NRA -are they Serious?!?

[CalicoPenn 729]

So what's the point of all these comparisons to other countries anyway? Is it "Don't sweat it because it happens in other countries too" or is it "Let's not bother trying to solve this because other countries can't solve it either" or is it "So what, it happens in other countries too".

 

Ya know, no offense to fine folks like CambridgeSkip but I really don't give a rats patootie if other countries have had the same problems too - its up to them to solve their problems - and in the meantime, let's be the United States of America that the other countries look to for leadership and just come to the table with everything up for discussion and compromise and try to solve the dang problem - and no whining that gu laws aren't going to solve anything because we already have 24,000 gun laws and criminals don't follow the law - we already know criminals don't follow laws - that's what makes them criminals - we pass laws to ensure that we all can live in a civilized society - the alternative is no laws and anarchy.

[Eagle732 27]

"So what's the point of all these comparisons to other countries anyway? Is it "Don't sweat it because it happens in other countries too" or is it "Let's not bother trying to solve this because other countries can't solve it either" or is it "So what, it happens in other countries too". "

 

Well I guess since just a few posts ago you were siting Germany then the answer is if the example fits your point of view you use it and if it doesn't you claim it is not a fair comparison.

 

I don't think anybody said don't solve the problem but I believe we can look at history for examples for what might work and what won't. History is full of tyrannical governments, that once were benevolent, that have murdered millions of its citizens. Again I'll say that you're worried about 30 round magazines and scary black semi-automatic rifles when you should be keeping a watchful eye on your government. The founding fathers knew this. History always repeats itself and the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

 

Of course some here would rather try to discredit the opposing view as "daft" or try to take the argument to an absurd level by throwing in " mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and light antitank weapons and the like" or "dynamite". Of course that's how a good lawyer wins in court, by confusing the facts and discrediting his opponent. However statements like that won't earn you much respect.

[Basementdweller 608]

We can all second guess what the founding fathers knew or thought..... Once the the pro or anti gets a hold of the issue the words can be twisted to mean anything.

 

 

The only thing consistently said about guns and the second amendment has been that the founding fathers just won their freedom from Great Britain because just about every house hold had a fire arm.

 

 

[boomerscout 35]

the Colt was long known as the Great Equalizer. It was about the only way a 140# man could defend himself against a 250# thug. Consider this scenario: two thugs are coming at you to rob you or worse. One carries a knife, the other an ax handle. You weigh 120#, and have had a year of karate. Do you really believe you will prevail?

 

Many have mentioned keeping your guns secured at home. This means you won't have time to go get it during a home invasion, someone following you into your garage as you arrive home, or even during a carjacking with your kid in the back seat.

 

In parallel with the broken window theory, perhaps all schools should have a dress code -- no Goth dress allowed. This Skinnering may have helped at Columbine.

 

As the Aurora shooter's trial progresses, I hope they also indict his psychiatrist. For taking taxpayer funds under false pretenses at the very least.

 

Putting fences around each school sounds better & better - with vibration alarms hooked to camera at the officereceptionists' desks.

 

The latest school shooting involved a shotgun.

 

As guns are driven underground, look for more off the books gunfactories to be set up. I just hope they don't make the bullets out of cast brass instead of lead

[Beavah 205]

Yah, hmmm...

 

So much bizarre stuff here, so little time.

 

Eagle732, I was not calling you a liar. I was calling Mr. Lott and some of da other sources you are parroting dishonest, and encouraging you to do a better job of verifying their veracity before repeating misinformation.

 

History is actually not rife with benevolent governments that become tyrannical. In actuality, history describes halting but relentless progress toward democracy and individual liberty, eh? Driven by economic and social factors. History has almost no examples of a citizenry armed solely with da hand weapons of the day successfully overcoming tyranny and da armed forces of the state. Most frequently, popular uprisings with hand weapons yield pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and worse tyranny.

 

that the founding fathers just won their freedom from Great Britain because just about every house hold had a fire arm.

 

Yah, this would be completely false, eh? Da Founding Fathers received weapons supplies in large quantities from France, and stole or captured a lot of da rest from the British. Da Founding Fathers required cannon and rapid-loading military muskets to accomplish anything, and for some reason our Second Amendment advocates here feel OK with regulating cannon. Da Founding Fathers in the end won at Yorktown because of the support of a large foreign navy.

 

Da notion that a bunch of untrained, undrilled, unorganized individuals with personal firearms somehow stood of tyranny to win da Revolution is just rubbish.

