The Smallest Minority |
|||
|
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. - MaxedOutMama I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. Kim du Toit
|
. . . and so are you  Wahabism Delenda Est      Hey, FEC!  BITE ME! I'm a Member of the McCain-Feingold INSURRECTION!    "Jeez, Kevin... calling you an asshole would be a huge understatement, wouldn't it?" -Jack Cluth, The People's Republic of Seabrook (Coming from you, Jack, it's an honor.)  email: gunrightsAT comcastDOTnet INVITATION: If you have never shot a firearm, regardless of your position on the right to arms, and if you live near or visit the Tucson, AZ metropolitan area, I invite you to go shooting for a day. I will provide the arms, ammunition, targets, safety equipment, range fees and instruction. All you have to do is show up. 6 Takers To Date DO YOU LIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE and want to try shooting? Click HERE  Proud Gun-blogging member of the Pajamahadeen since May, 2003!
Debates: "The Commentary" A OLD discussion on gun control between me and an Irishman living in London Start here. UPDATED! Now with archive! Post #1 by Alex, a Guest A multi-post discussion hosted here at TSM My short exchange with Professor Saul Cornell of the Second Amendment Research Center Best Posts: The "Rights" Discussion: What is a "Right?" What is a "Right"? Revisited, Part I Part II Rights, Morality, Idealism & Pragmatism, Part I Part II Part III Part IV The United Federation of Planets Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection? Part I & Part II 1975 in Washington, D.C. vs. 2004 in Canton, Ohio Go Ahead, Rely on the Government for Your Protection The Other Side Liberal vs. Conservative: Both are Necessary The Mystery of Government The Blog that Ate Poughkeepsie Updated and restated as: Of Laws and Sausages Militias A Mistake a Free People Get to Make Only Once The George Orwell Daycare Center This is NOT What I Wanted to Read TRUST The Lying "News" Media, Pt. II Say WHAT? Bias? What Bias? Agenda? What Agenda? The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation Let's See if I Can "Germinate an Intelligent Thought" Here The ACLU Hasn't Changed its Tune They Never EVER Stop It is Not the Business of Government Five Reasons Why It ISN'T They Keep Making Better Fools Five Month Investigation, 10 Tracer Rounds, Two Felony Convictions That Sumbitch Ain't been BORN! On Guillotines and Gibbets England Slides Further Towards Bondage Pressing the "RESET" Button Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothin' Left To Lose A Terrible Resolve The Courts Will Not Save Us Trilogy: The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions "Game Over, Man. Game Over." An Important Question And the denouement: Hudson Was Wrong The Dangerous Victims Trilogy: "(I)t's most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can" Violence and the Social Contract Governments, Criminals, and Dangerous Victims In the same vein: Those Without Swords Can Still Die Upon Them The True Believers Trilogy: True Believers March of the Lemmings Reasonable People Also in the same vein: Tough History Coming The Culture Trilogy Culture Hubris Weltanschauung And its follow-on: In Re: Culture Technical Dissertations Why Ballistic Fingerprinting Doesn't (And Won't) Work Spin, Spin, Spin Speaking of Teddy Kennedy... This is the Kind of Thing That REALLY IRRITATES ME Questions from the Audience?
