This is a long ‘un. Kick your feet up.
Driving through my home town today on the way to a family reunion, I picked up a copy of the local newspaper for the first time in years. (I thought I might know the guy convicted of manslaughter on the front page. I didn’t.) After we got back home, I sat reading it in my backyard – my wife asking why I kept bursting out laughing. The answer? Comedians masquerading as goofball liberal columnists in my own little small town news rag!
The main thrust of this chick’s column was that Bush is a hypocrite for wanting to create a “culture of life” by threatening to veto more taxpayer-funded stem cell research. She said Bush has created a culture of death in Iraq by starting a war when he didn’t have too, yada, yada, yada. She mentioned the Downing Street memo as well, something I just found out about recently at http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html.
These people have cried wolf so many times, if they ever find proof the Bush really is the devil, people wouldn’t believe them. (Except for their fellow nutjobs.) Wait, isn’t Karl Rove supposed to be the devil and Bush just a puppet? Or is Cheney the devil? But, what would that make Rove? Is it fair to the devil to compare him to GOP leaders? A good dem has to be sensitive to the religious differences of others, right? Except fundamentalist Christians and Catholics. They’re fair game. These religions are supposed to put up with having Christ on the cross get dunked in urine in the name of art. But if a Gitmo guard pees by an air duct which blows some liquid onto a terrorist and his U.S.-supplied Koran, OH NO! Stop the presses and spread the news! Here comes the latest news from the gulag that IS Gitmo! Ugh. What a bunch of weiners. Yet . . . I digress.
This liberal columnist chick works her way into ranting about the gun lobby, cop-killer bullets, and the dreaded .50-caliber rifle. She obviously feels all of these things are far more frightening than most fantasy stories. (Some horror movies are just plain frightening. Take The Grudge for instance. It scared me so bad I crawled into bed with my wife and almost 3-year-old daughter after I got back from the theater.)
What the heck is a cop-killer bullet? Is it a bullet raised in a bad neighberhood, educated in government schools, nurtured by government social programs? Did it join a gang at an early age to gain some feeling of family? Explain yourself, lib dem femme chick! I’m an inquiring NRA member and I want to know.
You can’t buy steel core bullets anymore, because they tend to penetrate things they shouldn’t. I don’t know if this includes your average Kevlar vest, but I suspect that that idea had something to do with their current hard-to-gettedness. The Winchester Black Talon hollow points were voluntarily withdrawn from the non-LEO market place by the manufacturer during the early 90s. The bullets’ hollow points are designed to open up and fold back upon impact to form extended metal talons that slice as they penetrate tissue. I also hear they aren’t really as effective as they should have been. BTW, I’ve been to a bunch of gun shows and haven’t found a Teflon-coated bullet yet. You can get Teflon-coated cooking pans at Wal Mart, though. Maybe you could buy some full metal jacketed shells and melt the Teflon off the cook ware and drip it onto the bullets. Wouldn’t recommend it, though. Burning Teflon smells terrible.
And the .50-caliber bullets Ms. Libby is talking about are .50 Browning Machine Gun cartridges. The civilian rifles they are used in aren’t machine guns. The cartridge has the name because this particular .50 cal. is the one which has been used in the U.S. military’s M2 machine gun since WW II if not slightly earlier. Don’t confuse these rounds or the rifles designed to shoot them with your average .50-caliber black powder using, muzzle loading rifle. If you ask for a muzzle loader in .50 BMG at the local sporting goods store, you’ll just look silly. Plus, you may frighten any liberals who may have wandered in in an effort to buy a stylish vest in John Kerry hunter orange.
She said these scary weapons can be used to shoot down planes. Well, .50-caliber BMGs were routinely used to shoot down Axis planes during WW II, since two or more of the things in machine gun form were commonly mounted on American fighter planes. The weapons she is talking about only fire one round per pull of the trigger. I’m sure a bullet or two from a .50 BMG rifle could be used to down an airliner if you put the shots in the right places, but surely there must be easier ways. Like using a surface-to-air missile, for instance. Hard to get? Illegal? Sure, but you have to go through a federal background check to buy a .50-caliber rifle or any other gun, for that matter. Funny how the lib dems leave out inconvenient facts like that when it suits their purpose.