 

The idea that yeh are goin' whip out your pistol while sittin' in da driver's seat to stave off a carjacker with a gun in your face and your kid in the back seat who would be endangered by any gunplay is nothing but Hollywood fantasy. Da truth of the matter is that we largely stave off all these bad people folks are imagining by responding with community. Friends, neighbors, police, law, social supports, economic development. That has been workin' just fine, eh? Despite a massive economic downturn, America is safer from crime than it quite possibly has ever been.

 

Yah, I'm in favor of school dress codes.

 

Yah, the latest school shooting involved a shotgun. More importantly, the latest school shooting was stopped by an unarmed, caring teacher without further loss of life.

 

Off the books gun factories would be great. Much less effective weapons than what can be built in a real factory, much more expensive, much lower quantity, near zero availability of capital for research or expanding production, fairly easy to trace and prosecute.

 

 

[Basementdweller 608]

So Beavah.....

 

 

Ya think the revolutionary war would have started or turned out any different if the entire population was disarmed????

[AZMike 173]

Beavah: "History has almost no examples of a citizenry armed solely with da hand weapons of the day successfully overcoming tyranny and da armed forces of the state. Most frequently, popular uprisings with hand weapons yield pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and worse tyranny."

 

In the Christero Rebellion (1926 - 1929), in our neighbor to the south: While not a clear victory, the Catholic rebels were able to use hand weapons to fight the anti-religious forces of the atheist president Calles (who received financial support from the Ku Klux Klan) to a standstill. Through a negotiated peace, the Catholics were able to defeat tyranny and secure their rights by forcing the Calles regime from enforcing most of the anti-religious statutes.

 

(The party which Calles founded, the PRI, was just voted back into office in Mexico, incidentally.)

 

Something that is probably overlooked in the "well, handguns and rifles will never defeat the more powerful weapons of the state" trope is that with sufficient hand weapons, you can get BIGGER weapons by defeating units in guerrilla attacks, raiding armories, and through defecting state forces - which is how the Christeros went from rifles and handguns to machine guns and cannons, and how they got some of their best military leaders.

 

Last year's film "For Greater Glory" provided a somewhat romanticized view of this bloody conflict for religious freedom.

 

We could also make the argument that the defeat of the Roman Empire by the barbarians was accomplished with the hand-weapons of the era, and the Battle of Roarke's Drift demonstrated how the most powerful army of its time could be defeated by "primitive" tribesmen using vastly inferior hand-weapons but vastly superior strategy (and who soon gained control of that vastly superior weaponry), as well as the defeat of the British at Khartoum, and the French at Dien Ben Phu...it's kind of hard to know when to stop, there are so many examples in military history.

(This message has been edited by AZMike)

[Beavah 205]

Ya think the revolutionary war would have started or turned out any different if the entire population was disarmed????

 

Yah, Basementdweller, how did we get to this silly statement? Nobody is proposing that the entire population be disarmed. I'm just proposing that we stop writing fiction about real history.

 

Da American Revolution largely saw organized civil militias responding at the beginning, and then of course the colonies raised, equipped, and trained a professional army, with civil militia serving in support roles. Those civil militia had the military equipage of the day, including field artillery and merchant shipping cannon, stockpiles of explosives and the like.

 

How do yeh suppose da American Revolution would have turned out if all we had were a bunch of untrained, undrilled civilians with hand arms, no stockpiles of gunpowder, and no command structure?

 

AZMike, without refreshin' my Mexican history I can't say. Perhaps yeh found one example. I said they were rare, not nonexistent. I generally consider da American Revolution another rare example. Such rare examples are vastly outnumbered by those that followed da pattern of da French Revolution into chaos and dictatorship or the Yugoslavian revolution just into chaos. In da absence of regular drill and a command structure, armed civilians throughout history have a sad tendency to riots and pogroms and tearin' civilization apart in favor of one-issue agendas.

 

On da fall of Rome you're way off, though. Da sack of Rome was done by what was the state army of the Visigoth tribe/nation at the time. Same with your other examples.

 

Beavah

 

[AZMike 173]

You're mixing several arguments together, Beavah - you said, ""History has almost no examples of a citizenry armed solely with da hand weapons of the day successfully overcoming tyranny and da armed forces of the state." If by citizenry you mean solely those forces that arise against an occupying force or an unwanted regime, certainly the Viet Minh, the Zulu, and the forces of the Mahdi qualify, in that they used the hand weapons of the day to defeat superior military forces. They may have replaced them with their own tyrannies, but that's not germane to your original claim - that handweapons, such as handguns and rifles are inefficient against a superior occupying regime. Heck, the Zulus faced British rifles with assegais. The Mahdi's forces used swords and a few rifles to seize the British Army's rifles. Did these forces function as a military force? Undoubtedly, as all revolutionary movements ultimately must. There is no gentleman's agreement that revolutionary forces must remain a rabble. At some point they establish a chain of command and some sort of structure.

