Want to write to your legislators in D.C. but don't know what to say, or how to send it to all of them? Ruger has made it very easy for you. Just go here, fill out your contact information, and in one swell foop Ruger will automagically send a letter (not sure if it's electronic, physical, or both) to "the President, Vice-President, your Senators, Representative, Governor, Lieutenant Governor, State-Level Elected Officials and State Attorney General." Political activism has never been more convenient!
Speaking of convenience, if you're tired of having to explain what an automatic weapon is, or debate how a new AWB is a total waste of time, The Truth About Assault Weapons is your new best friend. Using simple language and color pictures, it explains the difference between "assault weapon" and "assault rifle". Even if it doesn't convince your opponent, you've at least saved yourself some time and effort.
Oh, and as a question for my fellow gunnies out there: Just now, on Facebook, I was in a debate about guns and the usual "only military and police should have them" codswallop was being brought out, when I discovered the speaker was a German citizen living in Bulgaria (and who, incidentally, identifies himself as a monarchist of all things). My response was "I see no point in debating the policy of my nation's gun laws with a non-citizen. Good day."
My question is, was I right in not trying to convince someone who won't have an effect on our laws anyway? Or should I have engaged him anyway? I can see the point being made that You aren't trying to convince him, you're trying to convince the onlookers but I saw no real gain to be made by debating someone who believes in a ruling class and that the serfs should be disarmed.
He isn't a German citizen, he's a German subject.
ReplyDeleteNot a very good one, either, if he's living in Bulgaria.
ReplyDeleteBut my question stands: Should I have engaged him anyway?
I would follow the "never mud wrestle with a pig..." philosophy. Or perhaps the "never argue with an idiot, he will drag down to his level and beat you with experience"
ReplyDeleteHate to be a gun geek, but the M-16 in the slideshow on the assault weapon info site isn't an M-16- no pin for the autosear. There should be a third pin directly above the selector. Could be a registered receiver. See how hard it is to even get a picture of a real assault rifle? Don't go to imfdb.org, once you realize how many pics of supposed M-16s and M-4s really aren't, it will drive you nuts.
ReplyDeleteEngage only for amusement. Sounds like a troll, not someone looking for actual information or useful discourse.
ReplyDeleteIn fact... Are you sure that wasn't the same guy who self-identified as a UK socialist with mental health issues that cause him to experience violent impulses (therefore _you_ should have access to weapons)?
And I'll just leave this right here. http://www.ruger.com/micros/advocacy/takeAction.html
ReplyDeleteUm, Mike? Did you not see where, in the first paragraph, I linked to exactly that?
ReplyDeleteA few thoughts regarding debating the German monarchist in Bulgaria:
ReplyDelete- Debating specifically our laws with non-citizens doesn't have much point. It's just as presumptuous for non-citizens to tell us how we should run the US as it is for us to tell them how they should run their countries. There's a lesson in this, I think, for Americans who like to tell other countries how to run themselves.
- That said, gun control, in general, is a global issue so there's good reason to debate it with non-citizens. And with some detachment, I don't see any reason why non-citizens shouldn't get involved in the debate. It's one thing for foreign countries to issue statements encouraging us to have tighter gun control or for non-citizens to campaign for gun control in the US; it's quite another thing for a non-citizen to express and debate an opinion that the US would be better off with gun control in a private or semi-private conversation. One is telling us what to do, the other is saying what they think is best. I think there's a fine line of distinction but a world of difference between the two.
- The fact that he's a monarchist might actually make him easier to convince than a more conventional faux-democracy nanny-state apologist. Monarchists tend to respect tradition and tradition is firmly on the side of state-of-the-art, military-grade technology being in the hands of those even in the lowest strata of a classed society. See the English requirement for peasants to own and practice archery… and the results at Hastings and Agincourt. That argument (though I think it's valid) rarely works in gun control arguments, but, if it'll work on anyone, it'll work on a monarchist, if not this specific one.
- You might also point out that gun control is advocated for most strongly – and utilized most devastatingly – by anti-monarchist statists, fascists and Marxists. When a monarch, like Denmark's Christian X, is loved by his country then he has nothing to fear from them and there can be no better bodyguard than an entire country.
