Via email from Kris:
This post inspired by Say Uncle’s post about bedtime stories.
Dr. Seuss was clearly a socialist, and the Sneetches story is but a minor example of it. The Lorax is worse. Maybe I’ll do a post about that later.
I’ve always wondered why the plain-bellied sneetches didn’t just host their own beach parties instead of being all butt hurt and envious over being excluded from the star bellies’ parties. Ayn Rand would tell us that the star bellies were attempting a monopoly, which in a free market (that is to say, a market without some means of enforcing the monopoly through legislation or outright brute force) is merely enticing capital into start-up competition. If the plain bellies’ started throwing really good parties of their own, some of the star bellies would eventually want to attend. If the plain bellies let them attend, the plain belly organized parties would begin to dominate, or take over altogether unless the star bellies changed their discriminative ways.
A free market is self correcting in so many ways, and correcting against arbitrary discrimination is but one example. We see this in real life just looking at music or sports pre civil rights era, where excluding black players meant missing out on some of the best. By the time I was in middle school (late 1960s) Motown was well-represented, if not dominating, the top 40 on AM radio.
That’s what I tell my kids. If their public school teachers can’t handle it, well, it’s their own problem that they choose to make fools of themselves.
I do ask for laws that would restrict sales of M-16s, AK 47s, or Uzi’s. I don’t care what anyone says, hunting with machine guns makes no sense. The only use for them, the use for which they were intended, is to kill people. Lots of people, real fast.
It’s no secret that automatic weapons are so easy to buy that American gun dealers supply the Mexican cartels with 90 percent of the weapons they use to terrorize people on both sides of the border.
Dave Stancliff
September 13, 2009
Let’s face it, no one will take the high road to gun control
[Actually, I think it is a secret–since only the anti-gun people believe it. The pro-gun people know they have to spend 10s of thousands of dollars on an automatic weapons of any type if they can find one for sale.
He also implies hunting is the reason people want to own machine guns. None of people that I know who own machine guns claim that is the reason for ownership of them.
Also in the article is the suspicious claim that “About two billion bullets were made in America last year, bringing in about $7.5 billion”. This implies an average cost of about $3.25 per round. This is more than a little bit high.
This is all more evidence that the MSM (this guy is a “former newspaper editor and publisher”) does not care or is too lazy to know the facts.
Comments can be sent to richstan1@suddenlink.net or www.davesblogcentral.com–Joe.]
Recently there has been a lot of talk of government rationing of health care. In the U.K. they have been rationing health care for a long time now and now there is talk of expanding their influence to other things:
Air travel is expected to at least double by the middle of the century as new airlines spring up in developing countries like China and rich countries like Britain expand airports such as Heathrow.
However the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) fears unlimited growth of air travel will cause greenhouse gas emissions to increase and therefore cause global warming.
…
The CCC report comes as a think tank suggested that the unless the UK manages to meet tough targets on cutting greenhouse gases within the next three years, everyone in the UK will have to be rationed on the amount of energy, car use and flights they take.
The Institute for Public Policy Research suggested people have a certain amount of carbon credits that limits the amount they can spend on luxuries like air travel.
Michael Moore has a new movie out. Capitalism: A Love Story. The LA Times says this about it:
“Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil,” the two-hour movie concludes. “You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy.”
What sort of economic system is he proposing? “Democracy”? That isn’t an economic system. And democracies (we are supposed to have a Republic) seldom last more than a few decades.
And the irony is that Moore’s wealth and ability to make whatever movie he wants comes from the opportunities afforded him by capitalism. If it weren’t for capitalism Moore would be making probably be required by the state to be making exercise videos (if such a thing as videos and fat people even existed) which no one would take seriously. Instead he is making “documentaries” which demonstrate he is totally clueless about any topic he cares about but yet enough people want to believe him that he is able to be a wealthy man. In that sense I suppose capitalism has allowed an evil to exist and prosper but that is hardly sufficient reason abandon an economic system that has improved the status of people more than any in the history of man–even though it has never really been fully implemented.
Joe Huffman, I don’t want to play that game. I didn’t want to on Kevin’s blog and I don’t want to here either.
