As a hunter who has owned firearms since adolescence without breaking any laws or feeling under-gunned, I think I am equipped to offer a modest proposal that could produce a safer America and also break the maniacal hold of the National Rifle Association on the nation’s recreational shooters, not to mention Congress.You know what didn't exist in 1960? Background checks. There was no prohibition against buying handguns in other states. There was no prohibition on mail-ordering handguns. You could send in an order form and a money order to Herter's and buy anything that you wanted, which your mailman would happily deliver. If you were a kid and you wanted to blow your lawn-mowing money on a box of .22 or .410 shells, you were free to do so. If you wanted to buy a 20mm cannon, have at it. While you still had to go through the paperwork hoops, you could buy a fresh-off-the-manufacturing-line submachine gun and yes, sports fans, those had large-capacity magazines. High schools had rifle clubs; kids brought their target rifles to school on the buses. Sure, concealed carry wasn't much of a thing, but as long as you met the primary qualifications of being an adult and Caucasian, nobody bothered you very much.
My proposal is simply that we revert to the gun laws that prevailed in the United States around 1960. From a public-safety standpoint, that was far from a perfect world. The cheap revolvers called “Saturday night specials” ruled the night in many cities. Loopholes as to the sale and registration of long arms allowed the importation of the mail-order rifle that Lee Harvey Oswald used to kill President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
That was the "flawed status quo" that Mr. Raines is advocating be restored. Fat chance of that happening.
Beyond that, his argument is dangerous. If Second Amendment rights can be limited by tying them to a specific year, then so can other rights. In 1960, to the extend that CATV systems existed, their function was to bring signals to those people who lived in places where home antennas wouldn't work: People who lived where terrain blocked the signals or whose who lived in cities and so close to the powerful broadcasting antennas that the reflections from buildings caused "ghost" images. There was no Internet, so if you wanted to read a paper, you either subscribed or you trucked your happy ass to the local library or to the newsstand.
Raines is nothing more than a Fudd, a supposed hunter who is fine with any gun restrictions that don't affect him. With friends like these, gun owners don't need enemies.
8 comments:
Again we are faced with the reality that the world has changed. We must do something to try to understand why people feel the desire to conduct these mass shootings. All the proposals in the works to restrict/unrestrict/ban/give away free etc guns are pretty damn useless without real data.
Now, we must also get good data on what previously occurred, correct it for population and other demographic data and correlate it with any other useful inputs. We really need all facets to be looked at, so we can understand why we seem to be acting like rats in overcrowded cages, why we seem more violent (and if we really are or the news just feeds that fear), and such.
I’m even open to seeing a valid, repeatable study on of teaching evolution or not praying results in a more violent mindset...I think it’s complete bullshit, but I’m willing to look at all the data in the hope of finding how we can fix this while maintaining the rights of everyone.
I do hope this puts paid to the whole an armed society is a polite society crap that Heinlein spouted, cause there were a shitload of guns around that shooter in Midland/Odessa, but his just blasting away randomly made them pretty pointless...I’m just surprised the cops didn’t at least shot at one or more civilian who drew.
With the understanding that any study and its authors are going to be examined under an electron microscope for biases, I'm not opposed to studying.
The current push for universal background checks falls into "we gotta do something to protect our phony-baloney jobs" category. The impulse of "we gotta do something, dammit" brought us the horrid USA Patriot Act.
Fuck that Raines guy.
Crime still exists in places where firearms are banned- oh, excuse me, tightly regulated. But without the choice to carry an equalizer, the larger and stronger have an easy time of it.
I'm still mad about having to pay $75 to transfer a firearm to a family member. That is what universal background checks mean.
I live in California, a "tightly regulated" state, and my friend John had a 1911 and three loaded magazines delivered to his front porch in Richmond last year, where it sat unattended for five hours until he got home from work, so we also have to examine just how we go about making any regulations we do pass actually mean anything.
-Doug in Oakland
No problems with a colonoscopy, fluoroscope and exploratory surgery on any and all studies and involved individuals. As I noted, reproducible results only will be accepted and studied.
There are more than 20,000 gun laws and we are still closing the
neighbors barn door after our horses have left.
It more CYA and the gun banners looking to win their idea of
utopia which in every case is still a failed plan no matter
where we look.
Most of those idiots are one mugging away from flipping.
Eck!
We must sacrifice civilians in order to keep access to fun bang toys for everyone.
FTFY.
Eck!, are you opposed to studying the situation? I would be that with proper study a load of those laws could be shitcanned, and maybe we can find a way to make this stuff work for all of us.
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