Category: Guns

You know it’s a slow day when I’m linking to anti-gun blogs, which, I have to say, are few and far between, and as best I can tell, mostly unread.  Let’s start fisking:

The Virginia Tech shooting – 33 dead, 25 wounded – was another spark for the gun control debate in the United States. The National Rifle Association continues its campaign on the erroneous belief that the 2nd Amendment confers individual gun rights, and gun control advocates fight a rearguard action against some of the more heinous assault weapons (the linked gun can empty its 30-round magazine in 3 seconds).

Well, it does protect an individual right.  Even the liberal constitutional scholars think so.  The assault weapon you linked to has been illegal to import into the United States since 1968, as has any other foreign made rifle capable of fully automatic fire.  Domestically made full-autos have been illegal to manufacture for civilian use since 1986.  Possession of fully automatic firearms has been tightly regulated since 1934.  You really don’t have any idea what an “assault weapon” is do you?

1. If gun control doesn’t help reduce violence, then why was the Irish Republican Army asked to destroy its weapon caches as part of the peace process in Northern Ireland?
2. If gun control doesn’t help reduce violence, then why has the United States insisted that the Iraqi Prime Minister disarm the militias?

The IRA is a terrorist organization.   Terrorist organizations agreeing to lay down arms, we all agree, is a good thing.  But the IRA agreed to renounce violence and disarm itself.  If the IRA had wished to keep murdering people and being terrorists, can you explain how they would have been stopped?  The UK has had very strict gun control laws since the 1950s.  How did the IRA get their guns in the first place?

Second, in regards to Iraq, we allow families to keep fully automatic weapons in their homes for self-protection.   Yes, we’re trying to disband the militias who are fighting the elected government of Iraq, but gun control isn’t the primary method we’re using.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that guns are not a social good, lobbying groups like the NRA continue to advocate for “right to carry” or “concealed carry” legislation. While such legislation is unrelated to higher gun ownership rates, it also has no deterrent effect on crime.

What overwhelming evidence?  Studies show that guns are used in self-defense from anywhere from 800,000 to 2 million times a year?  And it’s also shown that concealed carry liberalizaion has had no effect in terms of increasing crime either.   So, living in a free society as we do, the burden is on you to show why the law restricting people’s right to defend themselves is necessary.

The facts show that gun ownership is correlated with gun crime, homicide, suicide, and violent deaths of children.

No, it doesn’t.  Stating it doesn’t make it so.

OK, so it’s a really slow day.  Hopefully I can find some better stuff to blog about.

I wish more psychologists were like Dr. Helen rather than this guy.

The Virginia Tech shooter used a Glock 19 semi-automatic weapon and a Walther. In less than 10 minutes he fired approximately 170 bullets. In the face of such firepower, do even the most ardent technophiles really believe that quicker communication systems could deliver people to safety?

Never claimed that, but I certainly do think someone capable of returning fire sure could have.

Our nation’s strategy for securing peace in other parts of the world includes ridding violent societies, such as Afghanistan or Iraq, of the widespread weapons that undermine their peace.

Actually, we’re taking weapons from belligerents.  Households are permitted to have a fully automatic AK-47 to defend themselves and their families.  Want to talk about bringing that kind of “gun control” to our shores?

You know it’s a slow news day in the gun blogosphere when I’m resorting to linking to college papers.  This one tells us that love can hurt:

For those who carry guns to protect your family I think you probably love your family so much it hurts… hurts them and all of us in society. Real love is based not on fear but on hope. My high school journalism teacher was shot by an elementary school student who had access to a gun. I grieve for both since they are both the victims of a lack of gun control.

I’m pretty sure they were victims of a deranged murderer.   And, you know, since people like that are out there, I’d really rather not depend on “hope” to protect me.  That’s how you end up at these people’s mercy, and that’s not for me.

Three of my cousins graduated from Virginia Tech recently and I am thankful that guns are not allowed on the VT campus. Allowing students to carry guns on VT campus would have not prevented the massacre, rather only made more people victims and more people shooters. Cho would have been more successful if he had an opponent.

Do these people even stop for a moment to seriously consider what they are saying here?  How stupid and incompetent do you have to think your fellow citizens are to even claim something this absurd?

I for one, am rather sick of the anti-gun people harping on Virginia Tech.  We’re really not going to see a sea change in gun laws over this.  That much is obvious now.   A few states, and maybe the feds, are going to move to tinker with mental health data and the background check system, but that’s as far as it’s going to go.   Get over it.  I’m tired of talking and reading about it.