Category Archives: Gun Rights

Do you trust your government?

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Yesterday I had lunch with Barb L. and as I was giving her an overview of our current political situation something crystalized and I thought I would share, in more detail, that insight.

I have been a gun rights activist since 1995 and have seen the fight from the perspective of someone “in the trenches”. In this post I want to give the 10,000 foot view of the battle.

Gun ownership is under more pressure with draconian laws affecting more people than I have ever seen. And I remember watching the TV news as the gun control act of 1968 was being debated. A month ago gun rights activists were on the offense and making steady progress. We would have minor losses and advances would be slowed or temporarily stopped but we would use what we learned from the failure and reapply the next legislative or court session. The anti-freedom people were on the defensive and operating with severally restricted finances. That changed on December 14, 2012.

One tragedy, implemented by a mentally ill man, put us on the defensive again. That tragedy is used by both the politicians and the anti-freedom activists as the reason for the latest push for gun control. It was the spark that ignited the Gabby Giffords anti-gun Political Action Committee two years after she was shot by another mentally ill person. It is the justification for the committee on “gun violence” headed by V.P. Biden.

I completely understand the grief and the urge to prevent such terrible tragedies but there is something that truly scares me about the political reaction to these tragedies.

Let’s take a look at some of the proposed anti-freedom legislation.

From New York state:

  • Ban any magazine that can hold over seven rounds.
  • Existing magazines holding more than 10 rounds must leave the state or be destroyed.
  • Existing eight to 10 round magazines may be kept but must not be loaded with more than seven rounds.
  • “High volume” (undefined) purchases of ammunition will alert the police.
  • Universal background checks will prohibit sales between private parties without a background check.

The Federal government wish list formulated by V.P. Biden isn’t public yet but it is expected to include essentially the same things along with numerous executive actions such as increased gun control “research” and enforcement of existing laws.

What is particularly striking and scary to me is that none of the firearms restrictions would have prevented the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting or even reduced the death toll. The facts are that the shooter had 15 to 20 minutes without serious resistance by someone with a gun. Even if he fired three rounds for every one of the 26 people murdered that would have only required 10 magazine changes with a limitation of seven rounds per magazine instead of the three with 30 round magazines. Suppose a magazine change on an AR-15 style rifle requires five seconds (with practice it requires far less). Had he been limited to seven rounds per magazine it would have taken him, at most, an extra 35 seconds to execute his foul deeds.

Even if all semi-automatic firearms were banned, and unavailable, the reloading of a six round revolver is also easily (with some practice) accomplished in less than five seconds. Suppose it was 12 reloads instead of the three. This requires, at most, 45 more seconds.

A total of something on the order of 100 rounds were used. A typical practice session of mine is on the order of 300 rounds. A typical weekend class is on the order of 1000 rounds. A one day pistol match is on the order of 150 rounds. Any “alerts” the police receive will be totally without meaning.

The shooter did not obtain his guns through a private sale. He murdered his mother with her own guns and took them.

Weerd Beard has more examples with a broader historical scope but arrives at the same conclusion, in many instances the firearms restrictions proposed and passed into law would not have prevented the tragedies that inspired the law.

If the Sandy Hook shooting is the motivation and none of the solutions being so vigorously being pushed would have in any way prevented the tragedy then what is the real reason? I can only come up with two different hypotheses to explain the politicians demands for more firearms restrictions:

  1. They have ulterior motives they are not sharing with us.
  2. They are unwilling or unable to act rationally.

If it is the first then what could those ulterior motives be? From U.S. history we know the motivation for restricting firearm access to the native Indians, the slaves, and blacks in general was to the extreme detriment of those populations. Internationally the same was true in Russia in 1918, the German Weapons Control Act of 1938, in China throughout the 20th Century, and in many other instances. The people in control of the government had sinister plans for the disarmed populations.

If it is the second then there is no predicting what these people might do next. And there is every reason to believe they will act in ways that will be to the extreme detriment of the whole of society.

