BUT the NRA is NOT standing up for machine guns!! That is the whole point! Who is accusing them of that ... and making it stick?
Let me ask it the other way. With the media saturating us with this new and sinister idea that Guns are Bad ... where do you imagine the line would be drawn, where the average voter would say Stop Banning Guns? I don't see any natural stopping point.
Since the early years of the century there have been laws against "destructive devices" - grenades, explosive rounds, demolition devices. These are rather universally accepted as not being under the aegis of the Second Amendment. So when somebody brings up tanks or fighter planes or atom bombs in the context of the Bill of Rights - you got someone with an agenda right there right then.
To be useful to defend self and home, a gun NEEDS a repeat-fire capability. Obviously in the wrong hands this is a heck of a liability. We used to be able to walk into the hardware store and buy a fully-working Tommy gun. Full auto. (This was in the Twenties.) Aside from some folks who got organized to exploit another kind of Prohibition then thought ot be a "generally good idea", civilly-owned Tommy guns were not any sort of public crisis. Why not? And why would they be now? These are questions worth asking, and it would be salutary to break the habit of Blaming the Gun. Jmho obviously.
Imo the Second Amendment covers any firearm that can be carried and fires nonreactive (nonexplosive) fixed rounds. This includes belt-fed 50 caliber machine guns. It does not include Stinger missiles or grenades or Claymore mines. It does include Uzis, and it does include what the rat bastards are now misnaming "assault weapons". It includes REAL assault weapons that can be switched to go braaaaap. it's not the gun that's the problem ...it's the crime. Somehow this idea lost popularity, and I honestly don't know what to do about it.
BUT I *do* want to get my friends here to THINK HARD about where the line between safety and liberty ought to be drawn. We are on course to have ALL our gun privileges revoked within maybe thirty years. Where do we say Enough, and how? Is there any natural point of resistance to the gun grabbers? I see none. If you see one, please tell me. New York, Boston, Washington DC - these are supposed to be the bastions of the American Way - the carried firearms are either in the hands of cops (who are damn brutal without a credible civil deterrent) or organized criminals. And the latter don't give a holler about gun laws.
The NRA sees no clear demarcation either. That is why it'll fight ANY gun grab tooth&nail. Because there is NO line of demarcation between "reasonable, sane" gun control and outright criminalization of all imaginable forms of firearm ownership. (Great Britain, home of the most marvelous double-barreled fowling-pieces ever made anywhere - just outlawed their possession.) And the gun owners are LOSING, and it grieves me. What form of sovereign private property will be up for Gov't interdiction after they're done seizing all the non-Gov't guns? |
