San Bernardino

It's like that line from that old Whit Stillman movie, Barcelona, the one about Americans living abroad. A Spanish woman is talking with Chris Eigeman about all the gun deaths in America:

 

Clearly, we need to ban baby showers.

 

Or better yet, babies! Then they won't grow up to be lunatics. Who's with me?!

 

Well, considering there were many people being denied health coverage for pre-existing conditions, then yeah, something did have to be done.

 

We *can* do something about it, if we get serious about it. In the 1920's, anyone with the money could buy a full auto Thompson submachine gun, or a Browning Automatic Rifle, again full auto, exactly the same rifle used as a squad automatic weapon in WWII. They would roll into a small town bank and rob it, and if they faced the local police, the cops were armed with .38 revolvers. They were heavily outgunned. Those weapons were made illegal for the general public to buy, highly restricted, and to this day you don't see them except in the hands of collectors and dealers with higher end federal licenses. This was not "a restriction of our Second Amendment Rights", it was an intelligent policy done in the name of public safety.

If you can afford one, you can buy a Ferrari that will break 200 mph. It is highly illegal to do so on a public road. Again, an issue of public safety, a common sense law.

Glocks with thirty round magazines are concealed carry mankillers, period. There is no reasonable need for them. Main line military battle rifles, designed for CQB, are not necessary to hunt or as a self protection weapon. Equip them with thirty round magazines, or the available one hundred round magazines, and again, they are nothing but mankillers. The only chance that someone in an active shooter situation has is to jump the shooter or run while he is changing mags. (Or yes, shooting him. I'm not sure that a two or three way firefight in a dark, crowded movie theater is a desirable thing either.)

I understand that hunting rifles will kill you just as dead. I understand the argument that "assault weapons" got banned because they are scary looking. I also understand that M-4s and AK-47s are main line infantry weapons in armies all over the world because they are very good at killing people.

Limit access to certain weapons. Do away with high capacity magazines. Yes, there are a gazillion of them out there already. Announce a generous buyback, and announce that anyone found with one after Jan. 1 of next year will face a $10,000 fine and a year in jail for each one he is found in possession of. Then really enforce it, no bullshiting around. If Glocks or M-4s stay out there, fine, limit them to ten round mags. That will help at least some. Nothing is going to be perfect, but that does not mean do nothing. Find useful ideas and implement them.

I can protect my home just fine with a twelve gauge pump gun. In fact, just the sound of my racking the slide, clack-CLACK! will send the average burglar heading for the door, right damn now.

Look at Western movies - cowboys would ride into town, and the local sheriff would walk up to them and tell them that carrying guns in town was not allowed, to check them at the Sheriff's office and pick them up on the way out of town. This was in a highly armed society, prickly about their rights and any perceived insult. For exactly that reason, towns would pass laws mandating this and then hire a sheriff who was strong enough to enforce them. There is nothing new about this.

We *can* do something about it, if we decide to, and if we make it clear to the politicians that represent us that they have as much reason to fear the voting citizens as they do the wrath of the NRA.

 

You're forgetting Con Logic, the reasoning that if a problem cannot be instantly and completely solved, we must do nothing instead.

 

Yep. Good thing Con Logic wasn't applied to our space program in the '50s. The first time a rocket fizzled, they would have been screaming to defund NASA and that Ike was a RINO who was in bed with the Commies.

 

What he (or she) said. I don't think doing nothing is an option anymore. Though I thought that 5 years ago too. And the upcoming elections just might prove that. I'm sure we'll be hearing quite a bit about this issue in the coming months.

 

The day after JFK made the 'we choose to go to the moon' speech, the teabags would have called congressional hearings to find out why we hadn't landed on the moon yet.

 

Buddy of mine on Facebook, shortly after shooting story broke: "Mass shooting in San Bernardino. 20 shot, 12 dead so far, 3 shooters still at large. In other news, Obama already on TV running his mouth about gun control."

He kinda forgets to mention that Obama was in the middle of an interview with Norah O'Donnell when the news broke. You know damn well that the Noron was about to wet herself and immediately started asking him questions about it. The scene is live on television. What was Obama supposed to say, "No comment"? He said that it was deplorable, that we shouldn't accept this sort of thing as the new normal, and that other countries didn't have the same problem with mass shooting as we do. I would hope that any President would say something similar. Hell, GWB would have said that, except maybe for the part about other countries.

Anything that Obama is for, no matter whether it is dumb or smart, will immediately, reflexively, be opposed. Period.

 

We have a sacred obligation to do whatever it takes to protect American lives ... unless it's through a law that criminals might break.

 

Second Amendment A Little Creeped Out By How Obsessed Americans Are With It