Ian has been talking about picking up a gun for awhile. He's mostly just interested in target shooting. As he mentioned above, he was introduced to them at age 11 (dontcha love the boy scouts?). I've never even touched one. If Ian gets a gun, I will be learning to shoot it. This is my choice, not his. I will not have a weapon in the house that I don't know how to use, or that I'm uncomfortable around. Despite the fact that we don't have kids, we'll be getting a safe for it. And if I had kids, they'd learn "don't touch" until they were old enough to learn how to shoot.

Then again, I was taught that a car is a deadly weapon.

Who here lives in detroit or near detroit? Anybody?

Stardock, the makers of fine sites such as JoeUser, who is my employer is in Livonia, which is Metro Detroit (which is why I use it as an example).  Why?

Ok. I live in Metroit Detroit. I just asked because I wondered if anybody had seen a recent article in the oakland press regarding a michigan bill proposed to take the place of the federal ban when it expires. The oakland press is a highly conservative paper, and they were in favor of it. The detroit police are in favor of it. It doesn't matter if the number of gun crimes goes down with the ban of assult weapons, what matters is that the guns used are less dangerous. Assult weapons are meant to kill as many people as possible. The number of crimes in detroit with assult weapons has fallen dramatically.

what matters is that the guns used are less dangerous. Assult weapons are meant to kill as many people as possible. The number of crimes in detroit with assult weapons has fallen dramatically.

No gun that is used is "less" dangerous than any other. And like a bunch of other people I know I think your missinformed.
1.)"Assualt weapons" by definition are automatic weapons (automatic weapons were banned in 1934). Yet it's the semi-autos that were banned. Semi's are NOT "assualt weapons". With Semi auto's you only fire ONE round per pull of trigger.
2.) The AWB banned 19 different types of fire arms based on looks alone! Can't have a flash suppressor, or a bayonet lug......yada-yada-yada.
3.) The anti-gunners say they are high powered rifles. Not so, all weapons banned were medium to low power.
4.) The number of crimes committed with "assualt weapons" has NOT dropped! It was NEVER very high anyway (less than 2%). The crime rate was already on it's way down BEFORE Clinton signed the ban. The anti-gunners just fell on the figures and used them to support their position
5.) The banned weapons are no different than ones that can be found on shelves today. The difference between a civilian M-14(on list) and a Mini-14 by Ruger (not on list) is "none". They both use the same loading and firing system. As a matter of fact for those not real familiar with firearms it's "real" hard to tell the difference.
"Nuff said"

You could also say- Michigan needs to do whatever Maine is doing. They have a 1.6% murder rate versus Michigan with a 9.8%. We'll just ignore the fact that Maine has roughly the same population as the city of Detroit.

And almost everyone outside of the city (Portland) in Maine has a gun. See any connection?
Anyone who lumps assault weapons and machine guns together needs to work on their knowledge.
If you think my Mini-14 in .223 caliber is the same as a machine gun you are probably going to have difficulty
finding your polling place. (Thank god.)

If more people with children in the household kept them properly secured and taught their children firearms safety,
there would be very little for the anti-gun lobby to use for their sob stories.

Gun control is a double tap, center mass and a double tap to the head.

Quoted from earlier.
Here's a good one- Percent of auto accidents caused by cell phones distracting driver: 6%. Number of deaths due to those cell phone related accidents: ~2,600 per year (Washington Post 2002) and on the rise. Number of accident reports that indicate cell phone distraction for cause of accident? ~330,000 per year.

"Guns don't kill poeple. Soccor moms with cell phones kill people."

Someone make a bumper sticker out of that. And when you do, let me in on the profits.

This just in
Friday, September 17, 2004 - 12:00 AM |

HERALD POLL Was the weapons ban effective in reducing crime?

The Daily Herald


The assault weapons ban may be history, but don't expect the debate to end.
The 10-year-old ban expired this week, despite pleas from some law enforcement organizations and gun control advocates to renew it. The law had required limitations on certain rifles with detachable high-capacity magazines and other features associated with military weapons, such as folding stocks, pistol grips, bayonet mounts, flash suppressors and grenade launchers.

What those features ever had to do with crime has never been particularly clear, but they nevertheless formed the heart of an emotional debate.

President Bush said he would have signed legislation renewing the ban, but Congress declined to put it on his desk. This was convenient for the president, who can now play to both sides as the election draws near.

