Firearms: National Misdirection and Misconceptions

[Jahness]

Firearms: National Misdirection and Misconceptions

by Ytzhak
montfu65@hotmail.com

Keeping all of this in mind, stop and think. Why would a government want to disarm its citizenry, or remove the capability of the citizenry to use weapons similar and comparable in power to what the military has? Why ban them under the guise of "keeping dangerous weapons from criminals"?



Firearms: National Misdirection and Misconceptions author: Mike Stratton
e-mail:e-mail: themoment@gmail.com

A raving liberal's view on national and state gun control policies, demystifying the tools in question and looking for an answer to why the fascist government wants to disarm the populace.

Guns- the big evil. Firearms have been a point of contention for decades in the United States. Movies portray them as a way for good guys to kill bad guys and vice versa. The media inundates us with stories of evildoers and their guns. Kids shooting up schools. Crazy people shooting at innocent civilians. Even a term, "Going Postal" was coined from the random acts of violence in which firearms were used. Why are people afraid of them? Has America been asleep this whole time? Who really wants to keep firearms out of the hands of civilians?

Most gun-toting red-state citizens would like to point at people like me. I'm a very liberal Chinese-American living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I don't subscribe to the Bush-agenda of the political war machine. I voted for both Clinton and Kerry like much of my state, I'm pro-choice, and I'm pro-liberty. I'm a card-carrying member of the ACLU, an organization that most look at as being "ultra-liberal", but perhaps that describes me best. I'm a card carrying member of an organization that is dedicated to fighting and preserving the freedoms and rights that were given to us in the Constitution and specifically the Bill of Rights by our forefathers over two hundred years ago. Maybe that's why I'm wondering why so many people are so lax when it comes to firearms.

Why are guns the big evil? Because people are afraid of them. Why are they afraid? Because most people don't understand them. A firearm is a tool. It is a piece of equipment that, when activated, sends a piece of metal traveling a thousand or more miles per hour towards what you're pointing it at. Quite frankly, an inexperienced driver behind the wheel of a several thousand pound vehicle hurtling down the freeway at 85mph frightens me more. They'd do about the same damage if they hit you, but the SUV is less likely to miss.

So, you're afraid of guns too. It's okay, really. I was before I started to read more about them, before I started to discover that what I saw in the news, what I read in the paper was all, to put it politely, malarkey. That's right, there is little to no correlation between what the government is doing and what they show you on the news.

But what changed this for me? A friend was going to take me to a shooting range. Now, I'm the kind of person that wants to know about what I'm doing before I do it. I read a manual before I work on a car, I look up instructions on how to make a fiberglass mold before I go to the local supply shop. So, naturally, I spent time on the web looking up how guns work and how they operate. I spent time reading on safety. I wasn't scared anymore. I realized exactly what they were.

You want to understand too, so that you're not afraid anymore. After all, that's what eliminates fear; knowledge. I'll explain it, in as simple a way as possible. Of course, there are points that I could be nit-picked on, but they would be unrelated to what I'm attempting to do: explain firearms to you, Jane or John Q. Citizen, and make you understand why the media and the government is pulling the wool over your eyes and taking away a very important right from you; the right to defend yourself.

There are a few basic components to shooting. There's a gun, and there's a cartridge- which you commonly refer to as a "bullet". The gun has a few parts that make it work. There is the trigger assembly, the firing pin, the chamber and the barrel. The cartridge is comprised of a few parts, too. There's the shell casing (usually brass), the primer, the gunpowder, and the copper colored thing on the end- the bullet. I won't get into the different types of bullets or methods of discharge, just to keep it simple.

The general concept behind the modern firearm is that the firing pin hits the primer of the cartridge with force, and this primer ignites the gunpowder in the shell casing. If you've taken physics, you know what must happen next. That resultant pressure and expansion of gas from combustion has to go somewhere, and so the pressure forces the bullet out of the shell casing and down the barrel of your gun. What makes the firing pin hit the primer? Well, if you've ever seen a Clint Eastwood movie you know that he usually pulls back the "hammer" with his thumb. The hammer is spring-loaded and is held in place by the trigger assembly. When you pull the trigger, you're actually letting the hammer go, which then strikes the firing pin and starts the chain reaction of shooting the bullet.

