In my first post (post #8, on 12-16-2012) I said
"… I will have nothing further to say on this subject."
Okay, I lied. A few items have been posted since that deserve some clarification/enhancement.
… Maybe we should get rid of the news! They only like to promote the negative in the world!
Good luck with that, as they say,
"If it bleeds, it leads." Their objective is not so much to report the facts, but to make a profit! And to beat the competition to the punch.
… What about the press in all this....reporting who where when, and interviewing childhood friends and teachers and counselors and spending huge amounts of time reporting on a senseless crime....clearly and obviously contributes to the next nut case who is waiting for their 15 minutes of fame. If we agreed not to report and cover this sort of crime, maybe half of them would never have occurred at all....and just perhaps we would not plant the seeds for those who are looking to make a splash! …
Also, they are so eager to "scoop" the competition, they'll snag any little bit of information and run with it, regardless of how inaccurate it might be, like the premature reporting that
Adam Lanza's older brother
Ryan was the perp. They just couldn't wait to discover the
facts! And even when the perp's identity was established, they continued to loiter across the street from
Ryan Lanza's home in Hoboken, New Jersey!
I wish everyone would quite calling them assault weapons. …
Yes! The expired Federal Assault Weapons Ban that included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms, so called "assault weapons", enumerated certain specific semi-automatic firearm models by name, plus other semi-automatic firearms
solely because they possessed a minimum set of purely cosmetic features having no correlation to true "assault weapons" — which are fully automatic (i.e. "machine guns"), and thus already covered by The National Firearms Act of June 26, 1934 — and many of those
cosmetic features were incorporated in some rather common civilian firearms. The additional criteria:
Semi-automatic rifles able to accept detachable magazines and two or more of the following:
Folding or telescoping stock
Pistol grip
Bayonet mount
Flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
Grenade launcher (more precisely, a muzzle device that enables launching or firing rifle grenades, though this applies only to muzzle mounted grenade launchers and not those mounted externally)
Folding or telescoping stock
Pistol grip
Bayonet mount (not a bayonet, just the mount!)
Flash suppressor, or a threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
Grenade launcher (more precisely, a muzzle device that enables launching or firing rifle grenades, though this applies only to muzzle mounted grenade launchers and not those mounted externally)
Semi-automatic pistols with detachable magazines and two or more of the following:
Magazine that attaches outside the pistol grip
Threaded barrel (to attach barrel extender, flash suppressor, hand-grip, or suppressor — just the threaded barrel!)
Barrel shroud that can be used as a hand-hold
Unloaded weight of 50 oz (1.4 kg) or more
A semi-automatic version of a fully automatic firearm..
Semi-automatic shotguns with two or more of the following:
Folding or telescoping stock
Pistol grip
Fixed capacity of more than 5 rounds
Detachable magazine.
In short, "if it merely
looks like a mean, nasty 'assault weapon'" — a purely "political" definition!
Enough to really instill confidence in our legislators, eh?
…ever since I can remember, my dad had guns in the house. The long guns (two of which were to be mine when I was old enough to hunt) were kept in a locked cabinet; his loaded .38 was kept in a dresser drawer. …
I can relate to that!
As a youngster born and "brung up" in Detroit, I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciated the many summer vacations I spent at the family farm — my maternal grandparents' dairy farm in da "Nort' Woods" (Bruce Crossing, MI) — that and quite a number of trips up there with my dad for that annual "Yooper" event called "Deer Season".
The "guest bedroom(s)" were on the second floor of the old farmhouse, and hanging on
an open rack (just pegs on a backboard, really) on one wall along the stairway was a substantial collection of long arms, from a single-shot .22 rifle to various shotguns, and a variety of deer rifles. No locked gun cabinet, just hanging there on the wall.
It was made quite clear to me that I was to keep my paws
off the guns, and I did. I later came to learn of the handguns that were stashed in a dresser drawer as well, not much more "security", but at least out of sight. And you know what? I didn't touch any of 'em.
I too was told that if I ever wanted to see any of the guns to just ask, and we'd do so. I too was taught how to check them to see if they were loaded (none were) but to treat them as if they were loaded, how to handle them safely and properly, and to always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction.
In my early teens I was introduced to the ol' single shot .22 rifle, and with careful supervision did a bit of target shooting and "varmint hunting". A bit later, I accompanied the uncles and some neighbors on a deer hunt, spending the night at quite a neat log cabin hunting shack in da bush, hard by the Middle Branch of the Ontonagon River.
(A pretty neat 'camp" it was: A log cabin building, with a bunkhouse on one side and a kitchen/dining area on the other side. The kitchen was complete with "rustic" kitchen cabinets, a wood fired cook stove and even a sink, but no running water, just a couple of 10 gal. milk cans for water, which were filled at an artesian well just a few steps away. The two sections were separated by a three-sided alcove that held a stack of firewood, but was open to the world on the front. Someone obviously put a lot of effort into building that "camp". But I digress.)
I was not carrying a rifle, but I did get to experience the hunt — No "tree stand", but moving carefully, silently through "da bush", following deer track, and stalking 'em. — I also got to experience the joys of "field dressing" my uncle's deer.
On one occasion we awoke in the morning to what sounded like a very low level flight of B-52s — which turned out to be the nastiest blizzard that I ever experienced in "da Nort' Woods". We were so deep in "da bush" that we didn't realize it then, but later that afternoon we got to experience the slog up the steep clay slide near the river, then the mile long slog back to the farm,
through waist deep new snow with our equipment and the deer! (That experience pretty well killed my interest in hunting — the fun was over when you dropped the deer, then the work began!)
In short, I learned pretty early on about respect for, and the proper handling of a firearm!
Incidentally, other than the early "varmint hunting" experience,
I never fired a weapon at any living thing, never mind a 'nuther human being. I never owned a firearm that was intended for either hunting, or for "protection", but as a "remote control paper punch", used strictly for punching holes in a paper targets at distances from 50 ft. to 300 yards (the latter at the National Rifle Matches, Camp Perry, OH, as an Army ROTC Rifle Team member). For protection? For me, not a chance, far too great a risk of some knuckle dragging nut case getting it away from me and using it
on me!
The Civilian Marksmanship programs of the day were also intended
to cultivate a skill set that might be employed at a future time in the armed forces without extensive ground-up training. Remember, during the WW-II era, we donated arms to the Brits, who had faint little stock of civilian arms, and didn't we have to help train them too?
Although
Japan’s Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto has often been misquoted as saying:
"You cannot invade mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.", I have to believe that fact would certainly be a serious disincentive for any such planned invasion!