 

"Most frequently, popular uprisings with hand weapons yield pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and worse tyranny."

 

As General Giap said when an American told him that they had never defeated an American unit on the battlefield, "That is true. It is also irrelevant." It does not follow that an armed rebellion must lead to tyranny, that is instead a function of the cause for which the rebels fight, and a host of other factors. Of course, it has nothing to do with the rebel's choice of weaponry.

 

Some other internal revolutions that began with handguns and rifles and produced what were arguably better societies, if we use your stricter (if irrelevant) definition of non-standing armies that resulted in better societies than the one the replaced, let's look at the first half of the 20th century as an example: we should include the Mashrutiyyat or Enghelab e Mashruteh, the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1907; the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, which began the second constitutional period in Turkey; the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 in China; the Easter Rebellion of 1916 in Ireland; the Greater Poland Uprising of 19181919; the 1921 Mirdit Revolt, which allowed the region to maintain its Roman Catholic faith in the middle of the Ottoman Empire; the 1926 Catholic peasants' rebellion in Shkodr; the Sao Paulo Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932, which although defeated, resulted in accession to the rebels' demands; the various guerrilla resistance groups (Greek, Jewish, French, Yugoslav, Slovak, etc.) that fought Nazi occupation and puppet governments; the 1945 Democratic Revolution in Venezuela under Rmulo Betancourt; even the "McMinn County War," also known as the Battle of Athens, Georgia in 1946 could be considered a rebellion against corrupt local rule, as armed WWII veterans fought back against voter intimidation.

 

That's just some of the rebellions that I consider justified in the first half of the last century. There are many others that, depending on your politics, could also be considered justified, and which were usually initiated with small arms. I can go back a couple of millennia and give you hundreds more (at least, if you can afford my billable research rate for writing all this down for you...), all the way back to the Athenian Revolution (508 - 507 B.C.) and the Ionan Revolt (499 - 493 A.D.). There are many, many more, Beavah.

 

We can further argue that even if many of these rebellions failed and resulted in brutal reprisals and rebellions, it is incumbent upon good men to resist evil regimes, even at the cost of their own lives. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil," etc.

 

A sizable number were, in fact successful and were, in fact, initiated with the hand weapons of the day, and did replace bad regimes with better ones, resulting in better lives for those involved. More importantly, and towards the actual point of your claim, throughout these rebellions, we can see that rebels are not required by some sort of unspoken gentlemen's agreement to continue the fight ONLY with handguns and rifles - they use those to trade up in firepower. So the argument that hand weapons are ineffective against a standing army can safely be discarded as an argument. You may have better ones, but that one is a non-starter, based on the lessons of history, my friend.

 

[packsaddle 753]

Rolling eyes...yes, yes, David slew Goliath. Can the 'clash of the Titans' subside a little?

 

Now, how about those armed security guards, teachers, and students?

[Eagledad 2779]

Two news articles on the same day.

 

White House eying 19 executive actions on guns

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/biden-guns-executive-actions-86187.html?hp=t1_3

 

NRA: Membership Has Grown by 250,000 in One Month

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/01/15/nra-membership-has-grown-by-250000-in-one-month

[Moggie 12]

"Battle of Roarke's Drift demonstrated how the most powerful army of its time could be defeated by "primitive" tribesmen using vastly inferior hand-weapons but vastly superior strategy"

 

Just a minor point, the British weren't defeated at Rorke's Drift, 150 soldiers of 24th Foot Regiment (now called the Royal Regiment of Wales) held off 3000-4000 Zulu warriors at the station in 1879.

 

Cheers

Gareth

[AZMike 173]

Moggie: "Just a minor point, the British weren't defeated at Rorke's Drift, 150 soldiers of 24th Foot Regiment (now called the Royal Regiment of Wales) held off 3000-4000 Zulu warriors at the station in 1879.

 

Cheers

Gareth"

 

You're quite right, Gareth, my mistake. The relevant battle to which I meant to refer was the Battle of Islandlwana.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isandlwana

[packsaddle 753]

Can someone help me out? I'm trying to find the NRA rules (guidelines, whatever) for firearm safety in the home. Or really, any related personal safety literature that comes close to this. Is there some other firearm-related organization that has literature on this topic?

But mainly, I'd like to know what the NRA recommends with regard to firearms in the home. If someone could point me to a link on the NRA web site that would be just great. Thanks

[Callooh! Callay!1428010939 28]

http://training.nra.org/nra-gun-safety-rules.aspx

http://eddieeagle.nra.org/information-for-parents.aspx