Okay, now you know what the basic workings of a gun are. Now, what about the different types? There are many, but again we'll keep it simple and down to the most popular types; bolt-action, semi-automatic gas operated, and fully automatic. Yes, fully automatic weapons are available and have been despite the assault-weapons ban of the Clinton-era.

Bolt-action guns are usually single-shot. This is how they work. You pull up and back on a lever that slides the bolt back, which opens up the chamber. Now you can put a cartridge in the rifle. Once the cartridge is inserted into the chamber, you push forward and down to close and lock the bolt. Inside the bolt is the firing pin, and once you lock it closed it's ready to shoot. When you pull the trigger, the internal hammer hits the firing pin and ignites the bullet, sending that happy little piece of copper or lead flying towards your target, whether vegetable, animal or mineral. Now there's an empty shell casing inside your gun and a bullet somewhere down the range. To eject the empty shell casing, you pull up and back on the lever, which opens the chamber and pops the shell casing out.

Next up is semi-automatic gas-operated, the most common type of handgun, and a fairly common type of rifle. Loading these rifles and handguns are a bit different. Instead of pulling on a lever and sliding in a cartridge, then closing it and shooting, you get a magazine filled with cartridges that you place inside the gun. On a handgun there is a slide and on a rifle there is usually a small handle for an operating rod or something similar. Once you pull the slide or operating rod back, you open the chamber. When you let go, the spring inside the gun forces it back forward. On the way back to the closed position, it pushes a cartridge out of the magazine and into the chamber, loading the gun for you. How nice of it!

Now, what happens when you pull the trigger? The hammer is released, striking the firing pin which hits the primer on the cartridge, causing an explosion inside the shell casing which forces the bullet out of the barrel. But hey, remember physics? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction? Well, the force of the explosion pushes the bullet out, but also pushes the shell casing back. So a semi-automatic handgun or rifle takes advantage of this. The force of firing the bullet is used to force the slide or operating rod back which readies the gun to fire, and when the spring forces it forward again, it loads the gun for you. So now you can pull the trigger again without having to sit there and reload the rifle on your own. In addition to making it easier to use, there is less recoil, or kick-back, against your hand or shoulder when you shoot this type of gun compared to a bolt action.
Okay. What about fully automatic? I know, I know. You think that the assault weapons ban outlawed these guns. But guess what? They were already restricted by the National Firearms Act of 1934! That's over 70 years ago. The National Firearms Act of 1934 imposed a $200 tax to register a fully automatic weapon, a rifle or shotgun with barrel shorter than 16", and any silencers or "gadget guns". You acquire a form from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, get it endorsed by your local police chief, turn it in and pay your tax. Oh, and by the way, by turning in the paperwork, you also give up your 4th amendment rights to search and seizure without a warrant.

There are thousands of people with fully automatic weapons out there. They operate the same way, for the most part, as a semi-automatic gas-operated gun does, except that the trigger resets itself so you just hold it down and it keeps shooting. Crazy, huh? You know what's crazier? There has only been one crime committed with a registered fully-automatic weapon, and it was the murder of a police informant by a police officer in Dayton OH, a crime to which Officer Roger Waller pled guilty of using his Mac-11 to murder 52 year old informant Lawrence Hileman.

According to statistics from the BATF, there are over 240,000 registered automatic weapons in our country, and about 50% of those are privately owned by citizens. They are not cheap, they are not easy to get, and they are not cheap to shoot or maintain. So, if these government statistics are true, what kind of weapons are being used to commit crimes? Illegally owned and illegally acquired automatic weapons from the black market, mostly from Mexico.

So wait, if automatic weapons were already restricted in 1934, what was the assault-weapons ban about? The news featured video clips of people shooting automatic AK-47's and M-16's in the air and at targets, so wasn't that what the ban was for?

No. You've been lied to.

I could go into the conspiracy theories, the list of who was lobbying for what and why, who contributed to whose campaign and why they voted the way they did, but I leave that to speculation and history. Instead, I can only present you with the facts and let you decide for yourself what does and doesn't make sense.
The Brady Bill, which has since expired and not renewed, defined in Federal legislation what was to be considered an "assault weapon". In this bill was a specific list of weapons to be banned. In addition to this, there was a list of the characteristics, of which a weapon had to have more than one of to be classified as an assault weapon.

