Meet me at the gun show with your gold

[yakko]

Apocolyptic gun show advertisementLet me go on the record as saying that, while I'm pretty liberal in a social sense (and conservative in a financial sense), I also support the second amendment to the US Constitution, which I believe guarantees my right to have guns. (I'm sure many arguments can be had over restrictions relating to this right.)

Comments

[vakkotaur]

Tell me, what the photon is a semi-auto machine gun? A machine gun is full automatic - and unless one has a federal firearms license ($200, approval of local police chief, and the gun must have been made before 1987) you can't legally have one. Also, they're very, very expensive and only getting more expensive due that 1987 limitation

[vakkotaur]

I don't see much point to a waiting period. When you need a weapon, you need it badly and now. An 'instant' (it will always take some time) background check makes sense (is the potential buyer an adult? not a criminal? not been in psychiatric institution?).

I don't see how it's overkill for hunting. The Mini-14 and the AR-15 are both semi-automatic (pull the trigger - bang, pull the trigger - bang). The AR-15 with it's ease of use enhancements could be considered better for hunting. Making the gun easier to use well and accurately means hitting the target is more likely. Any hunter would want to hit the target. Missing is wasteful of ammunition and opportunity, and there is the matter of what that bullet might hit downrange - though a hunter should always be sure of what all is downrange and forego even otherwise ideal shots if there is any doubt at all. Any other hunter would also want that one to hit his target, for the same reasons - they might be downrange of someone

[jmaynard]

Actually, the .223 Remington cartridge (the civilian name for the 5.56x45 NATO cartridge, the one the stock AR-15 fires) isn't all that great for hunting more than small game - but it does that just fine. In some states, it's too small to be legally used for deer hunting. It's hardly "overkill". It's a fine cartridge for varmint hunting, though: it's light, fast (which means it shoots a flat trajectory, making it more accurate at a wider range of distances), and low recoil, which makes it very pleasant to shoot.

As for weapon carry permits, as vakkotaur noted, getting one involves precisely the kind of training, testing, and regulation you advocate...so what's the problem?

[yakko]

Even though I generally support concealed carry, I agree that it does feel creepy that I might actually need to be armed like that at a point in the near future.

Right now, the ghetto is creeping southward. To get rid of this problem, I'm going to move instead of arming myself. There may come a time when I can't do that, though, and then carrying might be a better option. I'm just glad it's an option that's available to me.

[jmaynard]

I've had a carry permit continuously since they were first available in Minnesota about five and a half years ago. Before that, I had one from the time they first became available in Texas until I left the state. I did not carry continuously until recently, when I bought a small pistol more suitable for constant carry. Many people with permits do not carry full time; practically speaking the main reason I carry full time is to consciously get to the point that I don't notice the pistol, and feel naked without it. Having a permit does not equate to feeling the need to be constantly armed

[yakko]

The way many concealed carry programs are implemented, I think it's a good idea overall.

Criminals will carry weapons if they want to, regardless of any law or sign; at least having a chance of a non-criminal being armed will serve as a (however small) deterrent to them and gives a potential victim a chance to defend themselves.

Of course, my support of concealed carry is not without some restrictions, but in general, I think it's fine.

[rdfox]

Hunting. Target shooting. Something to hang on the wall as a memory of their days in the Army. Pure geekery. A desire to develop improvements on the design to sell to legal buyers, both military and civilian.

(I'll go into more detail in a new entry on my LJ.)

[rdfox]

If anyone cares, my full-length post on this is right here.

[yakko]

Real machine guns, which are always fully automatic, are increasingly hard to come by. And yes, they're designed to kill people. Even so, I still support a citizen's right to own one, for reasons discussed elsewhere here: mostly collecting, but not ruling out their actual use in bad times (consider Iraq, where many households are protected with AK47s because they need to be, although I don't see the USA getting that bad).

Of course, I also support some sort of control regarding these types of weapons. They're special, after all.

[jmaynard]

As for bad times in the US: try telling that to the Korean-American shop owners who stood off the mobs during the Rodney King riots with their AR-15s - and the ones who discovered, too late, that they couldn't buy them to protect themselves when they needed them most. Guess which stores got ransacked?

[wakkowarner]

Well, if police weren't such criminal thugs, there wouldn't have been riots in the first place...