From Slate. I appreciate it when reporters legitimately make an attempt to step outside their comfort zone. Of course, at least one of the gun owners he interviewed shows why our own people are a bigger impediment to advancing gun rights than the gun control zealots. See here:
Darwin Edwards and his friend John Paskey left the Big Sandy Shoot early. The 4,000-mile round trip from Kentucky, Edwards says, was worth doing once. He says the machine gun community proves the efficacy of rigorous background checks: “Machine gun owners are one of the few groups of people who can prove they’re not felons.” Ammo remains “really just not available because of the feeding frenzy” fueled by the gun control legislation. But Edwards isn’t worried. He’s got enough ammo to last him the rest of his life. He’s deeply disappointed that the Senate didn’t pass gun control. “The majority of people in the country, including me, were in favor of that particular bill,” he says. “I don’t see how any thinking person would vote against it.”
He’s got his, so who cares, right? If only that attitude were rare as hens teeth. “Machine gun owners are one of the few groups of people who can prove they’re not felons.” And you know what? Despite that, they still banned them. Once they get the rest of us out of the game, we’re not going to be able to stop them when they come to confiscate your now ungrandfathered machine guns. This guy had the nerve to call other gun owners uneducated. He’s a world class fool, blind to the realities of this issue.
More reason we have lost so much ground after newtown and our current set of “leaders”.
“The majority of people in the country, including me, were in favor of that particular bill,â€
Regardless of the issue, I love it when people pronounce what “everybody” or “the majority of people” thinks.
Cognitive bias.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False-consensus_effect
That is an excellent article that everyone should read.
I always feel compelled to point out, that phenomena like that are largely independent of ideology, and none of us are immune from it no matter how righteous our causes. Being mistaken in our perceptions can lead to political defeat. (I think a lot of evidence of it could be seen around the 2012 election.)
Is Darwin Edwards a real person or just a literary representation of what the author believes?
Yes Darwin Edwards is a real person, and he posts on the subguns NFA board frequently:
http://www.subguns.com/boards/mgmsg.cgi
It’s disappointing to see those words came from him, I only hope he’s not being misquoted.
You think Stale would lie?
Yeah, me too.
He’s a real person. I’ve seen him posting WTBs over at Bower’s board.
Just another “I’ve got mine, fuck you” sort who thinks owning a bunch of expensive NFA toys makes him more special than the rest.
http://www.healthgrades.com/physician/dr-darwin-edwards-3by5f
Looks like he is a retired doctor.
And some claim that he used to be a surgeon in TN but got sued out of practice:
http://www.ratemds.com/doctor-ratings/565524/Dr-Darwin-Edwards-LOUISVILLE-KY.html
“I don’t see how any thinking person would vote against it.â€
I bet if he had a few years to think about it in a federal penitentiary after getting pinched for selling a gun to one of his lifelong shooting buddies, he might come around to our thinking.
The article maybe balanced for Slate, but how hard do you think they tried to get someone to day that?
…someone to say that.
How much do you want to bet their editor gave them instructions to not come back without finding someone who likes M-T?
How much do you want to bet that those instructions didn’t need to be said?
You don’t need to give orders when everyone’s already marching in the same direction.
Heck, keeping an ear open for a gun owner that supports “common sense gun laws” fits the nice narrative of “See even among this crowd are people that support compromise.”
It also helps when it’s true…
Should call for a new form of “Darwin award.”
There’s quite a few MG owners that I know that are quite happy with things the way they are – at least in regards to MG ownership. With no new(non dealer TRANSFERABLE)guns being built since ’89, the value of their stuff just keeps going up and up.
I have observed over the years that classes of gun owners can evolve an “elitist” mentality, that is usually correlated with the extent to which they have qualified for what could be considered “extra privileges.” They come to regard their privileged status as a badge of being a REAL Gunnie, and fear freedom breaking out in any way that would obscure their specialness.
Yeah emdfl, that was the comment I was going to make. It seems that a few of the people who spent 10s of thousands on a gun that is almost identical to one that only costs 1500 save for the paperwork and a few bits of metal are invested in making sure it does not loose 95% of its value just because the legislature had an attack of conscious and repealed the stupid law.
I myself have a few permits that allow me to do things not available to the “common man” but (and I think this is far more common) instead of seeing them as a badge of prestige or something to gloat about I find that they chafe and make me want to be rid of them all the more.
I think (and hope) that the people who want to keep the law as is to protect their investment are in the minority.
“I think (and hope) that the people who want to keep the law as is to protect their investment are in the minority.”
I find that there are at least two or three classes of non-ffl MG people.
New shooters and collectors, old shooters and collectors, and investors.
The first group almost universally want the MG ban to go away so that they can afford more toys that aren’t 30+ years old (and therefore often mechanically unreliable).
The second group largely has their toys, and many of them bought them before the ban, so they tend to be split on the issue, because they tend to already have most of the toys that they want, and they probably paid non-inflated prices for the bulk of them.
The third group pretty much universally wants the ban to remain in place in order to maintain the value of their investment.
From what I’ve seen, the first group is exploding (especially when you factor in those who want MGs and can’t afford the inflated prices), the second group is dwindling, and it seems to me that a lot of the older people in the third group are selling off their collections.
Personally, I want the entire NFA process eliminated: it dates back to a time when vetting someone’s background was a complicated process, and it no longer is. The NFA process is, in my opinion, not significantly different from the NICS system apart from the fact that one takes 30 secounds and the other takes 6+ months.