Rifles
• Folding/telescoping stock
• Protruding pistol grip
• Bayonet mount
• Threaded muzzle or flash suppressor
• Grenade launcher

Pistols • Magazine outside grip
• Threaded muzzle
• Barrel shroud
• Unloaded weight of 50 ounces or more
• Semi-automatic version of a fully automatic weapon

Shotguns
• Folding/telescoping stock
• Protruding pistol grip
• Detachable magazine capacity
• Fixed magazine capacity greater than 5 rounds

It may be amusing to note that according to this list, it's perfectly legal to own a normal, plain-old rifle that has no pistol grip, no telescoping stock, no bayonet mount, no threaded muzzle, but has a grenade launcher. So as opposed to giving a shooter a more comfortable grip on his rifle, we allow him to launch explosives.

One of the weapons this list banned was the Colt AR-15, a popular rifle amongst target and competition shooters because of accuracy and ergonomics, and with varmint hunters for stopping pestering by coyotes and other such animals. I chose this rifle for a good reason, which I'll explain later.

As far as I go, being a California resident, I'm limited in my choice of firearms. But after shooting my friend's gun, and after seeing that Bush was re-stealing the election, I decided it was time to keep something at home for defense whether it be from enemies foreign or domestic. I chose a popular varmint rifle, the Ruger Mini-14.

This rifle is semi-automatic gas-operated, chambered for a .223 caliber rifle bullet, and features a detachable magazine. Perfect, I thought, for home and urban defense in case the proverbial "shit hits the fan", or as many like to say, SHTF. Also lots of fun to shoot at the range! Don't get me wrong, shooting is scary at first, but fun once you get used to it.


Here's a picture of my rifle, semi-automatic gas-operated, .223 caliber, detachable magazine:
?(See first attachment, mini-14.gif.gif)


Remember the Colt AR-15 I was talking about? Just as my rifle, it's-
semi-automatic gas-operated, .223 caliber, detachable magazine:
?(See second attachment)

Except my rifle doesn't look as "mean and black" as the Colt does, now does it?

So where does one draw the line with what is or isn't an assault rifle? And why have both Republicans and Democrats alike pushed for so-called "assault weapon ban" legislation? Certainly the supporters of the Brady Bill have some good points. There are things I do not support. Forward-grips, barrel shrouds and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds are all items that make it easy to support a sustained rate of fire. But the lawmakers of this country must have another reason for wanting to keep rifles like the above out of our hands. Maybe that it uses the same ammunition as the military M16 equivalent?

Some of the items are ludicrous. Why even allow grenade launchers altogether? And bayonets? Why ban bayonets? When was the last time a bayonet was used in the commission of a crime when affixed to a rifle? This isn't the civil war or World War I. Gangbangers don't sit in trenches and storm each other when the hail of gunfire reduces enough to rush the enemy position.

Why should it be illegal for a civilian to own what could be considered a military-grade weapon? Most of the crimes committed were not with legally acquired "assault weapons", and anyone who wants to commit a crime is not going to care if the weapon they are using is legal or not. The crack dealer on the corner is already committing a felony peddling his dope, and just because he can't go to a gun store and buy an AR15 doesn't mean he won't get one if he wants one.

But to most of the country, the worry about this ban is no longer. Residents of states such as California, however, sit back and watch rights stripped away. In fact, in the waning sunset of the Brady Bill, Governer Schwarzeneggar approved a bill to ban a rather curious firearm- the 50 caliber BMG rifle.

The .50 BMG cartridge was used originally in the Browning Machine Gun, an emplaced or vehicle mounted weapon. The machine-gun was fed a belt of this ammunition, powerful enough to tear through the armor of lighter vehicles. Later in the 20th century, the 50 caliber BMG sniper rifle was invented. Put to use in the military against hard targets at a long range, the rifle found its place in the civilian market for long-range hunting and high level competition shooting. But recently, California passed a ban on the rifle. Why?

Citing concerns about terrorist threats in their most recent struggle against the rifle, the mainstream media poised the weapon as being dangerous to the public. They stated that the weapon could be used to shoot down a plane, though the inventor of the weapon, Mr. Barrett himself, states that it could only be used on aircraft on the ground.