This realization should shake the U.S. population to its very core. This should be like the moment you see in the movies when someone realizes that the person standing in front of them is either very evil or very crazy. It should make the hair on the back of your neck stand up and a chill run down your spine.

This is not, and cannot be, about preventing the shooting of elementary school children. This is about sinister and/or irrational people in control of our government who are trying to take your means to defend yourself and your family away from you.

Do you trust a government like that? And what do you do about it?

Quote of the day—Charlton Heston

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When freedom shivers in the cold shadow of true peril it’s always the patriots who first hear the call. When loss of liberty is looming as it is now the siren sounds first in the hearts of freedoms vanguard. The smoke in the air of our Concord bridges and Pearl Harbors is always smelled first by the farmers who come from their simple homes to find the fire and fight. Because they know that sacred stuff resides in that wooden stock and blued steel. Something that gives the most common man the most uncommon of freedoms. When ordinary hands can possess such an extraordinary instrument that symbolizes the full measure of human dignity and liberty. That’s why those five words issue an irresistible call to us all.

…

From my cold dead hands!

Charlton Heston
2000 NRA Annual Meeting
[H/T to Mike B. who sent me the link via email.

I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Chris Cox

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Yesterday was nothing more than a dog and pony show. They checked the box, yep, we met with the NRA. They had no interest in hearing what we had to say.

Chris Cox
NRA Chief Lobbyist
January 11, 2013
NRA Chief Lobbyist Chris Cox on Meeting With Joe Biden’s Task Force: ‘It Was Nothing More Than a Dog and Pony Show’
[I’m reminded of this:

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

—Joe]

Supremacy clause

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An email exchange with lawyer/lobbyist Mike B. (with minor corrections and additions):

Joe: How about putting this on the agenda?
Mike: Won’t work: See supremacy clause.
Joe: Isn’t that the equivalent of saying, “The Fed can’t do that: See 2nd Amendment.”?
Mike: The 2nd Amendment doesn’t have its own tanks. See: Grant v. Lee (1865).
Joe: Vyacheslav Molotov mixes my cocktails: See Finland v. Soviet Union (1939).

You should know that Molotov cocktails have a difficult time with modern tanks. The proper application of Boomerite, thermite, and steel bars into the treads may also be required.

Conversations with special forces trained in improvised anti-tank methods are also useful. I kept my notes from the late 1990s.

Quote of the day—JBR

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This will start a war in the US. Urban liberals simply do not realize that much of this country loves its guns as much as the liberals hate them.

JBR
January 9, 2013
Comment to New York Is Moving Quickly to Enact Tough Curbs on Guns
[Not if just a few states do what NY claims to be doing. If the Feds do it, yeah, I could see things heating up to extremely uncomfortable levels.—Joe]

Extenuating circumstances

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When politicians cite crime rates, accidents, or current news events as reasons to infringe on the rights of their fellow citizens, they are in effect claiming extenuating circumstances to explain or justify their violation of the Oath of Office.

The question then becomes whether extenuating circumstances are a legal justification for willfully violating the Bill of Rights, or whether said politicians are guilty of a serious legal offense and punishable (see 18 USC 242 for example). It has to be one or the other.

Quote of the day—Patrick J. Buchanan

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Many gun controllers not only do not understand what motivates those who disagree with them, they do not like them, reflexively calling them gun nuts, a reaction as foolish as it is arrogant and bigoted.

Patrick J. Buchanan
January 08, 2013
America’s Coming Gun War
[H/T to an anonymous email.

I’m pleased to see the anti-gun people as bigots meme continues to spread.—Joe]

If there are too many

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If someone were to say there were too many of something then wouldn’t that mean they would advocate reducing the number?

Apparently I’m a number to be reduced. Nice to know where I stand in the minds of the anti-gun people.

H/T Twitchy Team.

