2nd Amendment Rights: "That America can't do something to prevent future mass shootings...is unacceptable"

April 3, 2013

Here's a conversation thread from Facebook. What do you think?

Try to ignore the facts that the photo shows a different caliber ammunition than what was used predominantly by Adam Lanza and that the bullet count isn't exactly correct according to the recently released details from the ongoing investigation.

DK shared States United to Prevent Gun Violence's photo.

Totally agree!
MC: Thought you should know that at least one of your constituents thinks that limiting magazine capacity will not prevent, or even slow down, a determined killer from taking 150 shots in five minutes. You should be spending your time on reforming the state's pension program.

DT: DK, please note that the "assault weapon" used in this horrible shooting was a .223 caliber rifle, which is only very slightly larger than what I used as a child of 10 to learn how to plink empty soda cans. The difference, of course, is that the killer's (and I will not do this person the dignity of using his name) rifle looks more threatening than the antique, Belgian crafted, hand-made rifle that was handed down to me. Please make sure that any legislation you endorse will not take this heirloom away from me but will prevent lunatics from access to ANY firearm.

DL: We don't have gun violence in our communities, it's very rare. When our elected officials get on an ideological bandwagon then we don't get our needs or issues met, issues that our families need etc. It's like in IL, that we have taxation (increased by 67% by Quinn) and our issues never get ANY representation whatsoever. It's crazy.

ME: The only thing that stops an armed, determined killer is equal force. If you want to make children safe in schools and reduce this kind of violence, you need to provide armed intervention in the schools and upgrade physical security measures to keep them locked out. But the physical measures won't protect the exterior school grounds. Armed security can come in the form of police officers, trained security, or arming our school administrators, staff or teachers. There are lots of ways to go about this. Going after a category of firearms has nothing to do with protecting anyone. The mass shootings at Fort Hood and Columbine were done with pistols and there are YouTube demonstrations of the quickness with which someone can change magazines. Chasing weapons and magazine bans is tilting at windmills.

NM: If you take away guns, murders by gun will go down. However, I am pretty sure murder by stabbing, strangling, and beatings will go up. Which way do you want to be murdered is the question we all must ask ourselves. I would hope that congress would focus more on creating harsher penalties and punishment for people who break laws, especially when any weapons are involved. Personally, I don't put all my security in a gun. I haven't never thought I needed a gun to defend myself, but if you feel you need one and you get it legally and obey laws, I have don't really have a problem with someone owning a gun. I also disagree with putting an armed guard in every school. Can't afford it, and I really don't feel comfortable with volunteers either. I was also in the military and I have seen what an assault rifle can do to a human body, don't know why anybody but military, police, or any other well regulated milita. A lot of European countries with low murder rates have a lot of gun ownership but most don't have assault rifles, they mostly own handguns and hunting rifles. I just hope one day, we this country loses its infatuation with guns. They should only be used for defense or hunting not any other recreation, in my opinion.

HC: DT obviously knows very little about modern firearms. Comparing a .22 rifle to one that shoots .223 is silly.