Does that give you a major victory over me, that you can say I don’t know the difference between truth and falsity? Fine, go ahead.
You and all your friends can say that over and over again. It’s a perfect way of avoiding what I am saying, of pointing out what I am saying is wrong, of discussing the issues.
Go ahead, be my guest.
Or if you’d like you can educate all of us about the proper way of determining truth from falsity. It might be interesting to know what you and all your pro-gun friends know that the rest of us, poor liberals that we are, don’t.
Mikeb302000
September 5, 2009
Comment to Tamara K. on Dr. Wintemute
In response to “Again, Mikeb30200, how do you determine truth from falsity?” The reference to Kevin’s blog about the comments here.
[Being able to determine truth from falsity is a game? Wow! And all this time I thought it was the basis for rational thought and a requirement for membership in the human race.
The issue is that Mikeb302000 believes what he wants to believe regardless of the facts. He is unable or unwilling determine truth from falsity. That makes his assertions based on faith, defined as “Belief without or in spite of evidence to the contrary.” That makes his belief system a religion rather than anything approaching science. I don’t have a problem with faith based belief systems as long as they leave me alone. But once they attempt to use force (and government is certainly a form of force) to make me conform I have a big problem with it.
That he is obstinately devoted to his own opinions and prejudices makes him a bigot.
Of course, I can’t help but have this nagging doubt that since he puts up such incredibly weak arguments that he is really on our side tossing out strawmen for us like clay pigeons in front of Tim Bradley.–Joe]
We’ve all had it happen. You mention the “S” word (socialism) in a political discussion and the one(s) on the Left act all indignant, denying that the socialism they’re advocating has anything to do with socialism; “Why, I’m shocked, I tell you! Shocked!”
To accuse anyone of advocating communism is to guarantee that you’ll be flagged as a nutbag (as if there’s no such thing as communism anymore, even if there ever was). Do not let that dissuade you.
This recording was circulating quite a bit last week, but it needs more attention. It’s a Democrat Congresswoman from LA. Suck on this, Leftists and Progressives. If you’re not socialists or communists, then you’ll no doubt get this loyal Obama supporter kicked out of your party. Furthermore, you’d no doubt be in support of a law banning all forms of socialism. Right? Since you’re not communist or socialist at all, in any way? Right?
Meanwhile; the Republican Party remains AWOL, or in a drunken stupor, or they’re out chasing pink elephants with a bad case of the DTs. They’re actually polling us right now about what we think of ObamaCare (looks at floor, shakes head and sighs). I was dumb enough to actually take the poll, before I realized the full vastness of the stupidity of it. A momentary lapse into Condition White, I guess.
Sometimes when I read the news I think I’m back in jr. High school. This time it feels like fourth grade elementary. When I was in fourth grade, I observed a girl enjoying some canned cherries during lunch. Unable, for whatever reason, to leave her in peace to enjoy her cherries, I walked close to her and said in a low voice; “You’re eating cow guts”.
Apparently this caused her to lose her appetite, and she was distressed enough to tell the teacher, who later called me on it.
Fast-forward to adulthood. Today if you’re enjoying a hamburger, you hear from the food Nazis; “That’ll clog your arteries, contribute to deforestation in South America and pollute the atmosphere with methane (cow farts).” You’re enjoying a smoke; “That’ll give you cancer and cause kids to have health problems, and you’re supporting Big Corporations that are trying to keep you addicted and kill you for profit.” You’re having a soda; “All that sugar will detonate your pancreas and make you fat.” You’re having a diet soda; “Those artificial sweeteners will give you cancer.”
“That car of yours is going to destroy the planet, you filthy planet killer you.”
“Unsafe at any speed” etc., etc., “That salad you’re eating is full of pesticides and that stuff was grown on corporate, industrial farms that have no regard for the planet…” etc., etc., etc. It never ends, and if you’re resistant to this crap, congratulations, if you can avoid getting the “Swine Flu” which happens to be just like any normal, run-of-the-mill flu, but ZOMG we’re all gonna dieeee!
Today’s reason not to enjoy yourself is that your candlelit dinner is going to give you cancer. So quit enjoying yourself (you selfish twit) be afraid, and call your Congressman to demand something be done about “Big Candle” before the children all die and the puppies all get cancer just so someone can enjoy a nice candlelit dinner while people in (insert country) are starving.