BLOGROLL:
PROTESTWARRIOR Some people who are taking the fight to the Left. And some GREAT T-shirts, too. DAILY READS I need a longer day! Day by Day InstaPundit Lileks' The Bleat Mostly Cajun View from the Porch Of Arms and the Law TFS Magnum Ravenwood's Universe Irons in the Fire Say Uncle The Adventures of Roberta X TRUE EXCELLENCE American Digest The Belmont Club Boobs, Injuries, and Dr. Pepper The Volokh Conspiracy Michael Yon Varifrank Eject!Eject!Eject! Eternity Road Oleg Volk ON INDEFINITE HIATUS USS Clueless The Safety Valve Ipse Dixit The Lopsided Poopdeck Acidman (RIP) Skywritings Publicola D.C. Thorton Kim du Toit Personal Effects Smoke on the Water OTHER GUN/RIGHTS BLOGS Airborne Combat Engineer AlphaPatriot Alphecca American Dinosaur A Day in the Life of an Ambulance Driver The Anarchangel Mrs. Anarchangel The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler Argghhh! The Bitch Girls Boots and Sabers The Breda Fallacy Gun Nuts Media Carnaby Fudge Clayton Cramer Cogito Ergo Geek Countertop Chronicles Cowboy Blob Critical Mastiff Cryptic Subterranean Found: One Troll FreedomSight From the Heartland Fun Turns to Tragedy!!! The Geek with a .45 Gunwatch Heartless Libertarian Hecate's Crossroad Hell in a Handbasket Individ Justin Buist's Blog The LawDog Files Lead and Gold Les Jones Live from the (upper) Texas Gulf Coast Mad Ogre The Michael Bane Blog Moral Flexibility Mr. Completely Murdoc Online The Munchkin Wrangler Ninth Stage No Looking Backwards No Quarters Oscar Poppa Outrageous Malfunction Pass the ammo Posse Incitatus Random Nuclear Strikes Reasonablenut Resistance is Futile! Sandcastles and Cubicles SlagleRock's Slaughterhouse Snowflakes in Hell Surly Curmudgeon Texican Tattler The Ten Ring South Park Pundit Triggerfinger The View From North Central Idaho Vox The War on Guns Weck Up To Thees! Wince and Nod Xavier Thoughts .45 Caliber Justice BLOGGERS I'VE MET A Keyboard and a .45  
|
Thursday, March 11, 2004 Speaking of Teddy Kennedy... Let's fisk his little rant from his Senate testimony on S. 1805 concerning armor-piercing ammo: As we all know too well, the debate about gun violence has often been aggressive and polarizing with anti-gun violence advocates on one side of the debate, pro-gun advocates on the other. There are deep divisions in the country on the issue of gun safety, and the current debate on the gun immunity bill has thus far only served to highlight those divisions.Check the sleight-of-hand here. Hi-Vel does indeed sell "armor piercing" ammunition designed to penetrate steel. But police vests aren't made of steel. They are made of kevlar fiber. The police wear relatively soft, relatively flexible National Institute of Justice Class II, IIA or IIIA rated vests at best. These vests are designed to stop 9mm, .357 Magnum, and .44 Magnum handgun rounds, respectively. In order to stop any centerfire rifle round, "armor piercing" or not, would require moving up to the heavy, rigid Class III and Class IV vests worn by our military personnel. You'll remember the Class IV vests from the "embedded" journalists during the invasion of Iraq. They were those very heavy vests with the splatter-deflecting collars that looked so uncomfortable, like this one:
In a recent report, the ATF identified three, .223 and the 7.62 caliber rifles, as the ones most frequently encountered by police officers. These high-capacity rifles, the ATF wrote, pose an enhanced threat to law enforcement, in part because of their ability to expel particles at velocities that are capable of penetrating the type of soft body armor typically worn by law enforcement officers."Particles"? I think the Senator meant "projectiles." What he doesn't say is that any centerfire rifle "expels particles" at velocities high enough to penetrate soft body armor. That's why the National Institute of Justice classifies vests as it does. But the facts are just too inconvenient for the Senator. Here's where he really goes off into the twilight zone, though: Another rifle caliber, the 30.30 caliber, was responsible for penetrating three officers' armor and killing them in 1993, 1996, and 2002. This ammunition is also capable of puncturing light-armored vehicles, ballistic or armored glass, armored limousines, even a 600-pound safe with 600 pounds of safe armor plating.Say WHAT? The .30-30 was introduced in 1895 as the .30 Winchester Centerfire, chambered in the "high-capacity assault weapon" of its day, the Winchester 1894 lever-action rifle. This is a '94 Winchester:
The .30-30, 150 grain bullet, 2200 feet per second. The .308 Winchester (7.62NATO), 150 grain bullet, 2600 feet per second The .30-06, 150 grain bullet, 2800 feet per second. The .300 Winchester Magnum, 150 grain bullet, 3100 feet per second. The .300 Remington UltraMag, 150 grain bullet, 3400 feet per second. .30-378 Weatherby, 150 grain bullet, 3500 feet per second Here's a picture to give you some idea of the cartridges.