ME: DT's point was that the .223 caliber is among the smallest of rifle calibers. The tissue damage would have been noticeably worse with a higher caliber rifle or pistol with hollow point bullets. What's silly is labeling a firearm an "assault weapon" because it has an ergonomic pistol grip or other non-functional feature; calling it a "weapon of war" when no standing army uses semi-automatic rifles (they use "select fire" rifles with a fully automatic or "burst" setting in addition to a semi-automatic one); calling it a "weapon of mass murder" when so are knives (in China the same day as Sandy Hook), machetes (in the hands of African guerillas or drug cartels), fertilizer (Timothy McVeigh), airplanes and jet fuel (which 9/11 showed us is the equivalent of a missile); calling them "weapons of mass destruction" when the WMD term is used by our military to describe nuclear, biological or chemical weapons; inventing terms like "assault weapon" and then defining it to mean whatever you want it to; inventing terms like "high capacity magazines" to re-label standard capacity magazines; using technically inaccurate terminology and phrases like "fully automatic", "machine gun", "spraying bullets", "imploding bullets" and "clip" in order to mislead the audience and scare them into believing agenda-driven nonsense; lying to people about statistics; setting arbitrary limits on magazine capacity that jeopardize people's personal safety; giving irresponsible and illegal advice to women on how to defend themselves; attempting to penalize and hold responsible tens of millions of law abiding people for the actions of a handful; describing ammunition as being armor piercing when it isn't (it was banned for consumer use many years ago); denying blatantly obvious statistics like that crime has trended downward for two decades while the number of firearms in circulation has grown to an estimated more than 300M, that crime is lower where people are freer to own and carry firearms, and violent crime in the UK and Australia has increased since their gun bans went into effect; vigorously pushing an agenda because of Sandy Hook that they admit would not have prevented Sandy Hook; denying that armed resistance to a mass murderer is both a "common sense" and "reasonable" solution to the problem; trying to sell "common sense" and "reasonable" but pushing it with lies, misinformation and continued proliferation of failed policies; rushing to 'do SOMETHING now' instead of doing something that's effective; establishing "gun free zones" that provide a false sense of security but are, in fact, potential killing fields for anyone who wants to use them that way; etc. Shall I go on? Actually, "silly" doesn't really describe these things well. Deceitful, irresponsible and criminal are better terms. In a nutshell, what's "silly" is believing anything that comes from the mouthpieces of the gun control agenda pushers - Obama, Biden, Feinstein, Cuomo, Bloomberg, Emanuel, McCarthy, Piers Morgan, notable politicians in Illinois, New York, Florida, California and Colorado, and many others. The gun control zealots cannot be taken seriously until they discuss and debate in good faith which, among other things, means being honest. Their threat to our 2nd Amendment rights and our liberty should be taken seriously, but the people... definitely not. Would you continue in a personal or professional relationship with someone who eagerly, consistently and aggressively lied to your face over and over again? That's who these people are.

HC: This is the bullet that Adam Lanza used to dismember first grade children. Did not those children have any constitutional rights ?

ME: Dismemberment? The only person I've heard use that term in relation to Sandy Hook is Senator Dianne Feinstein, hardly a credible source considering her agenda of lies, exaggeration and misinformation and that I think it was in her same statement that she mentioned "imploding bullets", a physical impossibility. I also saw a comment in response from a self proclaimed medical professional (can't remember if he was a coroner, surgeon ?) claiming in his many years of service he'd never seen dismemberment from a bullet wound. A .223 caliber bullet isn't really capable of dismemberment except maybe under extreme circumstances, unless you're talking about a finger or the effect of multiple rounds. It's possible that it occurred with multiple rounds but, again, we'll need to hear it from a credible source before it's worth pursuing and, frankly, death is the more serious argument.

Yes, those children and others had the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But their lives were no more valuable than those who lose their lives every single day in lesser publicized events, in smaller numbers at a time and through a variety of murderous means - guns, knives, blunt objects, automobiles, beatings, poisoning, drowning, explosives, strangulation, etc. What ALL those murders have in common is the PEOPLE behind them - not the tool or method. Those who are determined to kill will find a way. Your implied argument that the gun took away their constitutional right to life is fatally flawed and a dead end. When you're ready to ban every other tool used for murder then we can talk about banning firearms too. But it'll just be a more honest conversation. You still have no right to sacrifice others' lawful freedoms for your comfort.