And you leftists think you’re all about rights and freedom and privacy and stuff. I’m gonna tell the teacher on you.
I found a reference to this candle scare on Rush Limbaugh’s site (and there are some great comments at the Washington Times article on the subject) while looking for the fantastic quotes he found regarding Death Panels. More on that later.
Someone is actually spending money and time to research candle pollution. Wow. Like no one knew that burning things releases combustion products into the air. I find that the phrase, “too much free time” tends to spring to mind.
Ry says, “facepalm“. There are other phrases that could be used to describe the act of giving your attacker the ammunition to shoot at you with:
As a strong supporter of the country’s National Parks System, I just don’t see a logical reason why anyone would want to carry a concealed weapon into such naturally beautiful places like Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Redwoods, Crater Lake, Grand Teton or any of the national parks.
Is someone seriously afraid of being accosted or robbed by Old Faithful or El Capitan? Are there criminals hiding out in the Petrified Forest?
These places should be off limits to such practices because of the presence of children. Just because you have the right to pack heat on a vacation doesn’t mean you should.
Chuck Bloom
Plano, Texas
… but what about the children?
August 21, 2009
[A extraordinary clear example of scrambled thinking on the gun issue. Perhaps the reason he doesn’t see a logical reason for carrying a gun in the national parks is because he is severely logic impaired.
What does being “a strong supporter of the country’s National Parks System” or their natural beauty have to do with concluding there is no “logical reason” to carry a concealed weapon?
Even his straw-men of “being accosted or robbed by Old Faithful or El Capitan” is extraordinarily weak.
Criminal do their thing where they have the opportunity, means, and high probability of accomplishing their goal. If their thing involves robbing or hurting people the remote location and disarmed status of their victims in the remote parks can be good hunting grounds. One does not have life insurance for only when their risk is high, such as when traveling by car. They have life insurance for all occasions. And so it is with carrying defensive tools. If you knew you were going to be attacked you wouldn’t go there. But you don’t know so you carry defensive tools wherever and whenever you can. And not all of the threats are human:
Sign in Glacier National Park
Bear in Glacier National Park.
And finally, “because of the presence of children”? Come on, can any anti-gun person offer a plausible defense for that statement? Do children not need to be defended against violent attacks? Is it better to let them be injured or killed than for them to see a bear get shot? Is it better for them to see their mother raped and/or killed than to see the attacker stopped in his tracks by a gun in the hands of his or her parents?
I actually did use my gun while hiking through a state park with my kids several years ago. There was a rattlesnake near the edge of the trail. It was a threat both to us and other hikers that perhaps would not have seen and avoided it. From a safe distance I put a 9mm FMJ bullet through it’s head. The kids did not seem to have suffered any short or long term adverse effects from the use of the gun in their presence. They even seemed relieved after the threat was neutralized.–Joe]
As pointed out by others MSNBC cropped the video of the black guy with a rifle at the Obama protest down enough to not show his skin color. Then they talked about gun owners being white racists against Obama.
I have to wonder what the basis for that belief was and why they would put effort into falsifying the evidence to fit their, obviously, false beliefs. Do they think they have some sort of telepathy such they can read the minds of others? Or is it as Say Uncle pointed out:
So, you were assigning stereotypes to a broad group of people? Supposedly trying to address bigotry in this country while being bigoted yourself seems to lessen your point. It’s OK, they’re only gun owners.
Although there are a people who believe they have telepathic powers I believe projection is far more common and all the evidence appears to fit that diagnosis.
Projection is very common in the anti-gun camp and it’s one of the first thing you should look for when you encounter an anti-gun person. Do they say they are afraid of what someone might do if they carried a gun while at a school/church/restaurant/wherever? The evidence is overwhelming that people with guns in those places do nearly exactly the same things that other people without guns do in those places. It’s actually their fear of what they might do if they had a gun in those places. Never mind that a police officer with a gun in the same location is just fine for nearly all of these people–disregarding the fact that police officers accidently shoot innocent people at a much higher rate than private citizens do.