Quote of the day—Daniel Greenfield

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The defining American code is freedom. The defining liberal code is compassion. Conservatives have attempted to counter that by defining freedom as compassionate, as George W. Bush did. Liberals counter by attempting to define compassion as liberating, the way that FDR did by classing freedoms with entitlements in his Four Freedoms.

On one side stands the individual with his rights and responsibilities. On the other side is the remorseless state machinery of supreme compassion. And there is no bridging this gap.

Daniel Greenfield
December 17, 2012
Gun Control, Thought Control and People Control
[H/T to JPFO.

Nearly every paragraph in Greenfield’s post would qualify for a QOTD here. It is filled with awesome insights.

I decided to focus on these two paragraphs because of the last sentence of the second paragraph quoted above.

I’ve read that no two businesses or even species in nature share the same exact marketplace or ecologically niche at the same time. One will dominate and push the others out or cause them to differentiate themselves.

The freedom and anti-freedom, the left being the dominate flavor of anti-freedom, people are in a political struggle for the geographical niche known as the United States of America. There is no compromising with the other side anymore than there is compromising with someone that wishes to rob you or loot your business. There is only winning versus losing and protecting your property versus having your property redistributed for the common good.

The language of the left betrays this mindset.

In their “compassion” they will sometimes “concede” a “buy-back” of firearms they want confiscated. You can’t “buy back” something that was not yours to begin with. And you can’t “buy” something with money that you confiscated (in the form of taxes) from the victims you want to take the property from. But in the mind of the left all property, including money, is “community property” and there is no inconsistency. They don’t, and probably can’t, “get” the problem we have with their plans.

The anti-gun people claim removing restrictions against people carrying firearms on college campuses is “forcing guns on campuses”. Did you catch that? In other words we are using the power of government to force liberty upon them. One of daughter Kim’s economic class reading materials literally referred to the U.S. government “forcing free markets.” In their language and their world/philosophical view that makes perfect sense rather than being a self-contradicting statement.

They can barely understand that we don’t trust the government. They can understand not trusting the “right government” which in broad terms is a government which is not “compassionate.” But they cannot understand not trusting a government because of its size. The classic joke about the anti-freedom people fear Libertarians because they would take over the government and leave everyone alone is funny because it is true. It is beyond their philosophical framework to not trust the government based on its size. It simply doesn’t make sense. It is a nonsensical thought and in order to make sense of it they have to redefine the fear of large government in other terms such as “greed”, “selfishness”, or a as a close relative recently told me, “heartless bastards”. Gun owners cannot possibly be serious about defense against a tyrannical government and rational gun ownership must be redefined in terms of a hobby, penis substitution, or some sort of paranoia in order for it to make sense to them.

Any “compromise” they offer is defined in terms they understand. They are “compromising” by “allowing” us to continue our “hobby” by registering our firearms/magazines and submitting to a licensing process. In their minds this is a HUGE concession. In our minds this essentially defeats the entire usefulness of the right to keep and bear arms.

It goes deeper. They do not comprehend that the act of submitting to the government over a basic right is unacceptable. Submission to government/authority on every level is so fundamental to their nature it is like a fish in water. Any glimpse of “not water” is very brief and incomprehensibly hostile. It is extremely scary to them. More government is less scary and more “compassionate” to them.

They oppose us so vigorously and with so much violence because they see it as does a fish having their water removed. In their minds we have to be insane, incredibly stupid, or have evil intent. There is no other way to explain our actions and desires. Hence they are completely justified in killing us because if we had our way we would destroy their existence.

As Greenfield says, “There is no bridging this gap.”

I only see two possible outcomes and two ways to get there.

The possible outcomes are:

  1. One side will dominate and force the other side into virtual extinction.
  2. The sides will find different geographical niches. This option would mean the collapse of the union of the individual states.

The two ways to get there are:

  1. “Education.” The left has been working, successfully, on education for a century.
  2. Force. The left is close to reaching a critical mass and they now contemplate a victory through force.

