I have been around guns most of my life, as a teenager shooting in competition for a youth group I was in, my step-father was a policeman, and Beth's Dad was an avid gun owner - loving to target shoot and rid his place of unwanted varmints.Here at Nutwood, we would never dream of using anything more powerful than a BB gun against our malicious critters, preferring to shoot using a shutter rather than a bullet, but we do have a few rifles (one the target .22 rifle I used in competition and others from Beth's Dad) and hand guns.
Over the last several days, it has been tragic and traumatic to watch the images of the victims from Aurora Colorado on the news. The shooter was able to buy multiple guns over a short period of time, and to order more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition over the internet. One of the guns was a semi-automatic rifle. That is where I draw the line, there is not reason to have a semi-automatic rifle with a clip that holds a hundred rounds except to use in war for maximum damage. Would you use one while hunting - I cannot imagine.
This was only reinforced today as we were having our morning beverages (coffee for me, snapple for Beth) and perusing the newspaper. The property adjacent to us is an abandoned slaughter-house and now used for a civil engineering/construction company. On the weekends, one individual takes target practice, and I purposely counted this morning and there was one stretch of over 30 rapid fires shots. To what end???
The United States is one of the most violent and high murder rate countries in the world. I think we could stand to do without semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity clips. I am a supporter of the Second Amendment, but also believe that some form of regulation is warranted. Why not start with re-instituting the ban on assault weapons.
To sign the petition that Beth created, please follow this link: Assualt Rifle Ban
I am torn on the subject. I own two guns, a shot gun and a 22 pistol. The Shotgun is here in the motor home and I haven't bought shells for it.
ReplyDeleteLast year I owned three other guns, they were stolen. One I had bought for my dad before he died, he had never fired it, but had always wanted the Ithaca.
As I said, I am torn about my feelings. I would like to own (for some reason) an M1, #4508231, since I carried it for a few years. hahaha.
Thank you, honey.
ReplyDeleteI also am very familiar with guns; my Dad taught me to shoot when I was in junior high. But I am very disturbed by the easy availability of guns whose sole purpose is to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible. The shooter in Aurora had his semi-auto jam on him. If that hadn't happened, how many more people would have been injured or killed? As it was, he got 35% of the audience that night. I don't know how anyone can think this is in any way right. His guns were purchased legally. I find that obscene.
I too am torn... but for me it goes a little deeper. My family is from Texas and a number of my relatives are in law enforcement and military. So yes, I'm pro 2nd Amendment. That said, it is heart-breaking that someone would go to this extreme to act out with such incredible evil. While it is disturbing to say the very least, how he obtained those weapons and in that time frame, it is even more disturbing that someone would sink to the level of carrying out the inflicting of death and destruction for whatever sinister purposes that he concocted. Whether by the guns at the movie theatre, the booby trap at his apartment entrance way, or by any other factor... the behavior and lack of remorse of this parasite is what bothers me the most... what in the wide wide world of sports would cause a person to do this?
ReplyDeleteWe are gun owners and responsible hunters. But we do not own assault rifles. We have no reason to own them.
ReplyDeletePeople are asking how the shooter could have purchased so much ammo in so short a time without red flags being raised. Well, if he ordered from more than one source, dividing his purchases between the sources, and if he used different means of paying, how could it have raised flags? I don't know that he did use different means of paying, but if he did...? If one credit card is used, the credit card company would have to be the one monitoring the number of ammo purchases made in a short time. Could that be regulated? There would have to be some sort of law limiting the amount of ammo purchased before flags were raised. And someone could pay with a money order, or multiple credit or debit cards. And if he ordered from multiples sources, using different means of paying, but all were shipped to his name and address, then should there be some kind of cross-referencing data base that would tie all the purchases together? There will have to be checks at several different levels in order to make this kind of thing harder to get away with -- bans on assault rifles and some way to monitor legal ammunition sales and delivery. I don't see this happening any time soon, but yes, re-instituting the ban on assault weapons would be a start.