Remember, the lowly .30-30 is fast enough to penetrate a Class IIIA vest. Yet Senator Kennedy doesn't want people to think that he's interested in banning hunting ammunition, just ammunition that can penetrate a soft police vest. It is outrageous and unconscionable that such ammunition continues to be sold in the United States of America. Armor-piercing ammunition for rifles and assault weapons is virtually unregulated in the United States."Assault weapons" like the '94 Winchester. A Federal license is not required to sell such ammunition unless firearms are sold as well. Anyone over the age of 18 may purchase this ammunition without a background check. There is no Federal minimum age of possession. Purchases may be made over the counter, by mail order, by fax, by Internet, and there is no Federal requirement that dealers retain sales records.Note all these things that the Senator wants: Background checks for ammunition sales. A minimum age for possession of rifle ammunition. Dealer record keeping for ammunition sales - a record keeping requirement that would convince most retailers that it was simply too much trouble to sell ammo. And now he goes off on the current boogeyman, the evil .50BMG rifle: In 1999, investigators for the General Accounting Office went undercover to assess the availability of .50 caliber armor-piercing ammunition. Purchasing cop-killer bullets, it turned out, is only slightly more difficult than buying a lottery ticket or a gallon of milk. Dealers in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia informed the investigators that the purchase of these kinds of ammunition is subject to no Federal, State, or local restrictions. Dealers in Alaska, Nebraska, and Oregon who advertised over the Internet told an undercover agent that he could buy the ammunition in a matter of minutes, even after he said he wanted the bullets shipped to Washington, DC, and needed them to pierce an armored limousine or theoretically take down a helicopter. Talk about homeland security.The .50 BMG round, by virtue of its weight and velocity (750 grains at 2800 fps) will pentrate any body armor, and even if it didn't, that much kinetic energy would most probably kill a human being from mere shock. Kennedy has pulled a sleight-of-hand here - he's not talking about protecting officers in soft body armor any more, but he hasn't bothered to tell anybody. In a single year, over 100,000 rounds of military surplus armor-piercing ammunition were sold to civilians in the United States.And there were how many officers shot through their vests and killed? Twenty, between 1992 and 2002, according to the Senator. That's two per year, versus one million rounds of "armor piercing" ammunition sold. And not one of those officers was killed with an "armor piercing" round. They were killed with standard, everyday centerfire rifle ammo. And now he goes off on Smith & Wesson's horrible new .500 S&W Magnum, the new weapon designed, in his eyes, specifically to kill cops: In addition, the gun manufacturer, Smith & Wesson, recently introduced a powerful new revolver, the .500 magnum, 4-1/2 pounds, 15 inches long, that clearly has the capability of piercing body armor using ammunition allowed under the current law.Well, it is bigger than the .44 Magnum, I'll give him that. The publication, Gun Week, reviewed the new weapon with enthusiasm: "Behold the magic, feel the power,'' it wrote.Note the ad doesn't say:Many of our leaders will buy the Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum for the same reason that Edmund Hillary climbed Mt. Everest: Because it is there. Many of our leaders will buy the Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum because it will penetrate body armor and kill cops.Teddy just hates it because people will want it, and the proles shouldn't own guns. Current Federal law bans certain armor-piercing ammunition for handguns. It establishes a content-based standard. It covers ammunition that is, first of all, constructed from tungsten alloys, steel, iron, brass, bronze, beryllium, copper, or depleted uranium or, secondly, larger than .22 caliber with a jacket that weighs no more than 25 percent of the total weight of the bullet.Except you don't need "armor piercing" ammunition to penetrate "bulletproof" vests. Standard soft-point hunting ammo from a .30-30 will do the job, as Teddy pointed out. Armor-piercing bullets that sidestep the Federal ban, such as that advertised on Hi-Vel's Web site, put the lives of American citizens and those sworn to defend American citizens in jeopardy every single day. We know the terrorists are now exploiting the weaknesses and loopholes in our gun laws. The terrorists training manual discovered by American soldiers in Afghanistan in 2001 advised al-Qaida operatives to buy assault weapons in the United States and use them against us.Just think what he could do with a .300 Magnum bolt-action rifle and some decent 168 grain match rounds. But Teddy doesn't want to take away sporting ammunition, right? My amendment amends the Federal ban on cop-killer bullets to include a performance standard and extends the ban on centerfire rifles, which include the sniper rifles and assault weapons responsible for the deaths of 17 police officers whose body armor was penetrated by this ammunition.Except we "mainstream gun owners" understand that standard rifle ammo will immediately become a "loophole" because, by design or not, it can penetrate police vests. And if the lowly .30-30 is "capable of puncturing light-armored vehicles, ballistic or armored glass, armored limousines, even a 600-pound safe with 600 pounds of safe armor plating" then we know he's going to go after our 7mm Magnums, our .30-06 bolt-actions, and every other centerfire rifle cartridge extant. All he needs is an open door, and a law that the lawmakers "don't realize all that was in it." A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.And Teddy's a prime example. Labels: fisk, gun control, law | | |