The force option will result in massive numbers of people being forcibly imprisoned and/or murdered.

The big wild card in this deck is that the intended victims are arming up and training. The outcome is difficult to see. It depends both upon the order in which the cards show up and how the cards are played. For example had a “Newtown massacre” occurred before the Heller decision the course of history could have been drastically different. And so it is with our future.

I hate to go all Godwin here but I’m seeing the final option being played by the anti-freedom people as being the Final Solution to the “freedom problem”. Let’s play our cards well.—Joe]

Gun Appreciation Day

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January 19, 2013 has been declared Gun Appreciation Day.

When I first heard about this, via an email from Ray Carter, Director of Development, at SAF, the first thought that came to mind was, “I really should clean some of my guns.” That is especially true of the ones that I didn’t clean after shooting them months ago. If they were sentient they would appreciate it.

But that isn’t what this is really about. It’s about sending a message to politicians. And some of our politicians really need to get the message.

Careful with the whole stats argument…thing

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 We like to toss out statistics that bolster the pro second amendment position.  That’s something of an oxymoron, really.  I’ve done my share of it, certainly.

For example, there is the decline in our murder rate as gun ownership has gone up.  That’s nice and all, but I heard the other night that if our medical and response training and technology were that of the 1960s, our murder rate would be three times what it is today.  A person must actually die, you see, before it’s actually murder.  I haven’t looked it up (that’s your job – I’m not your servant) but it certainly sounded plausible.  If it’s true, then it means that there is in fact much more violence, but that yet more lives are being saved.  Gun owners couldn’t very well take credit for that.

I’ve been harping on this stats issue, and probably pissing off some people.  It may seem like a subtle point to some, but if so it is a subtle point of crucial importance.

Like Tam said, and I paraphrase; “Even if every other gun owner on the planet tried to kill someone last night; I didn’t, so leave me alone!”

And that’s really it, isn’t it?  As the story goes, Sodom and Gomorrah would have been spared for just one righteous person.

The concept of a right is a purely moral concept, and if you can find where the Bill of Rights was to be dependent on statistics, I’d like you to show me.

The communists hate the concept of unalienable rights, and will use stats as a way of changing the subject– of completely reframing the conversation.  I call them “tweakers” because all they care about is tweaking this and tweaking that, using the force of government ostensibly to get some predicted result in the statistics.

That’s a communist premise, and it stinks right from the get go.  It puts us into disparate groups, each being ruled according to its status.  Statistical arguments alone, either for or against a “right” imply the non-existence of rights by ignoring them.  Conversely, if rights truly exist, stats have no bearing on them, and the discussion is purely about morals– right verses wrong.

Our premise is, or should be, that justice demands the respect of all human rights, all the time, that rights belong only to individuals, just as criminal prosecutions are of individuals.  If you didn’t violate, or attempt to violate, someone else’s rights, you are to be held harmless in all regards.  If there were only one, that is the American principle.  If that ideal is not upheld, you have no rights and in that case your statistics won’t save you.

The communists know exactly how this works, and you all know that they know it, and of course they hate the very concept of rights.  They will ignore it and fall back on statistics.  It’s a pretty clever, evil trick.  I’ll give them that, but what else have they got, being that they’re on the wrong side?

That is where we (I hope) differ.  Not only is the moral rights concept all we need, it is all that can work in the long run to persuade good people.  If we rely on stats, we’re relying on the weather, essentially, because stats, like the weather, are not only very fickle but are subject to interpretation, while rights are eternal.

Sure; bring out the human interest stories– we probably don’t do near enough of that, all told, but start them, and finish them, with the moral Declaration.  There’s not a Republican alive, and very few in the NRA, who can do this, so it’s up to us.

Quote of the day—ArieKreyveldt

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This is so boring, every ass can see that this gun thing is about small dicks #guncontrol

ArieKreyveldt
Tweeted on December 18, 2012.
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via still another Tweet from Linoge.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Robert J. Avrech

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We need Liberal control, not gun control in order to save lives.