But could it really be used as a terrorist weapon? Well, it seems that California was concerned about trying to pass legislation on the rifle back in 1999, before 9/11 happened. After 9/11, cries of terrorism brought it to the table again in 2004, when it was finally passed for enforcement as of January 1st, 2005.
So what is this rifle and what does it entail? The rifle fires a high-powered round, capable of hitting a target up to a mile away. This kind of power doesn't come without a price, as the ammunition costs around $5.00 per shot, whereas most rifles including the one I own cost around $0.04 per shot. The rifle itself retails for $7000! Surely this isn't the kind of weapon that a terrorist can just go out and buy, with today's background checks and gun laws. And if he did, how is he going to carry the five-and-a-half foot weapon without someone noticing?

Despite the rifle never being used in a crime in California in the history of its existence, lobbyists cited the Branch Davidian standoff at Waco as a reason why it should be banned. No history of abuse of this rifle in California aside from the occasional soda can shot at a firing range, but lawmakers and lobbyists cite a single instance from over a decade previous in a separate state as a reason to ban the rifle.

Keeping all of this in mind, stop and think. Why would a government want to disarm its citizenry, or remove the capability of the citizenry to use weapons similar and comparable in power to what the military has? Why ban them under the guise of "keeping dangerous weapons from criminals"?

Robbing a liquor store is illegal, but people do it anyway.

Robbing a bank is illegal, but people do it anyway.

Stealing a car is illegal, but people do it anyway.

The assault weapons ban in California outlawed the AK-47, but it didn't stop a man from using an illegal, automatic-firing AK-47 to kill a cop in San Francisco a couple of months back.

What does it do? Keep upstanding citizens from arming themselves in case their government ever turns against them, and with the way the country is hand-fed to major corporations on Bush's buddy-list, we're less likely to do anything to stop them. That's the national misdirection, fueled by the mainstream media and misleading images. That's the misconception the country has about these weapons.

see also comments:

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/01/309598.shtml



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Original article is at http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2005/02/37703.php


© 2000-2002 Victoria Independent Media Center.

[Akyeame Kwame]

htp Jahness!

Long but as always a good read. demystification is key...also good points about disarming the citizenry in case they gov't turns on them (or in the case of Afrikans there hasn't been a point in time where they haven't been against US. this reminded me of a few quotes i'd like 2 share:

"Practically speaking about the efforts to disarm Afrikan men, a new handgun [is] being produced every 20 seconds by the 922 u.s. gun manufacturers alone. That given, simple math tells us that this adds up to 3 handguns made every minute, 180 every hour, 4,320 every day, 30,240 every week, nearly 130,000 every month, and over one and a half million each year. However, we miss the point by focusing solely on these statistics....They don't tell us about the 250 million legal handguns already in circulation or the untold number of illegal ones brought onto these shores through underground markets or as prizes by veterans of Europe's wars on the world. It does not speak to assault weapons, shotguns, rifles, grenade launchers, bazookas, attack helicopters, tanks or hand-held surface to surface missles, etc., etc., readily available in stores and homes....And last, but not least, this legal handgun market in no way speaks to the thousands of individuals who know, or millions who can easily learn, how to make weapons. Guns, whether produced in factories or basements are made by people using relatively simple technology....All this may lead one to question, the viability and feasibility of gun buy-back programs, especially since these efforts are specifically concentrated in neighborhoods where we are most concentrated. Ignoring the seemingly altruistic nature of such a noble idea, within the larger picture, this effort toward reducing violence in our community has an extremely limited impact. In fact, we won't even mention the guns bought back in places like Houston that are repackaged by police departments and shipped to other cities like L.A. for resale on the open market. Just compare the very limited number of weapons returned through gun buy-back programs last year with the enormous number of new handguns manufactured over the same time period or just those circulated among whites at gun shows."

Larry D. Crawford (Mwalimu K. Bomani Baruti)
negroes and other essays


"The nazis have guns, the skinheads have guns, the kkk have guns. And who do they come to saying give up the guns? Us! ...This is equality...This is democracy."

Kwame Ture
"The Student's Role in Revolution"

stay BlackNificent!

AK

[Moorbey]

Thanks for the informative post. I happen to own 4 handguns, 2 shootguns and an AR-15 which i converted to fully automatic. I also keep 4 boxs of shotgun shells and 4 boxs of bullets for each of my handguns at all times since i won't ever know when something may jump off. I will not give up my right to bear firearms.