Much That Is Hidden

oh my god, they are such total morons. eight years of horror and they're afraid of obama? oh, that is RICH! wow.
 

It is basically the NRA getting these farmboys jacked up. That assault rifle ban was a joke. It was an IMPORT ban. Meaning that if the gun is already in America, it can be sold. There is no shortage of these things floating around out there. They can be had for $400 at any gun-n-knife (as a buddy used to say "shoot a neighbor, stab a friend")show. I own guns and am not afraid of them coming to take them away. It's just like going out and filling up your tank on 9/11. It gives you that false sense of "I'm doing something!" being in control.
The only thing that I would ever envison using my guns for (besides hunting or recreational target practice) Would be to protect my home from an intruder or if we had another 1967 riot, but that's pretty far fetched and I am not really worried about it.
Hey, you never know, the county sheriff could tell all armed citizens to report for a posse, but things would have to get awful bad for that to happen. The whole making a Custer's last stand in your house or "compound" or whatever is ridiculous.
 

This could just be my cynical side showing, but perhaps more guns on the streets of Texas isn't such a bad thing...........
 

Can they get any more guns on the streets of Texas? I mean one man can only carry so many!
 

They want to re-enact Red Dawn. And they all picture themselves as Patrick Swayze, pre-Dirty Dancing. Real men don't dance.
 

I'm really and honestly baffled by the psychology of these guys.

What sort of emptiness, or impotence, or inferiority complex do these guys have that they feel they need an automatic assault rifle to fill it? A freaking assault rifle. Really? They need that? Really?

Is it honestly just the Freudian thing for these people, or is it something else?

I just wish someone would give me a rational, reasonable, logical, sensible reason why these guys feel they need so many high-powered weapons (not a hunting rifle, or a handgun for home protection, but a tripod-mounted machine gun). Just like I would love someone to give me a logical, sensible, rational, reasonable reason why allowing gays to marry is wrong.

So far, I haven't had anyone be able to do it.

Ook ook
 

I feel I understand their point of view. It stems from a particular view of history and of mistrust of government, and a belief that the security provided by a wealthy society that can afford police forces who act with professionalism can only be temporary. They don't know IF or WHEN things go really really bad, but when or if they DO ...

I don't share their point of view. If things really got bad, I'd go with the flow. It's the way I am. But I won't surrender my assault rifle, even though I bought it when a callow city-dwelling 23-year-old and have never "needed" it. Why would I do that? No one's business.

Anyway, these people are hard to explain because of the cultural gulf. They're not morons. They're just different. Well, except for the buying spike. THAT's moronic. Do they really think Obama will declare himself emperor? That's as stupid as all those people who complain about Bush supposedly doing the same thing.
 

Tim - I'm curious about what you would think/do if the sheriff came calling for a posse!

DCup - I'll bet the closet weapons fetishist in you fantasizes about being Jennifer Gray pre-Dirty Dancing. She was one bad mambajamba in Red Dawn!

Fez - The only thing I can do is laugh it off with the line from Samuel L. Jackson's character in Jackie Brown - "AK-47: when you absolutely, positively have to kill every motherfucker in the room"

Don - It's subjective of course, but I maintain that a survivalist mentality involving this level of firepower is moronic. And I say that as someone who, if I got pissed off enough, would probably not "go with the flow." My fantasy would be to have the stealthy Rambo-type skills that would make these weekend warriors useful as barricades when The Man comes down my way.
 

Well, O'T, I am a veteran with certain skills that could come in handy in an emergency. I know about crowd and rioy control, maritime search and siezure, and a marksman (check my service record) with a Colt .45.
If it were a true emergency and I was asked, damn right I would do the right thing and help restore order.
BTW- I agree w/ S L Jackson! That's why I have one of those and a crate of Warsaw pact armor piercing ammo to run thru it. Best damn killin' machine ever devised.
 

Second thought, these people *are* morons. They are caught up in some bogus Remember Ruby Ridge fantasy hard-on. "I'm takin' to the hills, ma-a-an!"
 

O'T:

I never had a problem with the Weavers at Ruby Ridge. The FBI and ATF totally fucked that up.

