Nothing Common and No Sense in Proposed Gun Laws

    “We have got to do something.”

    Any shooting like the one in Uvalde, Texas where innocent children are killed is horrible, but do not blame me and other law-abiding gun owners.  Blame the low-life evildoer that did it.

    Unlike the gun ban vultures that started circling and crying the “do something” mantra before the first body was recovered from the school in Texas, I tried to listen to all the conflicting reports and wait for valid information.

    The “something” gun banners always demand is “common sense” gun bans.  There is nothing “common” about their demands and if they made “sense” they would not have to exaggerate and tell half-truths to outright lies.

    I have been disappointed and amazed, but not surprised, by the bald face lies and stupid comments to uninformed babbling from everyone from personal friends to the president. 

    Biden’s comments have been weird.  First, he said something about the 2nd Amendment not really meaning “shall not be infringed” because citizens could not own cannons when it was passed.  When he was told by constitutional scholars like John Turley that he was wrong, in fact you can still own a cannon today, he continued to tell that lie.

He then began babbling about how a .22 caliber bullet would lodge in the lungs, but a 9 mm “big caliber” bullet would blow the lungs out.  That is an inane comment by anyone familiar with guns and bullets. 

But somehow it relates to banning “assault” weapons, meaning the AR-15.  AR stands for the company that developed the gun, Armalite, is in no way an “assault” weapon, no military in the world uses it.  And the most common caliber for it is .223, apparently less dangerous to Biden than the dreaded 9 mm.

One TV commentator said it was ridiculous an 18-year-old could go buy an automatic rifle and more than 300 round of ammo without a background check.  Fortunately, a guest on the show pointed out the rifle was not automatic, he went through a background check and it is not uncommon, especially in that area to buy large amounts of ammo. 

Personally, I have purchased more than 1000 rounds of 7.62×39 ammo at one time for target practice to save money.  Shooting more than 100 rounds in one target shooting session is not uncommon.  And common .22 long rifle bullets I shoot in my semiautomatic squirrel gun I have owned since I was eight years old come in boxes of 525 rounds.

Calls for extended background checks are another “common sense” waste.  The background check in place for years did not work this time so let’s make you get one on your child before giving them a gun for Christmas with an “extended” background?

All guns bought from licensed gun dealers must go through the current background check. The proposed “extended” check would have made no difference since the shooter in Texas bought his gun from a licensed dealer, already covered in the current law.

The sale of over 100 brands of rifles defined as “assault” guns were banned for ten years, from 1994 through 2004. One liberal commentator told this lie: “Mass shootings dropped by 40 percent during the ‘assault weapons’ ban.” 

Here is what Factcheck.org says: “A RAND review of gun studies, updated in 2020, concluded there is “inconclusive evidence for the effect of assault weapon bans on mass shootings.”  Seems a 40 percent drop would be pretty “conclusive” evidence, if it was true.

It didn’t work the first time, lets lie about it and do it again.

I keep hearing “Nobody needs an assault weapon.”  Yet they can’t define what they consider an “assault weapon,” it is a constitutional right and there are many reasons to own one. That is why there are somewhere between 10 and 20 million correctly called “modern sporting rifles” in the US.

One senseless murder is too many, but if these guns were the problem such shootings would be much more common.

Confiscation of all guns is the ultimate goal of some.  But if you confiscate all rifles, from my old .22 through all deer rifles to modern sporting rifles, you might somehow eliminate guns that are used in 2.9 percent of all homicides in the US. 

The most recent data I can find from the FBI shows homicides by all rifles in 2019 was 364, compared to 1476 by knives, 1591 by blunt objects and 600 by fists and feet.

If you want to have a rational discussion on gun control, don’t exaggerated, tell lies and make up numbers to try to push your agenda.  I will rely on facts, not emotions.

If you just have got to do “something,” go spit on the insane murderer’s grave. It may make you feel better and it will be just as effective as all the proposed gun control laws put together.

Till next time – Gone fishing!