Another Idiot says the sky is falling (but not really)
Today’s idiot is Thomas Withers, who apparently wants us to know he’s a former member of the NRA. This idiot thinks the expiration of the ban will mark the end of the NRA as a political force:
Eventually, someone with an assault weapon — as before the ban — will assassinate all the customers in a fast food store or kill a dozen or more workers in a manufacturing plant, all with a gun that doesn’t need reloading. When this happens, as it did in Australia, Britain and California, there will be an uprising unlike any we have ever seen demanding common-sense gun control laws we would have except for paranoia in the National Rifle Association.
The laws enacted will require the registration of all gun owners, the registration of all guns owned, and limit the number of guns a person may buy in a year. Mention these three laws, and any NRA member worth his shooter’s cap will have a panic attack.
The expiration of the assault weapons ban should be a wake-up call to expose the warped thinking and mendacious actions of the NRA. We don’t have to wait for a mass murder. A good place to begin is by showing that the NRA’s “patriotic” defense of the Second Amendment is nothing more than hogwash. It uses the Second Amendment as a smokescreen to defend its irrational and illogical proposals under the pretext that legality equals sanity.
Eventually, the murder will happen. But I’ll bet the assault weapons ban would not have prevented it, just like it didn’t prevent Columbine.
September 24th, 2004 at 11:13 am
Ahhh…a Fuddite. I wonder why this didn’t happen during the 10 years that the “ban” was in place, considering that it didn’t “ban” a single gun.
September 24th, 2004 at 11:16 am
It did happen. Columbine was 1999.
September 24th, 2004 at 11:38 am
Registration never solves anything. Especially considering that it does not apply to the criminal class, who are protected against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment.
September 24th, 2004 at 12:54 pm
Ooh! I want a “gun that doesn’t need reloading”!
Wow! I can’t believe the technology they kept hidden for 10 years!
“pretext that legality equals sanity.”
Er, what? So it is sane to ‘legally’ ban guns, but insane not to ban them legally? Did I read that right?
Whatever he and his ilk do is sane but whatever we do is insane? *rolls eyes8 Yeah, really winning debate points with that type of logic.
Sheesh.
September 24th, 2004 at 1:06 pm
Fucking ghoul sounds like he’s actually HOPING for a killing spree.
Asshat.
September 24th, 2004 at 1:44 pm
That depends on the method of registration. Requiring a prohibited person to register a gun he already owns illegally violates the self-incrimination clause, but conditioning the sale on a simultaneous registration does not. Of course, it will only affect guns purchsed through legitimate retail outlets unlikely to be frequented by most criminals, but that’s another issue.
IMO, registration does have one valid use: if a gun ends up being used in a crime, at least the cops know who the last legal owner was.
September 24th, 2004 at 2:11 pm
SU: I meant the uprising he predicts.
September 24th, 2004 at 11:02 pm
IMO, registration does have one valid use: if a gun ends up being used in a crime, at least the cops know who the last legal owner was.
Not a valid use. There was a workplace shooting in Chicago, where the law-abiding cannot shoot back, a couple of years ago. The gun’s history was traced back to someone now homeless, who had lawfully sold it to someone else. It then passed thru two more sets of hands. The last legal owner was charged in connection with the murders.
September 25th, 2004 at 1:22 am
That shooting Triticale, involved a Walther PP. The last legal owner sold it to a Chicago cop – who didn’t register it. He sold it to another Chicago cop. Who didn’t register it. Both cops subsequently died (of natural causes, I assume) and the gun ended up in the hands of a Prohibited Person, who used it to commit multiple murder and then suicide.
The last legal owneras you noted, Milton R. Beuck, was homeless. But because he didn’t keep a WRITTEN RECORD of the sale to the first cop, he was charged with failure to keep said record. You can read all about it here.
As for the massacre, we’ve already had more than one. I see no reason that another will make the American populace rise up in indignant anger. We don’t, as a rule, blame the weapon for the act.
September 27th, 2004 at 12:49 am
The assault weapons ban was a decoy to keep people from asking why Purdey had been arrested 7 times for violent crimes before he finally shot up that Stockton school.
Incidntally – one of the guys let loose from Gitmo was just killed while attacking U.S. forces in Afganistan. Bet the ACLU is proud, hu?