On Fri, 5 Sep 2014 08:18:08 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Thursday, September 4, 2014 1:34:52 AM UTC-4, Ed Huntress wrote:


3) People have a right to be armed for their own defense.

The gun culture never really took a turn for the worse, though. Its always been this bad.

I beg to differ. I got my first gun in 1959. Everyone in my
neighborhood was a hunter. Of all the people I knew in my town who had
guns, only two had handguns. One was a .22 revolver that my friend
used for collecting rattlesnakes while he was trout fishing. The first
day of deer season was a school holiday. We kept our deer rifles in
the school athletic director's lockers until the end of the day.

The whole gun culture was radically different. _American Rifleman_ did
not feature "tactical" rifles on its cover. If you had a military gun,
the first thing you did was try to hide its military origins by
"sporterizing" the stock. If you were caught with a gun that had a
flashlight attached in 1960, you'd be arrested for jacklighting deer.
g

The turnaround began in 1977, with Neal Knox in the lead. Remember,
the NRA supported the GCA of 1968 (and the NFA in the 1930s). After
Harlon Carter and Knox, it all went to hell.


If grown-ups have the guns, kids and the mentally or drug impaired will be around these guns. They ultimately will get them on way or another. Fully automatic or not.

Not if you keep them locked up. And when I was a kid, you didn't even
have to do that.


This has always been the case. It's always taken a turn for the worst. Not just recently. Just look at these phrases on YouTube:
"8 year old girl shoots full auto MAC 10 ", "Kid fires RPG on a beach ", "4 Year Old Shooting AK-47", "Kid shoots a m11-A1 ", "Kid Accidentally Shoots Dad's AK-47", "LITTLE GIRL SHOOTING AK47!!", "Boy Who Shot Himself With Uzi",

None of those guns were on the market at the time I'm talking about.
Semiauto rifles were for Philadelphia nimrods and idiots.


Philosophically, I include carrying firearms in public. I have serious

doubts, however, about their efficacy as a deterrent to crime, in

schools or otherwise.

I remember kids bringing ammo to show off at school.

Armed security guards would be somewhat more

effective in that regard.

Problem is the kids could have the ability to outgun the teachers and security guards ... AND just be joking about it.

4) [a minor point] Although the conclusions reached in Heller are,

IMO, historically correct, the whole enterprise has some arbitrary and

illogical parts. The Court left much of the relationship to militia up

in the air, despite its attempt to close the case by detaching the

individual right.

You'll probably never ever take guns away from these drug-addict parents who blindly buy guns, drugs and alcohol and anything else under the sun for their kids. They sure couldn't stop kids from getting this stuff in the early '30s, so how could they now?

I knew a different gun culture, which I sorely miss.

--
Ed Huntress