The intention of the assault weapons law was noble: to get rapid-fire weapons out of the hands of criminals. It never accomplished that, since no weapons were ever taken away from anyone, and it was never clearly established that the banned weapons were in fact the weapons of choice for many criminals.

The law was spawned by three shootings in California, beginning with the 1984 shooting rampage at a McDonald's in San Diego County that killed 21 people. Five years later came the notorious Stockton, Calif., school yard shooting, which left five people dead.

But it was a shooting at a law firm in San Francisco in 1993, in which eight were killed and six wounded, that finally persuaded the law's sponsor, California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein to push for an assault weapons ban.

Just over a year after the San Francisco shootings, President Bill Clinton signed Feinstein's bill into law. It banned the sale of 19 specific semiautomatic weapons and ammunition magazines greater than 10 rounds.

Among other things, proponents argued that so-called assault weapons do not have a legitimate sporting use. This isn't actually true, since semiautomatic rifles and shotguns are common in hunting, but it was nevertheless argued in Congress that they are not the first choice for most hunters. Indeed, some states limit the number of rounds hunters' guns can hold, mainly to add a greater element of sportsmanship and safety to hunts.

Further it was argued that accessories like flash suppressors should be banned because they only serve to aid criminals in the same way they aid a soldier on a battlefield. Simply, a flash suppressor makes a shooter's position harder to find. For a sniper shooting from concealment, hiding a muzzle flash would be desirable. Target shooters aiming at paper don't need that.

Other cosmetic features -- such as bayonet lugs and grenade launchers -- were banned even though nobody could think of a crime in which the victim was bayonetted or one in which the victim was blown up by a grenade.

In any case, political forces lined up on one side or the other. Law enforcement, surprisingly, is divided on the questions posed in the debate. Some officers and police chiefs prefer the ban, seeing it as a means of keeping criminals, especially street gangs, from attaining superior firepower.

Rank-and-file officers, however, typically like the idea of an armed population. Officers in Provo said exactly that this week. They know the bad guys are going to have guns one way or another, and it can only be good when more good guys are armed. It's a force multiplier, as demonstrated in Los Angeles during the riot after the Rodney King verdicts. Many point to how Korean shopkeepers used such weapons to keep criminals at bay during that anarchy, and how police were grateful for the assistance.

And so comes a legitimate question: Did Feinstein's ban really accomplish anything meaningful at all?

Crime has declined dramatically in the past 10 years, but that's not because of any ban on so-called assault weapons. In fact, during that period, gun ownership in the U.S. has increased by a million guns per year. Crime is a complex social problem, with countless variables. There can be many reasons for a reduction in crime, ranging from tougher sentences, better police patrols or changes in the economy. It may be a combination of all those factors and more, or none of the above.

The assault weapons ban dealt with cosmetic features of a few firearms. But removing a bayonet lug or pistol grip does not alter the gun's all-important firing mechanism, known as the action. Rifles without bayonet lugs are still as capable of firing a fusillade as rifles with them.

The rifle that John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo used in their shooting spree in the Washington, D.C., area was legal under the weapon ban. Besides, guns manufactured before the ban were grandfathered, and high-capacity magazines could still be purchased at gun shows, military surplus stores or from private parties. These magazines could fit into bayonet- and flash-suppressor-free guns that were manufactured after the ban.

Nor did the law stop criminals from using banned weapons. The infamous Hollywood bank robbery, where robbers armed with semiautomatic rifles they had converted into fully automatic machine guns, took place in 1997 -- three years after the ban.

So-called assault weapons have been used in less than 1 percent of gun crimes in the past decade, and less than 4 percent of all homicides in the United States involve any type of rifle. Government follow-up research, including a study by the Clinton administration, concluded that the assault weapons ban has had no impact on crime. Restrictions mainly affected law-abiding people.

Criminal background checks before gun purchases, on the other hand, have been an effective tool for keeping firearms out of the hands of the wrong people, according to government reports. This argues for a continuation of the instant check program (the so-called Brady Law), which identifies felons and the mentally ill, who are ineligible to purchase a gun.

D.K. Duy, the woman who opened fire in Salt Lake City's Triad Center in 1999, had a history of mental illness yet was able to buy a gun. Most people would agree that such leaks in the system need to be sealed.