Let’s look at one of the simplest, least powerful guns on the market, a Crickett Hunter. Manually cocked bolt action design dates back to 1820s, nearly two hundred years ago. Rimfire ammunition is uses postdates the action by only twenty years, and even the more modern .22 Long Rifle cartridge dates back to 1887. The telescopic sight on it is an equally old invention.
While it can be used for sport shooting, the main purpose of the Crickett is hunting small game. That, in itself, is a bad thing to many of the mostly left-wing prohibitionists, as it makes individuals less dependent on government handouts of foodstuffs.
The telescopic sight in particular scares them because, having unclean conscience, every prohibitionist considers himself worthy of assassination for cause. The suitability of the Crickett to the game not much bigger than a hare doesn’t matter to them, as such trivial technical considerations are beneath their dignity to consider. The same people who wish to ban “assault rifles” for supposedly being too inaccurate for hunting also wish to ban anything with optics for being too accurate for their peace of mind.
In the end, the training matter more than the weapon. With that in mind, German laws prohibit training kids, severely restrict training of minors up to the age of 25 and completely prohibit defensive training of adults. Playing Airsoft is considered war training.
Since even single-shot manually operated firearms that cannot be easily concealed are too scary for the prohibitionists, I don’t think much of a compromise is possible. They might claim not to be after such simple, low-powered arms but they don’t bother hiding their efforts to expand the definition of “prohibited persons” as much as possible, or their efforts to prohibit acquisition or defensive use of any weapon, however antiquated, in areas where they have control, like Washington DC. The perennial bills to prohibit private ownership of body armor serves the same nasty goal: a complete fire superiority of the elected and unelected bureaucrats over the rest of the population. And their angry reaction to such a non-military firearm as a single-shot smallbore pistol for hunting small game is a clear tip-off to the wise.
Good essay. No; excellent essay.
My preferred way to compromise with the gun-grabbers is like this: “Okay, here’s your compromise. You shut up about this, and stay shut up…the evidence is in and it does not favor your case. In return, I will forego the pleasure of verbally eviscerating and humiliating you. How does that sound?”
“Manually cocked bolt action design dates back to 1820s, nearly two hundred fifty years ago.”
1820 was 195 years ago.
Good catch. I originally typed “over 150” based on the 1840s Prussian adoption date, then changed it to nearly “200” based on the patents…didn’t realize that I left “fifty” in. It’s gone now.
Okay, let’s compromise.
I’m okay with banning the private ownership of nuclear weapons.
I also think you should have the right to ask me to leave if you do not want machine guns on your private property.
Why would we want to compromise? We’re winning. Now is not the time to compromise. Now is the time to go for the jugular.
There can be no compromise with groups whose stock-in-trade are lies, deceit, hysteria, fear-mongering, misrepresentation of facts, distortion, half-truths and dishonest statistics. Especially not when they are willing to deliberately use your own words out of context to show how “evil” you are.
The “progressive left” refuses to consider self-defense as a legitimate reason for firearm ownership. So too, they denounce the idea of the citizen’s militia as worthless (seemed pretty effective in Vietnam and other places). They only consider hunting and target shooting as viable reasons for guns, neither of which is relevant to the American right to arms.
Until (or unless) they can sit down like adults to discuss the true problems of crime, violence there can be NO compromise. We’ve put up with their progressive experiment called gun control for almost 47 years now. Repeated studies show it just doesn’t work and today’s legal landscape means many of their ideas & “model laws” violate the constitution. Future compromises should come from THEM and not the American public.
The progressive left is at fault for much of the poverty and unemployment in this country. When inner city youths turn to crime we often hear it’s because they have no opportunity to get a real job. Or it is that it is too expensive and cumbersome to launch your own enterprise. Little wonder in today’s over-regulated, over-licensed and over-taxed environment. Democrats have controlled Congress for the majority of the 20th Century, giving rise to literal mountains of bureaucracy one must negotiate just to operate a lemonade stand. Bureaucracy and red-tape choke our ability to be creative, experimental and dynamic, things which lead to job creation and new businesses.
The South tried to compromise with the yankee government, It did not work then , it will not work now. I have found that these “holier than thou” people can’t even describe the difference between the different types of firearms.
Sure we can compromise with them–exactly in the way they have “compromised” with us over the last century:
We want ALL of our cake back, but we’ll settle today for half of what they’ve already taken…..
Lather, rinse, and repeat; eventually we will regain our rights in precisely the same way the left originally sought to strip them from us.
I will agree to discuss meeting them half way. Considering how many infringements we have seen on the 2A, that would require revocation of a lot of bad laws. We do not define halfway from where we are but from where we began: uninfringed, entirely.
“There can be no compromise with groups whose stock-in-trade are lies, deceit, hysteria, fear-mongering, misrepresentation of facts, distortion, half-truths and dishonest statistics.”.
The primary stock-in-trade is coercion, wholesale violation of human rights as public polity.
The things you list are the methods used to justify the coercion and/or to trick people to accepting it. To that list you can add vote-buying through welfare, “assistance” programs, subsidies, and government employment, and promotion of group rivalries, or Balkanization, and using “regulation” of targeted major industries to compromise and degrade them, thus making “capitalism” look bad.
Another one we should all be very aware of is the regular use of America’s real failure to fulfill her Promise as an indictment of the Promise itself.
That, in itself, is a bad thing to many of the mostly left-wing prohibitionists, as it makes individuals less dependent on government handouts of foodstuffs.
Whoa, there, Tex. That’s a little bit far, and unsupported by any evidence I’ve ever seen,
They oppose it, in my experience, because they think animals are cute Bambii that need to be saved from mean ol’ Mr. Murderer, not because they want everyone dependent on Government Cheese.
(I mean, I’ve seen them argue against hunting, lots of times.
I’ve never seen a hint of “icky independence!”, and I’ve seen infinite amounts of “eww, hunting is ICKY” and “animals are cute and you’re mean!”)
Look at the FDA actions against food producers.
no.
there is no compromise w/ them on the point of gun possession.
and, no, there is no compromise on the point of their general politics.
john jay