So in this case the media representatives feel, without a factual basis, badly toward gun owners. They then search for something that could justify their bad feelings. Racism is an easy “hook to hang their hat on” since there once was a great deal of racism against people of color in this country and President Obama has the necessary pigmentation to be a target of white racists. But it’s the feelings of the media that drove the conclusion that someone else must be racists rather than the evidence of racism that drove their feelings.
This can be generalized to freedom in general. People are afraid of making their own decisions and they attempt restrict others decisions via some “wiser” authority with the justification being that someone else might make a bad decision–regardless of the fact that government “one size fits all” decisions for nearly everything cost more and are less effective than private solutions. Hence because of their feelings of fear of their own decision making ability drove the demands that others not make decisions for themselves rather than actual fear of others making their own decisions.
I suppose another psychological model that could be applied is one of stress reduction. It’s more stressful to believe that you are bigoted than to falsify the evidence to indicate someone else is bigoted.
In the case of the generalized freedom issue the stress reduction model works there too. It’s impossible to predict the future in any detail so having someone else to blame for making the wrong decision relieves the stress of making the, possibly wrong, decision yourself–even if the situation of nearly everyone is worse than if they made their own decisions. It appears to be more stressful for many people to see a disparity of outcomes than for everyone to have the same bad outcome. As a friend, Susan K., told me many years ago there are people who would rather everyone earns $1.00/hour than for the minimum wage in a truly free market (no government imposed minimum wage) to be $100/hour if there were other people earning $10,000/hour. I found this hard to believe but I’m now convinced it is true as long as there is some method by which the person desiring this sort of outcome can put some sort of whitewash, such as using phrases such as “social justice”, over the ugly truth.
As a side note I’ve heard it said that Bill Gates earned, on the average, about $100/second or $360K/hour while at Microsoft. This may have contributed to the great pressure put on Microsoft by the U.S. Justice Department during the 1990s and the European Union legal action that continues to this day.
Human psychology is a strange thing. What we call rational thought and socialization is only a very thin veneer over something far, far different which it pokes its ugly head through the veneer far more frequently than we realize.
I received an email from Rob B. that articulated some half-congealed thoughts of my own:
I consider it a “sin” to destroy operable items. This goes for the weapons destroyed and the Cash for Klunkers victims.
Certainly there is the occasional firearm that needs to be removed from circulation due to poor and irreparable condition or unsafe design or modifications. Certainly there are vehicles which are much the same.
This isn’t about that.
This is about materials made by the labor of man, which cost some fraction of man’s treasure to obtain being destroyed because they are unpopular.
This is roughly equivalent to burning books.
Destroying something made by the labor of an individual (or group of them) destroys some small portion of life, for that person (or group) spent their time and energy (life) making it.
Destroying anything useful diminishes the overall value pool.
This is not good, particularly when done for light, transitory or fallacious reasons.
Simply put, this is wrong.
Rob
Sebastian has a different opinion:
My only moral problem with the programs is that it entices people to turn in items that have significant historical value, which are then destroyed and lost for history. If anti-gun groups and big city politicians want to raise the market floor on junk guns, I have no real problem. It’s their money, and I’d rather than dump it into worthless, feel good programs like this than actually use it to challenge gun rights.
Sebastian is a little ambiguous about who’s money is involved that he is okay with. If it’s anti-gun groups, then I don’t have much problem with it–other than that articulated by Rob. But if it’s tax payer money then I do have a problem with it. This would be a lot like tax money, paid by blacks, being used for schools that teach blacks are inferior and should not be allowed to hold public office or vote. Or tax money used to buy and destroy private libraries and churches. It is the government taking money from you to enforce a restriction on your specific enumerated rights.
We have long known the anti-gun people won’t win any prizes for their logic skills and destroying guns is just one more example. If there were a limited supply such as moon rocks or members of an endangered species then firearm destruction would have some significance from a reduction of supply standpoint. But guns aren’t like that. The best they can hope for is to raise the price on used guns, but $50 or $100 as a market floor just doesn’t do anything significant other than increase the likelihood that someone will get into the business of stealing guns (a “no questions asked” market for stolen goods reduces the total risk).
