From Christine Stuart, CT News Junkie:
Gun enthusiasts flocked to the state Capitol on Saturday to encourage lawmakers not to pass any laws restricting what they described as their “God given” right to carry a gun.
The rally was in response to legislative proposals both at the state and national level to tighten gun laws in response to the shooting that claimed the lives of 20 students and six educators in Newtown. Several speakers who addressed the crowd–estimated at 1,000 by Capitol Police–wanted to make sure no gun control measures make it through the legislature this year.
But they face an uphill battle. Earlier this week, President Barack Obama proposed a plan to address gun violence, including a federal assault weapons ban and background checks for all firearm sales. In addition, Connecticut lawmakers have formed three subcommittees, one of which will look at gun violence prevention. There are also dozens bills the Connecticut General Assembly will consider, including one, SB 122, which would restrict the number of bullets a gun could fire to a single round.
“They believe they have to do something,” Craig Fishbein, an attorney from Wallingford, said in reference to the Connecticut General Assembly.
But he told the booing crowd that the legislature is not going to listen to them.
Full story here.
I’ll bet, with rare exception, few or none of those legislators who would vote for more stringent guns laws know much about guns from a practical standpoint.
It isn’t the legal guns or the legally licensed gun owners that pose the problems. It’s the illegal guns used by illicit persons for illegal purposed. Get the illegal guns off the street? Law enforcement is either unable or incompetent enough to do this.
More children have been killed in cities with very stringent gun laws than in those states with more legally owned weapons and legally licensed individuals. Regretfully, the best comparisons are Chicago and Sandy Hook vs Cheyenne and Houston.
There is nothing in the Holy Bible that bestows gun ownership on God-fearing people.
Ban All Gun Shows Now!
www .ctpost.com/news/crime/article/3-hurt-in-accidental-shooting-at-Raleigh-gun-show-4208060.php
Bob, where are you in the picture?
Ron, I’m in the picture for vetting gun licensees as to mental capacity. Where are you on getting illegal weapons out of the hands of those using them for illicit purposes? Where are you in regards to Eric Holder and “Fast and Furious” that put automatic weapons into the hands of Mexican drug dealers and cost many lives?
I believe in the constitutionality of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
I believe those who are bent on removing legal weapons and legally licensed individuals are so naive about those of us who have legally licensed weapons that they put themselves in peril. The police aren’t there to stop violent crime. They can’t. They are there to pick up the pieces and try and figure out what happened.
Do you know there wasn’t a man in the elementary school in Sandy Hook? And, without trying to sound chauvinistic, the brave principal gave her life trying to protect her students, but if she were a male she might have been able to stop the shooting, even if unarmed.
There was a MAN at Sandy Hook that horrible day. He ran from classroom to classroom to warn teachers about what was happening. Just because he wasn’t killed doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.
You must be on glue, Bob. How would an unarmed male be able to stop Adam Lanza, who was armed to the nines with a semiautomatic rifle and a 30-round magazine? That crazy punk was going to kill everyone he came across. He came close to succeeding.
Make pistols as hard to get in Virginia or Georgia, among other states, as they are in CT and we might not have so many illegal guns coming up I-95. Make “assault rifles” as difficult to own in CT as pistols are and those who want to possess one do not have their rights taken away. Same can be said with heavily taxing certain ammunition and restricting its purchase to in-person sales (as opposed to over the internet).
From Wikipedia:
“The assault rifle became the standard military rifle in the post-World War II era. The Soviet Union was the first nation in the post-war era to adopt an assault rifle, the AK-47, and other nations followed later. Combat experience during the World Wars had shown that most infantry combat took place at 200–300 meters (220–330 yards) distance and that the winner of any given firefight would most likely be the one with the highest rate of fire. The rifle cartridges of the day were therefore unnecessarily powerful, producing recoil and report in exchange for marginal benefit. The lower power of the intermediate cartridge meant that each soldier could fire more bullets faster and/or with less recoil and its lighter weight allowed more ammunition to be carried.”
And:
“The term assault rifle is a translation of the German word Sturmgewehr (literally ‘storm rifle’, ‘storm’ as in ‘military attack’). The name was coined by Adolf Hitler as a new name for the Maschinenpistole 43, subsequently known as the Sturmgewehr 44, the firearm generally considered the first assault rifle that served to popularise the concept and form the basis for today’s modern assault rifles.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle
with a link to a good picture of the Sturmgewehr 44.
Looks like lots of folks are getting ready for battle …
The AR15 is a SEMI-automatic rifle, not an automatic rifle like the Kalishnikov (aka the AK47). And … it isn’t a true assault rifle in military terms.
The AR15 can be easily converted to full auto by any reasonably talented mechanic.
