488 Old Town Road
Block Island, R I.
12/22/2012
To the Editor,
I would like to respond to the
editorial in the previous week's B I Times.
A little preface first. A few years
ago, I'm not exactly sure of the dates, various types of politicians
decided in their infinite wisdom, to cast open the doors of most of
the mental health institutions in this country, and to turn loose on
the public at large a huge population of mentally deficient folks.
Most of them probably only suffered from relatively minor ailments
that didn't make them a threat to themselves or their neighbors. But
within their ranks were folks with a festering illness that would
someday boil to the surface and cause them to erupt into violence of
some sort.
There are also hundreds of thousands
of very young people with hurts real and imagined, that really need
help in managing their own mental health.
If our elected leaders had the
intelligence God gave a gnat, they might have spent a few of those
billions of dollars on finding and treating those folks instead of
using it to fund nonsensical studies of the mating habits of
crickets, newts, or amoeba of some sort. Or as the present
administration does, and others, giving billions to countries that
are our avowed enemies.
The very first thing one must do when
they undertake to put a proposal before the populace, is that they
must know, and be able to define the object or idea of which they
speak. Until the era of “The Clinton” there was no such term as
an Assault Rifle. That was a name coined by them to scare the poor
folks of this country into banning those evil guns. No guns to
retaliate, the government can do as it damned well pleases.Witness
what is going on today.
What is mistakenly called an “assault
rifle” is one which is a select fire, magazine fed, possibly sound
suppressed, intermediate sized cartridge,( not all that powerful, as
is a deer rifle), and may or may not have lights and scope mounted on
the rifle. Mostly used by the military and the crooks and criminals.
These are fully automatic weapons. The
AR-15 mentioned in the article is a Semi-Automatic. One pull of the
trigger delivers one round down range. The action cycles inside the
rifle and puts another round into the chamber of the rifle. It is a
one shot at a time device, it just happens to have eight or nine more
rounds in a convenient location. There has NOT been a fully
automatic weapon sold legally in the US since the National Firearms
Act was passed in 1934! The most common caliber that you will find is
a .223 Remington or a 5.56 NATO. These are a tiny bit bigger than a
.22 you may have shot as a kid. They are NOT monster guns. Although
you can buy them chambered for any number of calibers. These
particular rifles were regulated before they were even invented!
Any bolt action rifle or shotgun,
revolver, or other handgun is also a semi-auto firearm. The only
difference is that it takes a live body instead of a spring to make
it work!
Why does every one of the “Regulate
guns” guys feel the screaming need to ban “extended capacity”
mags? A large one holds thirty rounds. A guy with one of those can
empty it in about 30 seconds. Another person with three ten round
mags can put those thirty rounds down range in about 40-45 seconds or
less! Where is the big advantage of banning the thirty or forty round
mags.? Most people who own them have no intentions of ever using them
against another human being unless the rule of law breaks down. Why
are these flying off the shelves? Because millions of people are
worried about exactly that coming to pass in the near future, and
they want to be able to defend themselves and their families, not go
on a killing rampage in a primary school!! If all of us with these
weapons were as crazy as the left leaners believe, there would be
none of you left to complain! You think?
Detachable mags, flash hiders, barrel
shrouds, collapsible stocks, all these items do is hold your spare
ammunition, keep the flash of the fired round from blinding you, keep
you from burning your hands, and making the rifle usable by folks of
the same family with different arm lengths. They are NOT evil
accoutrements!
So where do all these illegal weapons
come from? Certainly not from any licensed gun shop in the USA. Think
about where and how they get into the country. Why, wonder of
wonders, they follow the same trails and routes that the illicit
drugs do.
Now we are inundated by the call of
all the politicians, for more gun laws to stop these horrific mass
murders. “More gun laws eh”, well there are well over 20,000 laws
on the books now. You can pass a million more gun laws outlawing this
gun, or that rifle but not one single criminal will abide by them
anymore than they have the last 20 thousand!
About those “Gun Free Zones” and
“No Guns Allowed” signs you see all over the place. All those
signs do is to inform the criminal that here is a hunting preserve
stocked with hundreds of innocent victims with no means of protecting
themselves! Damn, let's get in there. Those signs in the store fronts
are advertisements that draw nutcase killers or just regular old
crooks. “Well they think to themselves, nobody here to shoot back
at me so I'm going in”! It is just like the old bees and honey
adage.
Do you honestly think that those signs
are going to stop a person determined to commit mayhem from entering?
Really? Get REAL, they won't even slow down as they go through the
doors guns blazing away. These are people with no empathy for anyone,
age, gender, or race. Those signs are in reality, nothing more than
hunting license's to kill people within!
If you are really interested in
finding out the truth about wether CCW stops or inhibits or increases
crime, look up theses two guys on Google. Dr. John Lott and Dr. Gary
Kleck or you can go here and read this guy.
Http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-gun-control/
.
I know in advance that none of this
will change the warped outlook of most gun banners, but just may be
an inspiration for someone with an open mind, and a rational thought
process, to take from them another idea of just what the role of
firearms is and what was intended by those smart guys from the
1700's. They were a whole lot more prescient than we folks of the
here and now! Thanks!
OBTW, I stole much of the info from
the link listed above. TIFN