So one has to conclude the gun-buy backs are advocated by people that have one or more of the following characteristics:
Did I miss any?
If I were to tell you that everything you needed to know about guns could be learned from T.V. shows and the movies you would, and rightly so, tell me I was full of crap. If I went even further and said you could learn what you needed to know about carrying guns in public from watching an ad for a video game you would, and rightly so, consider calling the guys from the funny farm.
It’s very clear that the Joyce Foundation needs to put more effort into making sure their guy is taking his meds. Because he just said:
This is without a doubt the embodiment of the gun lobby’s dangerous and irresponsible myth: that an “armed society is a polite society.”
But this old XBOX advertisement that was banned several years ago shows the complete opposite. Depending on your worldview and experience, viewers will undoubtedly have many different responses to this video. But we think it makes a dramatic and cogent argument for keeping all guns — concealed or openly carried — out of our public spaces.
Can anyone demonstrate where even a hint of this type of thing has ever happened? We have millions of people legally carrying guns in public each day and this type of thing has never happened. Not even close–except in his hallucinations. And he thinks it makes a “cogent argument”?
Wow. Did he get his logic training from a comic book?
There has to be more to this query than is in the search terms. I can’t believe someone is so stupid to ask a question like, “Does the actual bullet go in you”?
| Domain Name | (Unknown) | ||||||||||
| IP Address | 75.159.210.# (Telus Communications) | ||||||||||
| ISP | Telus Communications | ||||||||||
| Location |
|
||||||||||
| Language | English (Canada) en-ca |
||||||||||
| Operating System | Microsoft WinNT | ||||||||||
| Browser | Internet Explorer 7.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 3.0.30618; .NET CLR 3.5.30729) |
||||||||||
| Javascript | version 1.3 | ||||||||||
| Monitor |
|
||||||||||
| Time of Visit | Aug 12 2009 3:01:08 pm | ||||||||||
| Last Page View | Aug 12 2009 3:01:08 pm | ||||||||||
| Visit Length | 0 seconds | ||||||||||
| Page Views | 1 | ||||||||||
| Referring URL | http://www.google.ca…et go in you&spell=1 | ||||||||||
| Search Engine | google.ca | ||||||||||
| Search Words | does the actual bullet go in you | ||||||||||
| Visit Entry Page | https://blog.joehuffman.org/2009/01/02/where-does-the-bullet-go/ | ||||||||||
| Visit Exit Page | https://blog.joehuffman.org/2009/01/02/where-does-the-bullet-go/ | ||||||||||
| Out Click | |||||||||||
| Time Zone | UTC-7:00 | ||||||||||
| Visitor’s Time | Aug 12 2009 4:01:08 pm | ||||||||||
| Visit Number | 564,176 |
I keep thinking of ways at demonstrating the answer in ways that would prove Darwin correct but unfortunately involve illegal acts.
It should come as a surprise to no one that gun permits and applications in Florida are on a record pace, as barrel-strokers with small penises* throughout the state react to an alleged threat that has virtually no chance of happening — and even if it does, they’re not going to immunize themselves by buying now. Wow, talk about stupid …
…
No one is coming to take away your guns. (Even though I personally wouldn’t mind if they did.) And you firearm fellators out there who think that getting your permits now will shield you? Granted, you won’t lose your guns, but a higher tax on ammunition is just going to get you even more. Didn’t think about that one, did ya?
…
All this from a gross misreading of the Second Amendment. It’d be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
——————————————————————————–
* Based on my assumption that the vast majority of gun owners have, um, endowment issues; the size of their gun is inversely proportional to their penis size. I think.
Sinfonian
August 10, 2009
Florida gun nuts: breaking records through paranoia
[My primary objective of quoting this guy is to let you know what the other side thinks of you.
My secondary objective is to demonstrate how wrong he is.
The first thing that comes to mind about this guy is, “Does he think women have infinitely sized guns?” Then I wonder how many penises he has measured and compared to gun sizes. If it were more than one or two my hypothesis would be it was because he was more interested in the penises than in the correlation with gun size. But my leading hypothesis at this time is that he has precisely zero data to support his claims. This is based upon the above collection of data about him. For example:
What would be funny if it weren’t so tragic is this guy confuses his imagination with reality.–Joe]
Trying to reduce gun crime by rationing guns to law-abiding citizens is as absurd as trying to reduce drunk driving by rationing cars to non-drinkers.
