was a given in the rural community of early America. If you couldn’t shoot deer, you’d starve.

The Second Amendment has to do with being able to make sure that the government doesn’t get too large. To protect yourself from government. Though even uttering these words today gets you put on a watch list. Fedzilla has grown to the point that it wants to remove the Second Amendment. And they do it slowly, in bits and pieces. Give ‘em an inch and they take a mile.

Because of the Second Amendment, politicians cannot outright ban guns. So they go after them incrementally, and each bit of gun control (or ammo control, lately) legislation is a step toward the unstated goal of the government having all the guns and the people having none. Once that happens, they can cram anything down your throat, and there is nothing you can do about it.

America was founded by guys who were really pissed.
But if you quote the Founding Fathers now, you’re called a terrorist!

–”Liberty in Shards” by Right Arm of Wyoming

Most politicians who want to outlaw guns don’t do so for love of the public safety. They only do it for power: the power of having the government have the only guns, and the power of getting votes. Politicians love votes, and promising to be “tough on guns” (instead of being tough on actual crime, which is harder) usually gets a few votes with the “think of the children!” parrots.

Back to the original reason for the Second Amendment: you don’t have to use your guns to prevent encroaching tyranny, you only have to have them. And maybe be willing to use them if things get bad enough. And have the skill to do so.

By the way, you need rifles to oppose tyranny. No revolutions were ever won with pistols, and tyranny is not opposed with a shotgun.

“Progressive” leftists tend to be into banning guns, because leftists think that they know what’s best for everyone. People on the right have more trust in people. They don’t need to “nanny” everyone.

But most leftist gun grabbers have never held a gun, so why should they be in charge of regulating them? Here’s a typical gun grabbing leftist, trying to explain the random indicators that defined an “assault weapon” under the “assault weapon ban” that she helped create.

Would you trust someone who is that stupid about pharmaceuticals to regulate medicine? (Never mind, that’s what the Democrats are trying to do with health care.)

Note that she also uses the incorrect term “clip” (should be “mag” or “magazine”) Also, “assault weapon” is a made-up, meaningless term. As is the specious indicators that “defined” one under that law. A pistol grip on a rifle never killed anyone, nor does it help anyone kill anyone. There is something called an “assault rifle” (a full-auto, select fire AK-47 would qualify, so do the guns our boys carry in Iraq, but both of those are already illegal for private citizens in America), but gun grabboids’ definition of “assault weapon” often includes many shotguns and hand guns too. Basically, it banned anything that looked like a military weapon, was black, and looked scary. They banned some very underpowered guns, and didn’t ban some very powerful guns, based entirely on cosmetics. Some gun lovers even called the “assault weapons ban” the “scary looking ugly black gun ban.”

Obama’s boy Eric Holder tried to reinstate the “Assault Weapon” ban last year, and said it was to help Mexico in their War on Drugs! Trying to limit our Constitutional rights to help a foreign country is treasonous, in my opinion.

All gun control has historically led to total gun confiscation, which has always led to tyrants being able to kill dissenters. Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin all took away the guns before doing the horrible things they’re best known for.

Gun control and gun registration does not prevent crime. There are thousands of gun laws on the books, and not one of them has made anyone safer. They have only made criminals out of law-abiding citizens. Gun control simply disarms citizens. If your daughter were being stalked, would you want her to have to wait ten days to get a gun, when the criminal stalking her likely already has a gun? And while we’re on the subject of waiting periods: if you think they’re a good idea, keep people from buying a gun when they’re enraged, why should there be a waiting periods on your second gun? And your third, fourth, fifth, etc. ?

A lot of places are going after ammo, since they think that’s more Constitutional than going after guns. But limiting the amount of ammo people can get, and requiring paperwork on ammo, will have some dark unintended consequences: criminals breaking into honest follks’ homes to get ammo, and honest folks not being able to practice much. I think people who shoot should practice often, and with a lot of rounds. If someone is having to use a gun in a self-defense situation, the more practice they’ve had, the less likely they are to hit an innocent bystander.

And when asked why I should be able to have a military-pattern semi-auto gun, I say why not? I’m an honest person. Should you be limited to a slow computer with little memory because hackers can work faster on fast computers? I have a military-pattern rifle because who the fuck knows what’s going to come to my door or my neighborhood? If there were an earthquake and people were looting and trying to kill me, en mass, a shotgun and a handgun (which I also have) wouldn’t save me.

Why should my handgun be limited to a ten-round mag? If a criminal (who, by definition, does not respect the law and does not follow it) tries to mug me, starts shooting, why should I have to stop to reload? That could get me killed. (And anyone who says “If ten rounds isn’t enough, you’re not a good shoot” knows nothing about guns or self-defense. Especially when trying to fend off more than one bad guy, and they’re not standing still.)

A common chirp of gun grabboids is “The Founding Fathers didn’t imagine Uzis and AK-47s when they wrote the Second Amendment.” Well, I can guarantee if they did, they would have included that. They had the cutting edge of battle technology at the time.

A good response I’ve heard to “The Founding Fathers didn’t imagine Uzis and AK-47s when they wrote the Second Amendment” is a response about the First Amendment: “I’m willing to only carry a brace of muskets if the New York Times is willing to only publish on hand-run presses and only deliver papers by horseback.”

A lot of people confuse Uzis and AK-47s with machine guns, because both are also available in full-auto (machine gun). Only criminals have those in America. I know people with AK-47s, but they’re legal semi-auto versions.

By the way, I have several semi-auto rifles that are FAR more powerful than an AK-47.

Which brings me to the “Why do you need so many guns?” question. Well, why do you need so many shoes? I have different guns for different things. Plus, I just like guns. I like the history of them (which is why I own a 1943 gun that was actually used to kill actual Nazis), I like the feel of them, the mechanics and the science of them. Why does a stamp collector have so many damn stamps?

My guns in Wyoming don’t effect you in your state. My guns don’t even affect you if you’re my next-door neighbor. Like most gun owners, I’m an honest person. Assault and murder are illegal, and rightfully so. I will not do those things, I wouldn’t do them even if they were legal. So lay off my guns.

Guns hurt far less people than cars and swimming pools. And you don’t need a gun to hurt people. You can kill someone with a rock or a hammer. So keep your immoral desire to control my guns to yourself, and go after actual criminals instead of trying to make me into a criminal.

–Michael W. Dean