You keep saying that. Well prove it. All the info I can find say it takes extensive machining.
answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081116211345AAiwdoQ
I’m well aware they all are semi-automatic in civilian use, which is exactly why it is a bad joke to think for a moment that the right-wing stormtroopers in this country are going to rise up and confront a government they happen to disagree with that is equipped with the fully automatic versions of said weapons, as well as the armored vehicles so popular now with even small local police departments … the basis for their “patriotic” explanation of the Second Amendment the rest of us “sheeple” just don’t get. The semantics used by “assault rifle” advocates should be viewed in relation to this article in the Post–high-capacity magazines are the only way to go for assault rifles I guess. Assault rifles are designed for one thing only, and it ain’t target practice.
www .ctpost.com/local/article/Angela-Carella-Grieving-mothers-who-wanted-the-4208256.php
You cannot buy a weapon in Georgia without being a resident. It is also illegal to be a straw purchaser of a weapon there also.
Enacting stringent gun control laws will be a uphill battle for sure. The legislation will not be popular and will be vigorously resisted. There is a reasonable solution out there which currently eludes us. The issue appears to be related to ownership of weapons for personal defense and for recreation. The Second Amendment certainly provides for this. Assault weapons and weapons that resemble military assault weapons especially with large-capacity magazines fail to meet the fundamental test implicit in the Second Amendment. These types of weapons MUST be banned as well as 30+ round magazines. The next uphill battle we will face will be the legal determination of what criteria shall be established to determine who should be allowed to own a weapon.
yahooy, one question. Why? Will this law stop tragedies like Newtown? ARs were only used in 30% of mass shootings in 2012. Handguns were used in 87%. What is your goal?
I want a law that will ensure the emotionally disturbed never get near a hand gun.
I wonder why nobody complained when the federal government outlawed from private ownership the Thompson submachine gun used extensively by US Forces during WWII. This was the weapon of choice of criminals infamously established by the Valentines’s Day Massacre. Because the “Tommy Gun” was used in horrendous crimes, the Feds had it banned. All registered owners were compelled to turn the weapon in to the authorities for confiscation or severe penalties were imposed. We did it then and I hope we can do it again.
You can buy a Thompson. Just that it is semi-auto.
Then it would be a Thompson replica. Why would anyone but a wannabe want to buy a replica of an assault weapon?
The problem does not affect legitimate gun owners. But legitimate gun owners are making themselves a problem. Enacting greater restrictions, banning all assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines is all fine and good at the state level but indices is correct. There is nothing to stop a crook from hopping in the car, driving south on I-95 to the Carolinas or Georgia to purchase handguns and other firearms to resell to thugs and criminals.
It will be an uphill battle for President Obama to pass federal gun legislation but it is necessary. A federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines is necessary, as is a background check for ALL firearms purchases. And all purchases should be recorded in a national database to make the weapons easier to track.
I say again … You cannot buy a weapon in Georgia without being a resident. It is also illegal to be a straw purchaser of a weapon there also.
A big “well said” to yahooy and the Kid.
With apologies to Christine Stuart’s headline above … the right to bear arms is NOT a God-given right. It is a CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT.
And her editorialization of …
Gun enthusiasts flocked to the state Capitol on Saturday to encourage lawmakers not to pass any laws restricting what THEY described as their “God given” right to carry a gun.
WHO ARE THEY??? No names, Ms. Stuart?
Very obviously politicized comment.
This is going to be some kind of battle in Washington. State legislatures will have an easier time. By the same token, if anyone believes a new law will magically remove all illegal guns from the streets, welcome to fantasy land. There’s no magic potion that will make that happen.
While Mr. Obama is at it there ought to be more money allotted to law enforcement agencies to fund and mobilize task forces with the objective of confiscating illegal weapons and prosecuting the criminals who trade in them.
The Second Amendment was designed to give the people the ability to defend themselves against the government. If the government has ARs then the people are to have ARs. I don’t ‘need’ an AR in the same way Rosa Parks ‘needed’ to sit in the front of the bus.
To buy a gun you do need to be 21+, no felony record and wait a week. In CT the mentally ill have the right to refuse to take the very medication that keeps them sane. This, by far, is a bigger part of the problem than keeping an AR away from John Q Public. If these new laws are going to do such a good job of controlling guns then the police should be the first to turn in their firearms. The police in England do not carry guns.
BOE SPY
Are you a gun owner?
Yes, but I have never shot anybody. My entire family are vets and other than one brother, none have ever shot a person. The one brother was in three combat zones and has POSSIBLY shot someone but he has never stated such. I also have trigger locks on every gun I own and a safe the size of a refrigerator to hold the guns. It all come with being a RESPONSIBLE gun owner.
This map gives some interesting information about gun sales state by state:
http://www.tracetheguns.org/#
Sure is a profitable business. To see how other states approach this scroll down in the page below for the slideshow:
www .huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/gun-fails-second-amendment-rights-gone-wrong_n_2490579.html#slide=1511017