Scott Bach
President of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs
August 7, 2009
Corzine signs law limiting handgun purchases
[H/T to Jeff.
Straight thinking has never been a strong point of the anti-gun people. This case is just another in a long crooked line of abuses against gun owners.–Joe]
Two weeks ago, gun violence prevention organizations helped defeat a bill in Congress that would have allowed this killer to carry his loaded weapon almost anywhere in the country.
Sooo… this killer was prevented from carrying his loaded weapon in other states because concealed carry license aren’t universally recognized, but he wasn’t prevented from murdering and wounding the women in Pittsburg by the laws against murder and assault?
Got it. I’m so glad Helmke told us that because I would have never been able to come to that conclusion on my own.
According to the research, gun violence is most likely to occur in those places where guns are more accessible—small towns and rural areas. Given the stats, I can’t help but be grateful that I live in an urban rather rural location. Gun violence is a huge problem in some cities, notably Chicago. But to argue more guns equals more security makes no sense. Taken as a whole, however, gun violence is a greater threat in rural settings.
Robert V. Thompson
August 3, 2009
Guns and the dark side–Gail Collins gets it right
[“No sense”? How about that paragraph? He says gun violence (note that he talks about GUN violence, not violence as a whole) is more likely to occur where guns are more accessible but gun violence is a huge problem in Chicago (unmentioned is Washington D.C.) where guns are banned. He can’t remain coherent for three consecutive sentences.
I’d love to see the research showing violence (not just “gun violence”) is a greater threat in rural settings that in urban settings. I doubt that it is a oversight that he doesn’t mention it. I don’t think it exists.
And even in the article he links to (registration required) Thompson apparently overlooked this sentence or read it completely backward, “In general, homicide gun deaths in the United States are more of an urban than a rural problem.”
As for claiming there is no sense in guns enhancing security perhaps he can convince our police and military to turn in their guns. Would he, or anyone else sharing our reality, think that would make the U.S. a more secure place to live?
Thompson is either living in an alternate reality or has some strange version of dyslexia where facts are reversed by the time they are registered in his brain.–Joe]
“Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”
I think that’s a good argument for keeping people away from guns. The two just do not mix well.
thinkagain2
July 31, 2009
Comment to Taking Gun Laws Seriously.
[I’m of the opinion “thinkagain2” is unable of thinking or making a good argument.
His, or her, thesis overlooks the possibility that some people need to be killed. Those men herding the naked women and children to the trenches prior to being shot… they needed to be killed. Right then and there. Keeping guns away from the people that needed them enabled evil.
It also overlooks that guns are used to stop violent attacks on innocent people–most of the time without anyone getting killed.
And just who is going to keep people away from guns? I’m betting it will be other people with guns.
No thanks. In addition to having a serious logic flaw that would violate my Jews in the Attic Test.–Joe]
I don’t really know where to begin on this mess. They messed their pants so badly even hip waders couldn’t hold it all. This is not reporting. This isn’t even editorializing. They don’t check their facts and I have doubts if they even know how to recognize a fact. It’s the rantings of people with severe mental problems. It starts with the title “Brazen weapon fire chills police“. It doesn’t let up for an instant:
The gang shoot-out that rained gunfire and smoke on a quiet Dorchester street this week disturbed police on many levels: the seemingly new height in disregard for neighborhood safety, the fact that a 12-year-old girl watching TV inside a nearby house was shot through the leg.
Since when do gangs have any regard for “neighborhood safety”? Do they expect them to meet at a gun range to have their shoot-out? Gangs, in the common usage of the word, are criminals. Do they think criminals care about memorizing and following the gun safety rules that the rest of us do?
But even more alarming: At least one of the weapons used in the gunfire was an AK-47 assault rifle, the fourth time in three weeks that one had been found or used in Boston and the seventh time since last July, when a 32-year-old man was shot dead with one.
