Thursday, March 07, 2013
"Nobody needs that kind of gun . . . ."
A few years ago, we attended an annual awards dinner recognizing qualification in a particular rifle and pistol target shooting discipline. My wife and I had taken seats at a table with
another couple whom we had not met before. They seemed pleasant and, after all, we apparently had
the same shooting interest in common.
As
we talked, he mentioned that he had been a member of a now-closed military Rod
and Gun Club with which I was familiar, and he spoke a little about shotgun
shooting with that organization. This
always raises little red flags with me, because it’s been my empirical
observation over the decades that although shotgunners may occasionally dabble
in other shooting disciplines, they’re often willing to throw other gun owners
under the political bus when it comes to supporting gun rights.
The conversation tracked here and there, about past careers including our military service,
grown children, travel and other common experiences. We had both
taken the oath to support and defend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,
without mental reservation or purpose of evasion.
At one point in the conversation, he brought up a tragic incident wherein
his college-aged son had been recently shot in the thigh and was undergoing extensive
and painful rehabilitation that may still not provide complete recovery of the
use of his leg.
He prefaced this by
telling us that he came from a long line of gun owners; that both his grandfather and father had been
gunsmiths, and that he had grown up with a healthy respect for guns and gun
safety, which he claimed to have passed on to his son. He said he’s a member of the NRA, but he’s against ownership
of “assault” rifles (see little red flags above) and wouldn’t let his son buy
one. “Nobody needs that kind of gun,” he
said.
But his son did buy one, an
“AR-5,” without dad’s knowledge, after he left for college. The son kept it unloaded in a closet, but
with a full magazine next to it, along with several other guns.
As college kids do, they were having a party one
evening. One of his son's “buddies” (I think
he said it was a roommate) pulled the rifle out of the closet, inserted the magazine, operated the bolt, then removed the magazine.
He then began waving it around, pointing it at people and laughing. After all, he had unloaded it, right?
Except for the round he had chambered from
the magazine when he jacked the bolt, and which subsequently went BOOM!! when he
pulled the trigger.
The round entered
the son’s leg, severing the sciatic nerve, and bringing an abrupt end to the
party and the horseplay. EMT’s and police
were called, and the police took the “assault” rifle and its user into
custody, while leaving the “other guns out in the open and unsecured.” That's where the
father found them upon arriving at his son’s apartment.
The father said that a 12-gauge shotgun was just lying on
the table. When he checked it, he found
it was loaded. Imagine the results, he
asked, if his son had been hit with a close-range 12-gauge shotgun blast to the
leg instead? He answered rhetorically that
it would have shattered his leg, which he would have subsequently lost, if he
survived at all.
While we expressed sympathy for his son’s injuries, the
misplaced blame and the illogical basis of his attitude toward “assault” rifles
reverberated in my head.
In the first place, I don’t want somebody else (likely some
bureaucrat without my best interests at heart) being given the power and
authority to dictate to me what I “need” and “don’t need,” and what I should be “allowed” to have,
especially when it comes to my Constitutional Rights. I guess I’m selfish that way. It especially amazes me when I hear somebody who took the same commissioning oath that I took, later declare that some of those
rights we defended, or portions of them, should be curtailed. I’m sure our acquaintance would have been
outraged if I said to him that shotguns are too dangerous to be left in private
hands, and I’d just as soon see them banned. He probably would have even quoted the Second Amendment to me!
Secondly, apparently his teachings on gun safety didn’t
take. His son’s disregard for gun safety
rules and proper storage are indisputable evidence of that. Furthermore, if his son were a true
practitioner of gun safety, he wouldn’t have allowed his reckless buddy access
to his guns, especially when alcohol was present. Or his son would have found a different roommate
in very short order after the first display of carelessness or gun safety
indifference.
Thirdly, by his own
admission, the loaded shotgun he found at his son’s apartment had the potential
to inflict even more damage to his son than was actually done. In fact, even without identifying them, any of the guns present in that scenario could have caused as much or more injury if handled in the same reckless way by anybody! Yet he considers a semi-automatic,
cosmetically military rifle (no self-respecting military organizations or drug
cartels actually equip their soldiers with these) which is functionally no
different than any other semi-automatic hunting or target rifle, to be the
bigger menace to the public. But even
within the shooting discipline whose awards we were celebrating that evening,
at least a few members had used semi-automatic “assault” rifles and pistols in
friendly and safe competition.
Ironically, the event we were celebrating that
evening is sanctioned by the Swiss Shooting Federation. Military rifles (surplus Swiss bolt-action or
semi-auto variants) and pistols are used to compete, shooting the same qualification course
of fire that the Swiss citizen militia must shoot annually. The Swiss keep their currently issued selective-fire real assault rifles and pistols in closets in their homes,
along with their ammo. Have you ever heard of Swiss citizens being injured or killed due to horseplay with them? It's not uncommon to see Swiss of both genders and all ages openly carrying assault rifles and other firearms on public transportation or walking to and from their shooting ranges. Earlier that year, Swiss citizens voted in a referendum to continue this practice rather
than surrender their rifles to common armory storage. It was a wise vote because this tradition,
coupled with the annual marksmanship requirement, has ensured Switzerland’s
freedom from invasion, and respect for its neutrality, for several hundreds of
years.
But that irony was apparently lost on our “assault”
rifle-hating companions of the evening. They would rather demand limits on our rights
than acknowledge Swiss logic, or accept the fact that their son’s negligence –
and by extension, their failure to sufficiently impress gun safety on him -- was the
cause of his injury, not the type of gun involved.
Tuesday, March 05, 2013
Just because [they're] paranoid doesn't mean [we're] not out to get them . . . ?
First it was massive ammunition buys totaling more than 1.65 billion bullets, enough for sustained combat operations for a 30-year war. Then it was drone capabilities for domestic surveillance, and suggestions by some police departments that they be armed as well. Then it was 7,000 "Personal Defense Weapons" for federal employees.
Now it's 2,700 mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) DoD "surplus" carriers for DHS. Five years ago we couldn't get enough of them to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our troops were paying a high price for that oversight. Now they're surplus?
I can't, for the life of me, figure out what DHS is doing with two thousand seven hundred mine-resistant ambush-protected carriers, or why they're even "needed."
Is it paranoid to wonder about the purposes of domestic law-enforcement agencies acquiring huge stockpiles of suddenly military "surplus" combat equipment, drone capabilities, and ammunition?
I think it's irresponsible to NOT wonder about the level of paranoia being exhibited by domestic law enforcement agencies (and even non-law enforcement agencies) who are engaged in this strange arms race.
Not to mention that all these expenditures are being paid for with money borrowed from the Chinese because this administration has failed to produce a balanced budget -- ever.
It's past time to defund these activities until public hearings are held, and these department heads are held to a high standard of transparency and publicly-justified specific need before proceeding further. The potential for this level of domestic armament for misuse, corruption, and repression is too great to be ignored.
