Disingenuous Politicians?Follow

Just about ten minutes ago I thought "Wow, we might make it through a work day without a new politics thread in the Asylum! Talked about DUI's, cameras, punting cats, tipping.. but no politics. This could be the dawn of a new era!"

Meh.

Aside from that, I agree with you. I'd be a whiney ***** and point out Pubbie examples but you already acknowledge them so you took all the fun out of being a whiney *****. Anyway, it's a shame that they boil things down to the lowest common denominator, stuff gets lost in the translation and then we (or they) spend a month arguing over whether or not terrorists need flash suppressors and miss the forest for the trees.

here is another fact for you.

if you want to buy some heroin, you can, even though it is banned.

here is some reality for you,

if you are a criminal, the LAST thing you would want to do is carry around a banned weapon. you get pulled over for a traffic stop, you go to jail, and do not pass go.

just like you dont whip out your heroin at a street corner full of people and shoot up in public.

it is about deterrats.

YES you can get anything if you want it bad enough. but if they are illegal to posses, you significantly lessen the chance of encountering one in a routine traffic stop, or a domestic violance call.

the ban saves the lives of law enforcement. making them illegal makes it much less liekly a cop will have to deal with one.

most crimes are crimes of opertunity. your average street hood is not going to walk around with a weapon what will immediatly get him arrested, and thus will probably not have one on him when he does commit a crime, and will probably not have one in his back seat when he gets pulled over for a traffic violation.

to argue you can still get them so make them legal, is like arguing you can still get drugs so make them legal, or you can still buy switch blades so make them legal.

they need to be banned.

the above is just gun lobiest BS to make some money.

I do. Any manner of weapons should be available to law abiding citizens. And now for my next trick, I'll produce solid evidence why guns are good and people are being mislead about gun control:

http://www.gunowners.org/fs0404.htm

Totem

Not true, one time me and a friend were going to rape someone then we picked up an assault rifle with the folding stock and such and decided to go shoot someone instead.

Shadowrelm. It's obvious you have no clue what weapons were actually banned, or what method was used to ban them.



If you are a criminal, the LAST thing you would want to do is carry around any of the weapons listed as "assault style weapons" on this ban. They are all large, bulky, and extremly obvious. The only people who bought such weapons were gun collectors and people who liked firing "replica" military style weapons. Despite what you may have seen in films like "Colors" and "Boyz in the Hood", virtually no gang members used such weapons.



Which is exactly why this ban was meaningless 10 minutes after it was passed. Again. No one was carrying around any of the weapons on the banned list on the off chance they'd need a gun.

Your argument would at least be in place if we were talking about a ban on snub nosed revolvers or "Saturday Night Special" type weapons. I'd have other arguments against you, but at least you'd be in the ballpark. Those are the types of weapons that criminals carry on them. They are cheap, small, and easy to conceal and use.

The problem with the ban of "assault weapons" is that no one can define exactly what an "assault weapon" is. There's no real definition in terms of firearms. It's not about bore length, or muzzle velocity, or bullet diameter, or weapon size, or rate of fire, or method of chambering rounds. The ban focused on weapons that looked like military style weapons. Actual performance had nothing to do with it.

Your heroin example is totally off. The problem is that this ban essentially banned the sale of heroin in pink plastic baggies, but allowed it as long as it was held in any other sort of container at the time of sale.

That's why it was so meaningless. Since the ban focused on purely cosmetic issues, the makers just removed the things that made them look like "assault weapons" out of the box, and voila! Same weapon. Now totally legal. And hey! You could buy a kit from a 3rd party to make it look like a military style weapon again if you wanted to. All perfectly legal. I'd be surprised if the law actually reduced the number of firearms purchased in the US by even one. It really was that silly...


And Joph?



Which is still probably more then the number of crimes commited with such weapons in the first place, much less the number ever prevented by this ban.


Hey! Where's my parade! :)

Ya know, personally, I've always thought that handguns are a bad thing.

Let me state for the record that I'm an avid 'shoot thigns and blow **** up' sort of guy. I like things that make loud booms. If I have to check to make sure my shoulder will still move properly after I shoot a gun, then it's cool. Explosives in general are fun.

So why do I have a thing for handguns? Well, it's always been pretty obvious to me: the #1 use for a handgun is to shoot people with.

I know that you CAN shoot other things with handguns. I know that most bullets fired from them are fired for target practice. I know that people buy shooting glasses and scopes and compare penises, err, accuracy ratings with them.

But the entire reason for taking a big long rifle and giving it a really short barrel, a handgrip, and fast firing capability has a lot to do with putting holes in people, as opposed to putting holes in things other than people.

I'm not entirely against putting holes in people. There are some cases where I strongly support the idea of putting holes in people, to let the stupidity out.

I just question the need for a specific tool designed for the task. Do people really need a special tool for killing each other? Militarily, sure. That's what all those big toys the military designs are for.

On the street is something different. I just don't like handguns. I'd vote for a complete ban on all handguns, outside of police or other specially authorized persons.

Ya know, if I have a NEED to kill someone there's all sorts of other things handy.

I'm sure that handgun enthusiasts will disagree.

Basing this on....?

And, for that matter, for every crime "stopped" by use of someone with an assault rifle, I'd be curious to find out how the same crime wouldn't have been prevented with a revolver, shotgun, semi-auto handgun, bolt action .22, musket, realisticly made BB gun, etc that assault rifles need to remain legal to stop muggings and rapes.

hehe,

I though gun toting criminals Broke the law.
So waht's the point of new ones or harder ones or reforms on present ones?
Most criminals already think they are un-catchable.

Plus remember that the 1st amendment was created when it took 5 minutes to load your musket.


but really I'm all for Guns... it's infused in our culture.

Plus anarchy would be no fun without them ^~

Just because they probably don't have an illegal handgun around doesn't mean they won't kick yer *** for trying to drink their Labatt.