Police say they are noticing more of the fearsome firearms on Boston streets than last year and, in particular, are concerned that there have been so many in the past three weeks. Tomorrow afternoon, Mayor Thomas M. Menino will meet with ministers in Roxbury to discuss crime in the city and the sudden proliferation of the rifles.
But more alarming than there are criminals among us is that there are “fearsome firearms on Boston streets”. Well then, why doesn’t someone go out there and pick them up and take them home? Oh, that’s right. That’s not what they meant. They meant criminals are using the firearms on the streets. And, I say this having not lost a single bet in the last 35 years, I’m willing to bet than none of those rifles were actually assault rifles. They are intentionally using words to inflame emotions.
“This [weapon] can lay down a lot of fire in an urban area where there is basically no cover from it,’’ Commissioner Edward F. Davis said yesterday. “You can conceal yourself from these weapons, but they’ll rip through a car. They’ll rip through a telephone pole. They can rip through just about anything in an urban environment.’’
What he doesn’t say is that common hunting rifles such as a 30.06 have far greater penetration than these rifles.
“Everybody understands when they read the morning paper that you have to push as much as you can to get these guns off the street,’’ he said.
Only those that believe the morning paper. And this article is a very illustrative example of why more and more people don’t believe the “morning paper”.
Nine assault rifles have been confiscated so far this year, compared with four seized in 2008. Eighteen assault rifles were found in 2007.
Want to bet?
But police worry about the attractiveness of assault rifles to gangs. AK-47s are much more powerful than handguns, capable of firing at least 100 yards, and can be easily converted into automatic weapons.
The range of the AK-47 on human sized targets is much greater than 100 yards. With common ammo it’s about a 4 MOA gun. This makes it capable of first round hits, with a skilled marksman, at about 300 yards. So what? Common hunting rifles chambered .308 Winchester, 30.06, or .300 Win Mag, in skilled hands, can reach out and touch someone at 600 yards and beyond. They can’t be “easily converted into automatic weapons” for two reasons; 1) Assault rifles ARE automatic weapons and these, almost for certain, are not assault rifles; and 2) Firearms that are “easily converted” into automatic weapons are not allowed on the market and haven’t been for decades.
The guns have surfaced as Boston police have pushed to provide more of their own officers with M16s, high powered semiautomatic rifles.
In May, the Globe reported that police had ordered about 200 M16s free of charge from the US military and made plans to train dozens of officers and arm them with the rifles.
M-16s obtained from the military are NOT semi-automatic. They are fully automatic. Facts? What do facts matter to these mentally deranged writers? That’s right, they don’t. (Update: As pointed out in the comments the M16s were converted to semi-auto by the Boston Police Department. The article was written by the same writer. She was careless with the facts in this article even though she knew them.)
Community leaders and gun control advocates yesterday said many of the illegal guns in Massachusetts likely come from states like Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, where private gun owners can sell their weapons to anyone without requiring background checks.
Bruce Wall, the pastor of the Global Ministries Christian Church in Codman Square, said he is planning to hold a prayer summit on the steps of the New Hampshire State Capitol in Concord, N.H., to get the attention of public officials and call on them to tighten their laws.
“We’re going to pray for the trafficking of guns to stop,’’ he said. “Those gun shows in those states are making a lot of money off people in Massachusetts. Now the criminals are using weapons that can outpower what the police have.’’
Let’s see… violent crime rates (FBI stats for 2007 that I just happened to have on my computer):
Blaming the laws in states with low crime rates for the high crime rates in their state proves that logical thinking doesn’t even rate a place holder in their brains. If it was private sales of guns increased crime then why is the crime rate lower, by at least a factor of PI, in those states than in Massachusetts? Massachusetts should look to the laws and policies of states with low crime rates, see what is different, and emulate those other states. NOT insist that those other states adopt their failed polices.
What do you think? Are the authors correct that it’s all about “fearsome firearms”? Or is it that the authors have crap for brains?
Author Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com let her know what you think. I sent her a link to this post and a link to Just One Question.
Update: I received a response from her:
From: MCramer@globe.com
Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 7:59 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: Re: Brazen weapon fire chills policeThanks for your note.
Maria Cramer
Reporter
Boston Globe
w: (617) 929-3169
c: (617) 291-6008
