uglyelk wrote:
Don
I agree with most of what you say, except I believe it's okay for a 13 year old to own firearms, on his parents permit/permission. I had my first bb at 8; 22 at 9; 20 gauge at 11; 12 gauge and 303 at 13. I didn't kill anyone, but I did bring home a ##### load of meat.
Laird,
I'm sorry I gave you the impression that I was somehow "against" children shooting or being in possession of firearms. Did I say anything that led you to believe I think otherwise?
I have had "easy and ready access" to a firearm since I can remember. I can remember some things when I was in diapers, take that for what you will.
Seriously, when I was a kid growing up, I could have put my hands on rifle, shotgun or handgun and the ammunition to go with it. I was raised differently than a lot of children are now. Some people have to "tweak" that issue to fit their own lifestyle. Since my Father was a former Marine, Hunter and avid Shooter/Reloader, I was brought up differently. So I would not say it is a "great idea" to allow certain things to be readily accessible for some people and their children. Intensely personal issue that I cannot make a judgment call on and I don't think Government should be doing that either.
Since the issue has been raised, I think it is a proper time to say that some people tend to harp on school shootings and the whole "Kids and Guns" issues and they do the vast majority of children a terrible wrong in lumping them in with the malcontents and psychopaths that are in an extreme minority. By that I mean this:
Antigunners single out the relatively few kids who have had emotional problems, etc., and they focus on the very few victims of their wrath as a rallying cry. In so doing, in their condemnation of "Kids and Guns," they ignore, literally, the HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of kids who have had ZERO ISSUES with negligent discharges, homicidal and suicidal rages.
Like any other person that uses a firearm responsibly, the vast majority are being painted as potential problems, timebombs waiting to go off or stick a pistol in their mouth or so stupid they don't know what end the round comes out of...
Again, there have been MILLIONS of kids that have used them responsibly, but people who believe in Mommy Government wish to paint all of them as potential "problems" when in fact they should be banning the doling out of Ritalin, Adderal, Paxil, Zoloft, Prozac and all that other crap in their so-called, "Drug Free Schools" and perhaps some of these kids would not crack up.
On another point about using other types of "assault weapons" and banning them because they offer a great potential for lethality, last year in Baltimore City, a drug dealer firebombed a house because the woman kept calling the Police on the dealers in the area. The whole family, if I remember correctly, seven died. Also, IIRC, one daughter survived because she was at a friend's house, everyone in the home that was bombed - died. No sophisticated device was used, a simple Molotov Cocktail.
You cannot stop this sort of thing, if you are going to ban firearms and coddle criminals, that sort of thing would continue. Are these liberals thinking they can ban a whiskey bottle or...would they ban glass bottles of all kinds to prevent this sort of thing? This drug dealer, he could have bought an illegal gun, right? Why did he choose a Molotov Cocktail?
He chose it because it's a better weapon for that sort of crime than a firearm. The Molotov Cocktail, a real assault weapon if you want to use that term. Bottle, rag and fuel is legal until you combine them, then it becomes an illegal thing to have.
As I posted earlier about the shift from firearms to edged and impact weapons, this would happen as well, assuming, of course, you could disarm drug dealers, which you can't. You can't even keep the drugs out of their hands to begin with, let alone get their weapons.
................let the ranters,rant.
........I'm gone also 