With Friends Like That...
It's been a long time since I last posted, what with life getting in the way. Paying the bills, keeping the wheels of e-commerce turning and all of that. But lately I've had some niggles, not in a good way, that make me uncomfortable about the political climate here in the US. Our 2nd Amendment rights are under threat - not directly and not immediately, but I've lived through the slow strangulation of gun rights in Australia, and I'm here to tell you that it won't happen overnight, it's a gradual process that won't always be the result of actions of the usual suspects. I hope over the next few months to tell many stories that illustrate how change is brought about, and I'm hoping many of my shooting friends will spread these words far and wide. If I can scare the stuffing out of enough people to motivate them to vote this November, and encourage as many of their friends to vote, maybe we can hold them off for a while yet.
Thank goodness for the NRA, and thank goodness for Fox News. Fox has enough of a national audience to keep a commonsense perspective on conservative issues. If we'd had something like Fox in Australia we may have had a fighting chance to keep some gun rights. Imagine if MSNBC was the mainstream, and all four free-to-air TV channels sang the same song - that's what we were up against.
Having said that, it made me sick to the stomach a couple of nights ago to hear Bill O'Reilly espousing some hare-brained scheme to make it law that anybody buying "heavy weapons" or large amounts of ammunition should be reported to the Feds. Those who bloviate about that which they know bugger all should keep their fat traps shut, Bill. He said, "Right now some gun dealers do background checks but nobody reports the sale of heavy weapons like AK-47's to the feds". What? I thought I must have somehow landed in a parallel universe where full autos weren't federally regulated. Just about any shooter in this country knows that you can't walk into a gun show and walk out with a machine gun or a bazooka. Who's his researcher? Bob Beckel??? Even Utah Congressman Chaffetz couldn't convince O'Reilly of this in a follow-up interview, and I'm sure there were thousands of emails telling him he's sorely misinformed. So why is he continuing to perpetrate this myth?
This is exactly how we end up losing ground to the anti-gunners. Somebody we thought was on our side takes a "measured" or "rational" look at the situation and decides it's okay to make concessions "for the greater good". All with the best of intentions of course. I remember losing a friend of many years, an ex-Olympic shooter, after we argued bitterly over compromising with anti-gunners when the Queensland gun laws were being drafted. The argument was, "It's going to happen anyway, and if we appear unreasonable they'll just make it worse, at least this way we have some input." How'd that work out for ya?
I don't know what was in Bill O'Reilly's head. I'd like to think he had some bad information or advice, but you just never know. Where did the term "heavy weapons" come from? And what does that really mean - and how do we know that term won't "evolve" into covering all manner of items?
Thank goodness for the NRA, and thank goodness for Fox News. Fox has enough of a national audience to keep a commonsense perspective on conservative issues. If we'd had something like Fox in Australia we may have had a fighting chance to keep some gun rights. Imagine if MSNBC was the mainstream, and all four free-to-air TV channels sang the same song - that's what we were up against.
Having said that, it made me sick to the stomach a couple of nights ago to hear Bill O'Reilly espousing some hare-brained scheme to make it law that anybody buying "heavy weapons" or large amounts of ammunition should be reported to the Feds. Those who bloviate about that which they know bugger all should keep their fat traps shut, Bill. He said, "Right now some gun dealers do background checks but nobody reports the sale of heavy weapons like AK-47's to the feds". What? I thought I must have somehow landed in a parallel universe where full autos weren't federally regulated. Just about any shooter in this country knows that you can't walk into a gun show and walk out with a machine gun or a bazooka. Who's his researcher? Bob Beckel??? Even Utah Congressman Chaffetz couldn't convince O'Reilly of this in a follow-up interview, and I'm sure there were thousands of emails telling him he's sorely misinformed. So why is he continuing to perpetrate this myth?
This is exactly how we end up losing ground to the anti-gunners. Somebody we thought was on our side takes a "measured" or "rational" look at the situation and decides it's okay to make concessions "for the greater good". All with the best of intentions of course. I remember losing a friend of many years, an ex-Olympic shooter, after we argued bitterly over compromising with anti-gunners when the Queensland gun laws were being drafted. The argument was, "It's going to happen anyway, and if we appear unreasonable they'll just make it worse, at least this way we have some input." How'd that work out for ya?
I don't know what was in Bill O'Reilly's head. I'd like to think he had some bad information or advice, but you just never know. Where did the term "heavy weapons" come from? And what does that really mean - and how do we know that term won't "evolve" into covering all manner of items?
posted by Warren at 4:12 PM
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