She goes on to say how hunting rifles are okay, but the evil .50-caliber weapons of mass destruction should be limited only to the proper authorities – like the federal agents who took Ellian Gonzales from his uncle’s house at gunpoint, for example. Know what the difference is between a scoped .308 bolt-action hunting rifle and a sniper rifle? From the perspective of a typical anti-gun Democrat, not a blessed thing. Read the Second Amendment folks. It’s not about deer season, just the right for you and me to bear arms.
Oh, and she mentioned something about loopholes that allow dealers to sell firearms to criminals and terrorists. I suspect our columnist friend here is referring to the so-called “gun show loophole.” Here is the first thing you need to know about the gun show loophole: it doesn’t exist. A federally licensed firearms dealer has to have a Class 1 Federal Firearms License. For a holder of the license to sell a gun to an individual, the prospective buyer must undergo a federal back ground check. This check will be done every time the individual purchases a gun, except in some states with concealed carry laws. I don’t know the rules by state, but in some of them, a concealed carry permit holder doesn’t have to undergo a federal background check with each purchase because he or she has already been fingerprinted and background-checked to get the concealed carry license. Terrorists and criminals are not usually eager to be fingerprinted, much less have the feds check on their past criminal records. The prospective buyer also has to fill out a standardized form certifying he or she isn’t a fugitive from justice, a wifebeater, illegal alien, drug addict, etc. It is a felonly to lie on the form.
Anyway, a federally-licensed dealer has to call in a background check on anyone who wants to buy a gun regardless of where they are. In other words, background checks ARE conducted at gunshows. When background checks aren’t conducted at gunshows is when the sale is between two ordinary private citizens. The government hasn’t gotten around to getting in your business if you want to sell your Dad’s old 12-guage shotgun to a friend or acquaintance. And if you don’t trust yourself not to sell a gun to potential criminal, keep the thing. Or ship it to me. I’ll take it off your hands and pay the shipping fees to boot. (Wait, you can’t ship it directly to me if you are out of state. You have to ship it to a licensed dealer in my state who then sells the gun to me ((background check)). Unless we both have Curio and Relic licenses. That’s another federal background check ((pesky things)) and more paperwork.) Remember, our government says handguns are more dangerous than rifles, so you have to ship handguns next day air but long guns can go ground.
Modern machine guns are illegal for private citizens to buy and sell, so don’t worry about somebody giving Abdul the terrorist an armload of fully-automatic AK-47s under the guise of a private transaction. Old machine guns are legal to purchase after you get a Curio and Relic license, undergo yet another federal background check (see a pattern?), and pay a really exorbitant fee for the gun itself. Don’t let the thought of a frothing terrorist with a 50-year-old, fully-automatic weapon keep you up at night. Remember that bit about having to undergo a background check (at least twice, at this point).
Oh, and the lapse of the “Assault Weapons Ban” doesn’t make machine guns available at the local five and dime or Wal Mart, for that matter. (The assault weapons ban didn’t really affect assault weapons? Democrats and the press misleading the public? Say it ain’t so, Irene.) If its fully automatic, i.e., capable of emptying its magazine after the trigger is pulled and held back, you still can’t buy it off the shelf. Sorry. The Ak-47s and M16 lookalikes available to us civvie types are semi automatic only – one shot fired per each pull of the trigger. And the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives makes sure they aren’t easily modified to become full auto.
So there you are. Liberals’ favorite firearms myths debunked. The next time you come across these lies, just laugh at ’em and make fun of the writer. It’s great fun at parties and will amuse your friends . . . well, most of your friends, anyway.
BTW, politicians think they don’t have to listen to individuals unless the individuals are able to donate copious amounts of $$ to their campaign funds. If you want them to hear your views on gun control, go to http://www.nra.org or http://www.gunowners.org and sign up. Tell ’em I sent ya.