White supremacist separatists are not people I want to hang around with, but I understand their wanting to be left alone.

I prefer not to live in the US because of the White Supremacist Government and it's social control mechanisms, lack of privacy, lack of respect for civil rights and civil liberties, war and punishment fetishes, and shit economic management that can but won't provide single-payer health care to every citizen. A White Supremacist Government that can produce flag pins but still have in a lot of parts of the country HUNGER, TB, and LACK OF POTABLE WATER.

I like President Obama a lot as a person and I respect his style and his mind but America is America is America.

I'm afraid of the Feds not Blacks because I grew up in NYC so while Black culture is familiar to me, American Federal Law Enforcement And Military Culture is not.

America still has a lot to show me before it even sees my first tourist dollar again. I would have done what you did -- voted for Obama in a Purple State.

If I was in a lock Blue or Red State, I would have probably voted for Obama, as well. I might have voted for McKinney or Nader if Obama had said just before the election one of the occasional dumb things he does about Venezuela or "his FAITH" or "only in America." Silliness. Panama has already had an Afro-Panameno president and we're likely to have a brown-skinned woman president starting in May of 2009.

That said, I'm cautiously hopeful that there will be real change with him. I'm noticing it in the things that I look for -- statements about Latin America policy.
 

Most people who have zero experience with firearms believe an assault rife is something that it is not.

The assault weapons in public hands are NOT machine guns. They are semi-automatic weapons. They fire a round with each pull of the trigger. They have magazines that hold more cartridges than the usual hunting rifle. But a magazine is just a box with spring that holds cartridges.

The size of the magazine does not increase the lethality of the weapon in any way that matters.

More than anything else, the typical assault weapon LOOKS deadly. But they fire the same cartridges fired by hunting rifles. Hunting rifles benefit from an elegant look. Nice walnut stocks and foregrips.

Actually, for maximum firepower, rifles meant for big-game hunting are the real stoppers. True shoulder cannons.
 

"The size of the magazine does not increase the lethality of the weapon in any way that matters."

True insomuch as any hunter worth his salt lick needs but one bullet to fell his prey. Apples and oranges for sure, but from an anti-personnel strategy I'd say the guy (or gal) with the Kalashnikov could still have leg up against three or four (or maybe even five) guys/gals with Browning bolt-actions.
 

O'Tim, as I think you know, a Kalashnikov is a fully automatic weapon. If a nut in a crowded shopping mall began firing one at masses of people, the results would be disastrous.

However, due to the difficulty of aiming an automatic weapon, it is likely a shooter with a semi-automatic weapon would hit more people.

I am making only one point -- that the issue is the nut holding the weapon, not the weapon itself.

Amazingly, in the era of drive-by shootings here in New York City, where shooters often fired Tec-9 fully automatic weapons, few people were hit relative to the number of bullets fired.

Unfortunately, it was too often the "innocent bystander" who was hit. There's still to much of that here in NY City, especially Brooklyn, where illegal guns are everywhere.

Then there's the lunacy of Plaxico Burress who accidently shot himself in the leg at a nightclub in Manhattan a few nights ago.

The club where he shot himself is in midtown Manhattan, about as far from the dangerous parts of NY City as a person can get. Nevertheless, this clown of a pro football player felt he would have been underdressed if he were to leave his pistol at home or outside in the Escalade.

Bottom line -- in NY City close to 100% of shootings in 2008 have involved blacks and hispanics. There's plenty of whites in NY City with guns. But they have refrained from shooting others except on the rarest occasions.
 

P.S.

O'Tim, you wrote:

"from an anti-personnel strategy I'd say the guy (or gal) with the Kalashnikov could still have leg up against three or four (or maybe even five) guys/gals with Browning bolt-actions."

My comparison was between commonly available "assault weapons" and standard semi-automatic hunting rifles. The only meaningful difference between the two is the number of rounds held by the magazine.

There is no question someone with a semi-automatic weapon can fire many many more rounds than someone shouldering a bolt-action rifle.

But that's not the comparison I offered. However, the most notable shooting deaths in our history have been accomplished with only one or two shots from bolt action rifles. Oswald, for example.