BTW, has anyone slipped a drive belt onto ol' Bill "no honest man needs more than 10 rounds" Ruger's body to turn a generator yet? I imagine he's doing enough RPMs to power the whole Ruger facility about now.
ReplyDeleteI do find his old statement on NBC morbidly amusing though: "no HONEST man needs more than 10 rounds [...] It has long been Ruger’s policy to limit sales of those items to LAW ENFORCEMENT..."
So true.
Why a drive belt? Why not just a magnet and a length of copper wire?
ReplyDeleteThank you, Chris! This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. Believe me, I am taking notes for next time.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever built a generator? You've got to get the windings and spacing just right or you lose a lot of efficiency; tough to manage on a body. And a magnet-based generator is less efficient than an alternator arrangement. Might as well just buy an assembled gennie and tap the torque.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever built a generator?
ReplyDeleteClearly, the answer here is "No."
Youngsters these days, I swear. They don't even know which end of a soldering iron to pick up...
ReplyDelete-sigh-
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure which worries me more: That more people don't do these things, or that I _do_.
At least I'll be well set for the post-apocalypse, if I live that long.
The assault weapons definition is lunacy.
ReplyDeleteFlash hider? Hides freaking nothing. The only thing it does is reduce stress on the shooters eyes during low-light conditions or continuous fire.
Collapsible stock? It's practical when carrying. Pretty much nothing else.
Pistol grips? Well, a pistol grip does make a weapon more suitable for urban combat. Not enough to qualify it as a "military weapon".
The only good definition for modern military weapons (used versus humans primarily) is that they have quickly reloadable high-capacity magazines (or even larger ones that aren't so quick to reload. Belt fed for example) and that they use ammunition that's suitable against humans yet feature low recoil.
Capability for automatic fire is less important (you use it for room clearing and suppressive fire) than the ability to fire a steady stream of shots over a long period of time.
If anything though the common availability of semi-automatic rifles is less worrying than the common availability of handguns.
Switzerland is loaded with semi-automatic rifles, featuring pretty much all of those "evil assault weapon" features. The state even allows people to keep them after completed military service (although with the automatic fire feature disabled). That's not a problem because you're not allowed to lug it around in public except when travelling between your home and a gunsmith or a shooting range.
Switzerland has the "well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state" that the US hasn't had since the 19th century.
Mainly because there hasn't been an interest to maintain such a militia in the US since the 19th century. Unlike Switzerland there is no credible threat against the US that a militia could fend off. The US doesn't have a larger and threatening neighbour next door, it is the larger and threatening neighbour next door.
I have no problems debating international folks about the lacking merits of "gun control" - human rights, after all, are a universal concept, and just because their country does not respect their rights does not mean they are not still in possession of them (though it does mean they cannot exercise them lawfully, of course). Hell, I would love for a similar story of the Totenham Outrage to come up in the future in the very country that spawned the original one - average citizens providing the police firearms when the police's had run out of ammunition.
ReplyDeleteThat said, one of Kevin Baker's favorite sayings, which I think came from somewhere else, is that if two people do not agree on the basic premises of the debate, anything further in the debate is pointless. I dare say that a monarchist would be at a sufficiently different starting position than me that any discussion about "gun control" would be pointlessly hampered by those different worlds, and I probably would have broken it off as well.
Well, your congresscritter Bill Nelson has a poll up and I've already voted twice, so...
ReplyDeleteNaah, not worth it, you'll hear me say, now and then "and the pig likes it", from "don't mud-wrestle with a pig, you get dirty and..." -- I will debate a troll, but in a public forum, and for the benefit of other people following the thread. One-on-one? Forget it, the pig likes it :)
*scroll scroll* Yea, what Matt said.
Uh, guess not? I can't click on all the links when I'm reading. I can only do one thing at once :P
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link. I used it immediately and told family members about the form as well.
ReplyDeleteThe are about 80 million gun owners in the U.S. and it's odd such a large portion of folks are vilified in the press as a fringe minority.