So here's a couple of interesting bits of information for public consumption. While the Senate is preparing a bill to ban "assault weapons" (with 120 specific weapons listed) and anything that holds or feeds more than 10 rounds President Obama is enjoying the luxury of gun toting security. He reportedly told a reporter that one of the main perks of being president is having his teenage daughter protected by armed men (1).
Meanwhile, he also sends his children to a school that routinely employs armed security to protect campus. As do folks in the media according to this news article (2). They're sure glad their children have guns around them but think it's a horrible idea that your children have the same protection.
Honestly, this reminds me quite a bit about the socialist forms of government in this world. China for example has called for Americans to be disarmed by the government. Meanwhile in China only the government and their agents are allowed to have guns. Not like that seems to protect anyone. It's well known that China greatly oppresses it's people. There have also been several stories recently of men in China going on rampages without firearms and injuring or killing people (two stories specifically involved schools). One man used a car to run down middle school students (3). The other man used a knife in a kindergarten (4).
We're pointing fingers at the wrong culprit. This is not a gun issue, as evidenced by the same issues occurring in China but without guns. This is both an issue of morality and mental health.
Meanwhile as the liberal left launches a full scale farce (I mean attack) on firearms rights we're seeing record sales on firearms, ammunition, magazines, etc. Brownells reports they've sold 3 1/2 years worth of PMAGs in just 72 hours (5)! This is a bit ironic considering this is exactly what the left does not want. Yet they have only themselves to blame for this increase in sales. They don't want people to have high capacity magazines and so called "assault weapons" (i.e. anything that looks cool and fires semi-auto). Meanwhile, in a vain attempt at pretending to address the problem in hopes of appeasing the liberal left populace Senator Feinstein has introduced a bill to be brought to the Senate floor in January. This bill would reenact the 1994 ban on "assault weapons" by specifically naming 120 firearms to be banned. It also removes the requirement to identify "assault weapons" by 2 characteristics and makes it easier by utilizing only one characteristic. To top that, any magazine or feeding device which contains more than 10 rounds will become illegal.
As if this wasn't enough, any firearms which are owned prior to the ban would be required to be registered with the Federal government. This process would require the involvement of local law enforcement (along with the ATF) to do a background check on you all over again, obtain photo ID, a fingerprint, and properly identify the type of firearm and it's serial number (6). They might as well require the local police to fire your weapon, collect the bullet, and send it to the FBI to be identified and cataloged as well. Because that way after the nut job goes nuts and kills people it'll make it easier to identify which gun killed whom.
Let's face it folks none of this is real progress toward the end goal that politicians claim they want. It's all a bunch of emotional knee jerk response so we can feel better about ourselves for "doing something". If anything we'll put a solid spike in the gun market, drive prices of firearms and ammunition up, and make sure everyone buys NOW NOW NOW.
We need to get real here and stop pretending. Every single one of these folks who went on a shooting spree was known to have had issues mentally. They were all identified as loners, people who segregated themselves, been "off" or "weird" or some other description. Most of them had been to psychological therapy of some kind, were known to have had issues in school, etc. This doesn't mean every shy kid is a mass murderer. It doesn't mean every autistic kid is violent either. However, none of these shooters was known to be "an every day guy." There were warning signs to those around them if anyone cared to watch.
Taking away 15 round magazines from these shooters and forcing them to go on a rampage with 10 round magazines is not going to realistically prevent anything. If these guys put even 30 minutes into practicing changing magazines before they went on their rampage it would hardly slow them down at all. They would just want to carry and extra magazine to compensate for having fewer rounds in the firearm. Full size magazines are critical when confronted by a life or death situation to protect yourself or others. These are incidents where that split second truly counts and changing magazines could leave you in a defenseless situation in a drawn out gunfight. The mass murder is almost always uncontested in their rampage however so that smaller magazine and reload time will likely not make much difference.
Check out this article for details on each of the recent mass shootings. The writer has detailed the weapons used, how the rampage was ended, and whether or not it was legal to possess a firearm in that location. Of the 21 shootings only two of them were places citizens could legally carry a firearm. Only two shootings were considered to have been ended because a good guy with a gun confronted the shooter. One of these incidents the shooter was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer who are ILLEGALLY carrying a firearm on private property that prohibited the carrying of firearms (that mall subsequently removed their prohibition). Thank God that cop had broken the law that day I say. Had he/she not been carrying more people would have been hurt or killed. I certainly don't condone police officers violating the law. But from a life standpoint I'm glad that officer had broken the law that specific day as it prevented further harm.
Reality is, most of these mass murderers was stopped by their own gun. The rampage only ended because they quit and killed themselves. Imagine if they hadn't killed themselves...
Mentally stable moral adults do not kill other people.
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