What those trained in the professions of arms all know is that 'safety and security' are more perception than reality. There can be 'safer' or 'more secure' but complete safety and security do not exist and never will. You simply cannot control all the variables, especially human will and random chance. If the outspoken gun control advocates ever get serious about reducing gun violence or providing for the safety and security of children in schools or of people anywhere, there is plenty of willing, informed expertise available to them to help craft effective solutions. (Again, there is no perfect solution or guarantee - just 'better'.) But they'll have to divorce themselves from their longstanding, controlling agenda and accept some simple truths that they seem to find unpalatable - things like a gun in the hands of a good guy is more effective than posting a "gun free zone" sign, or adding another law to the thousands that already exist, or banning a particular tool or toolbox in a virtual hardware store.

HC: I don't know what other weapons could have caused such carnage in 5 minutes. If we had listened to Diianne Feinstein this would not have happened. I heard dismemberment from a Sandy Hook parent who had an open casket funeral for his child so people could see the missing parts of his head. Private persons do not need access to high velocity ammo.

ME: Bombs can and have created worse carnage in less time - Andrew Kehoe in Bath Township, MI; Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City, OK; 9/11 in New York City, NY. As the incident at Sandy Hook was still unfolding, some in my Facebook circle were already making anti-gun statements. I made the point to them that this same loss of life could have been done with a propane tank, a machete and a spark. A chainsaw can produce this carnage on children in a controlled environment like a classroom. Killers will find a way. They always have. China has had a series of mass murders of children with knives. A weapon of choice with terrorists is bombs. Think of decades worth of news reports in places like Northern Ireland, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq. Afghanistan and many more.

Listen to Dianne Feinstein? Would that be the Feinstein who claims she's not coming for our firearms or the one who has said on camera that she would have taken every single one of them if she could? Or the one who, when she felt her life threatened, chose to arm herself with a pistol and a concealed carry permit in a state where it's all but impossible to get one so she could 'take them with her' (kill the criminals who threatened her safety)? Yes, I know she's since given up her permit and claims to no longer carry. She's also a millionaire and has resources most American don't that can increase her personal safety. I will not be led by someone who blatantly lies to push an agenda that seeks to control others and make them victims of their judgment and worse and who does it from a position of power and privilege. She's abusing her power and spending uncounted millions of dollars of taxpayer money pursuing her decades-old agenda. Gun bans in the UK and Australia resulted in increased crime in both places. In Australia, at least, I believe the murder rate and gun murder rate went up along with the other offenses.

I'll grant you may have heard of dismemberment from a grieving parent. I recall one parent in particular insisting on the open casket so that the damage could be witnessed though I don't remember the dismemberment comment. I still challenge it though. It's not because I insist on discounting anything that doesn't support my arguments. It's simply because this national debate has shown daily that people are being lied to and misinformed. That's inarguable in the technical terms, descriptions and statistics being used. It very well may be true with the graphic descriptions of the victims too. I have no trouble believing that there may have been pieces of flesh or skull missing. Those are typical gunshot wounds but they're not dismemberment in the way it's usually meant to be understood. There may come a time when the autopsy reports are available and we'll know one way or another whether this kind of trauma occurred. But the people doing most of the anti-gun talking, including a very biased media, have lost credibility to report objectively and with facts. (There was a study done in January, I believe, that analyzed a handful of media sources and showed an 8 to 1 bias favoring gun control.)

High velocity ammunition? If you look at this chart you'll see that .223 caliber ammunition has a muzzle velocity in the higher end of the spectrum but is not the highest. You'll also see that its velocity is more in the middle of the spectrum at 200 yards. (I just scanned the table - didn't export and sort on values.) But do you really think velocity had anything to do with it in the confines of a classroom? A higher caliber, lower velocity round could have done more damage. Hollow point bullets could have caused more damage. .223 caliber rifles are not allowed for hunting big game in some states because they're not powerful enough to ensure a clean kill. But at close range, any firearm can be used to cause death so the velocity argument is meaningless in this context.

http://www.chuckhawks.com/rifle_ballistics_table.htm

2nd Amendment Rights

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

"That America can't do something to prevent future mass shootings...is unacceptable"

DK shared States United to Prevent Gun Violence's photo.

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