Robert J. Avrech
Emmy Award winning screenwriter. Religious Zionist. Republican. Movie fanatic. Gun owner.
December 26, 2012
Comment to Stalked: Girl Without A Gun
[There is more than a little truth to this statement. The liberal agenda enables and emboldens criminals both on the streets and in control of the power of the state.

Reading the post made me think of Barb L. and her “I can’t wait until he is my ex” husband (as she described her husband in the first few minutes of our first date). Her situation probably wasn’t as bad as the one detailed in the post but still she “got her affairs in order” before the divorce papers were served on him because she believed the chances were significantly greater than zero that he would kill her after he was served.

The papers were served several months ago and Barb’s anxiety has decreased some. We seldom talk about it but it’s not something I ever forget. We recently found out that he knows she is “seeing someone” and he knows my name.

Every visit to her place, every time she visits me, every time we see each other at lunch I wonder if he or a friend is watching. He certainly knows where she lives and works but does he know where I live and work too? Would he be able to find her and the kids at my place if things ever “got ugly”? Sometimes people “raise their eyebrow” when they get hints as to the extent I safeguard the address of my residence but this is one of those times I’m glad I have.

I go to the observation deck of my clock tower when I hear her car drive up and as she leaves my place to make sure she makes it across the parking lot safely. As far as I’m concerned it’s a known distance range and if I can see it with my naked eye I can hit it. Her 300 pound “I can’t wait until he is my ex” husband would be easily visible, even without my glasses, in the parking lot.

I’ve taught her how to use a gun and she, her children, and I will soon be taking an Insights class together. The best way to save lives is to be responsible for our own safety. Acquiring the skills and tools to do that effectively are an essential part of being responsible adults. Many liberals want to do away with that. This has and will cost many lives.—Joe]

The problem with experts

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Plenty of research, plenty of information, zero mention of the second amendment or the core principles behind it;

http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2013/01/with-megyn-kelly-on-fox-news.html#comments

In other words, he didn’t make the case.  Instead he argued purely within The Enemy’s framework, proving who had all the control over the conversation.  Human rights, and the power relations between citizens and government, were apparently not even worth mentioning, yet those are THE points to be made.  Listen to their words very carefully.  Lott and Kelly both took the bait, hook, line and sinker, and ran with it.  It’s sad.  The term, “too clever by half” comes to mind.

In fact, a fundamental human right is being impugned and attacked without being mentioned– as though it didn’t exist– as though infringements on that right aren’t specifically prohibited.  “Machineguns are already highly regulated, and aren’t used in crimes” as if that would matter– as if your rights depend on statistics– as if a certain set of infrigements to your rights is all we’re going to talk about.  It would be like discussing how to cook your mother for dinner, with no mention of the mother’s moral right to life or the legal prohibition against killing her and eating her.  Cannibals are arguing over the cannibal pot, and the audience is to see one chef as the more clever culinary tactician than the other.  No doubt many of us on both sides are cheering along like mindless sports fans at a game.  We are better than this.  It’s not a goddamned game.

Quote of the day—Martin Luther King, Jr.

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A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Donald Kaul

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Here, then, is my “madder-than-hell-and-I’m-not-going-to-take-it-anymore” program for ending gun violence in America:

• Repeal the Second Amendment, the part about guns anyway. It’s badly written, confusing and more trouble than it’s worth. It offers an absolute right to gun ownership, but it puts it in the context of the need for a “well-regulated militia.” We don’t make our militia bring their own guns to battles. And surely the Founders couldn’t have envisioned weapons like those used in the Newtown shooting when they guaranteed gun rights. Owning a gun should be a privilege, not a right.

• Declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal. Hey! We did it to the Communist Party, and the NRA has led to the deaths of more of us than American Commies ever did. (I would also raze the organization’s headquarters, clear the rubble and salt the earth, but that’s optional.) Make ownership of unlicensed assault rifles a felony. If some people refused to give up their guns, that “prying the guns from their cold, dead hands” thing works for me.

• Then I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control.

And if that didn’t work, I’d adopt radical measures.

Donald Kaul
December 29, 2012
Kaul: Nation needs a new agenda on guns
[I think I owe a H/T to some blogger but I lost that info. Sorry about that.

In addition to being violently opposed to the 2nd Amendment he is willing to (have someone else) use violence against people exercising their First Amendment rights (freedom of association in this case) and the Fifth Amendment (due process).

Suggestion to Kaul: You should plan on take point on those plans of yours because that would probably result in a less painful end than waiting around for someone else’s point to find you.

Oh, and another thing. The “my cold dead hands” thing went out in the mid-90’s although Charlton Heston did use a few times after that. It was replaced with, “When you reanimate your cold, dead, hands.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Gerry

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You’d think they would know their American history. Taxes started the debate, going to take the colonials firearms started the war.

Gerry
December 27, 2012
Comment to Quote of the day—Alan.
[This may become the quote of the year or the decade. It might even be quote of the century. The next few months or maybe year or two will tell.

Rivrdog has thoughts on the comment as well.

At the highest levels of the gun control movement the people are generally not stupid or ignorant (there are some exceptions). A case could be made that these people know that in the present political climate of oppressive and unjust taxes the confiscation of firearms will be a spark in the tinder box that ignites a rebellion. Furthermore a case could be made that such a rebellion is exactly what they want so they can rid the country of “those troublemakers” that hinder the implementation of their utopia.

If such a disaster occurs I hope the case is proven at their eventual trials.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Nancy Lee Grahn

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Ur luv of guns will not make ur penis any bigger. Give it up. Find another hobby

Nancy Lee Grahn
Tweeted on December 14, 2012
[[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via Twitchy Staff.—Joe]

Quote of the day—john personna

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I will say that if someone suggested a reasonable boundary and a buyback, it would matter to me how generous it is. Paying 150% of 2012 market price would seem pretty fair. It would not even hurt the economy if you printed money to do a lot of that. If money is traded for guns, and guns are destroyed, the wealth remains the same.

john personna
December 28, 2012
Comment to Taxing Ammunition
[He has no clue as to what wealth is.

And more generally he also has no clue as to the fundamentals of economics. As the supply goes down the price goes up. 150% of 2012 market price would be a buyers market when the supply is being forcibly set to zero. The people actually willing to sell their firearms and accessories at 150% of 2012 market price could get 200% or perhaps even 2000% on the black market.

I can only conclude liberalism is a mental disorder. This becomes a dangerous delusion that they are the superior ones and should be in charge.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

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It appears to me there may be a problem with the meanings of words in the gun control debate.

Many anti-gun people want to “ban assault weapons” or “ban high capacity magazines”. I think what they really want to do is abolish them. I think when they hear and say “ban” they believe, at some level, that a ban will quickly result in abolishment. I’m not convinced they have distinguished the two in their minds.

“Ban” and “abolish” are very different things. As difficult as it is to get a controversial law through the legislature and signed into law that is child’s play compared to abolishing something so easily made, popular with millions of people, and with tens or hundreds of millions of them in existence.

Most recreational drugs are banned but we haven’t come close to abolishing them.

Most political jurisdictions in this country have banned prostitution. I’m certain the worlds oldest profession is a still viable career option for someone with the proper physical attributes.

Many beverages containing alcohol were banned during the first part of the last century. People were smart enough to realize banning it didn’t abolish it, it never would, and the ban was repealed.

A ban on certain types of guns or gun accessories with no hope of approaching abolishment is pointless as a potential solution.

Perhaps when someone suggests a ban we should ask them if they really mean abolish. It might help them realize the difference and the difficulties.