Guns, Guns, Guns, vs Laws, Laws, Laws

The new mass shooting (how many makes it “mass”, BTW) in VA brings up all the old canards:“action on suppressors, a ban on assault weapons, and expansion of local authority to regulate firearms,” and more and more.

Thinking on just these three, which are from a statement from Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, I come to some conclusions. Let’s talk.

 Suppressors, by which I think he means “flash suppressors,” which are attached to the barrel of a weapon to shield and reduce a flash at the exit point of a rifle by dispelling the hot gases and as a way of reducing or eliminating a flash that gives away the location of the rifle. For someone in an exposed position, this wouldn’t seem necessary since a mass shooter is usually easy to locate. If shooting from cover it might give an advantage and make it much harder to locate the shooter. I can think, off hand, of two incidents/crimes where this was the case. But generally speaking this wouldn’t have much impact on mass shooting sprees that I know of or can imagine. So, in this case, the governor is “blowing smoke.”

The ban on assault weapons is merely nonsense. I would bet the governor, and most people who oppose “assault weapons” don’t really know what they are. Some are just cosmetic, giving a tough look to the weapon. Some are relatively useless, and I suspect rarely used in mass shootings, like a bayonet mount or a grenade launcher. In general, specific weapons and models that are frequently mentioned are only produced and legal to be sold to military and paramilitary group members. One, usually described as a large capacity clip (and what exactly is “large”) could have an impact on number of firings before another clip must be loaded. I suspect a “devoted” shooter can change clips in a few seconds. But even this might help. The sale of “assault weapons” is banned in most cases to citizens. Nevertheless, the very description gives rise to vague and whimsical application to many weapons that aren’t really used in an “assault.” Note that the use of a flash suppressor is not needed to make a weapon an “assault weapon. If the barrel is grooved or threaded for allowing attachment of a flash suppressor, that makes it one.Other stuff, like a folding stock or a stacking buckle, has nothing to do with the application of a weapon. A flash suppressor, for example, does not enhance the damage potential of the weapon. The semi-automatic nature of most of the legal banning characteristics is a red herring. Almost all weapons made and sold today (and since the Wild West days of the revolver) are semi-automatics. Otherwise, we are talking about the single shot weapons which require loading, or cocking the hammer, etc. to set the weapon in a condition that allow it to be fired. Semi-automatic weapons use systems that eject the spent round, replace it with a new round, and sometimes cocking the hammer mechanism using springs and/or compressed gasses produced by the round just fired. Everybody has seen the action of doing this manually for a weapon that hasn’t been fired yet (usually in movies) when they see the actor pull out the weapon and pull the front of the weapon’s barrel back and let it snap back. That’s loading a round and cocking the weapon for firing. Handguns are pretty much made that way at this time. [Aside: there are other little differences to this action, such as the first part of a trigger pull performing this “loading” action and the rest of the pull operating the hammer. Don’t just use my brief description as a formal explanation of all semi-automatic weapons.] 

The third thing mentioned is the one I will find greater exception to. Expanding the local authorities’ regulations is opening the can of worms. Most local authorities approach this task as one of eliminating types or specifically named weapons, use of a variety of attachments, ammunition, and technical enhancements (like aiming systems). This gets the authority into the area of bans, punishment, confiscation, etc. for weapon purchase and possession. All of this, I say in general, is a change to the Constitution. But local authorities can’t just change the overall law of the country as applied to citizens. There is a way to modify the Constitution, purposefully made difficult to do. We have a “guarantee” that the Constitution is the law of the land, specifying how the government is organized, what powers each component of the organization may or may not do, and what conditions are guaranteed to each citizen. It says that citizens have a right (always) to own and bear arms. A store owner who posts a sticker on his window saying the store is a “No gun zone” is taking the citizens right to bear arms. But a store owner can’t just cancel a Constitutional right by his decision and putting up a sticker or sign. That would lead to chaos. It’s already a bit like that when you go from state to state, and one allows you to carry a firearm in their jurisdiction and the other doesn’t. Many people think it’s the weapon that is “dangerous.” They want to take “dangerous” weapons away from everybody (except police, the military, and themselves and their armed guards). Of course, true criminals and psychotic persons don’t care about “laws” and will carry weapons anyway. And mass shootings seem to be oriented to being carried out in “No gun zones” so that the gun-free citizens there are simply helpless victims. One can’t even rely on the police to be alerted, get to the scene, and actually take some action to stop a shooter. Sometimes the police are just chicken and don’t do the (very difficult) job of challenging a shooter. Sometimes the police wait around until they have enough of a group and information to challenge a shooter. This last actually has some sense when they don’t know just how many and where shooter(s) are. But sometimes the authorities are so worried about offending someone (a voter or supporter) that they just can’t bring themselves to allowing the citizens to defend themselves by having at least some of them in a “soft target” group to have weapons for defense. 

Often some sensible ideas are put in place. If I am carrying and I have to go into a large government building where sometimes contentious situations happen, with perhaps angry, frustrated people have to interact, citizens coming in have to “park their guns at the door,” just like in the old wild West. In cases like this, however, provisions are made to place your weapon(s) in a locker to which you have a key or ticket, and armed guards and police are in the building to provide safety at quick response times. Pretty sensible! Not perfect, of course, because no policies can ever address everything that could happen, like people having a small weapon in their shoe heel. 

If someone came to believe that robberies were almost always carried out by people who drove in get-away cars that were four door sedans, wouldn’t it be sensible to ban sale of four door sedans? That would stop all those robberies.Well, anyone thinking about this would come to the conclusion that it was silly. The cars (four door sedans) didn’t commit the robberies. Did they? Guess how this applies to stopping felony use of weapons in killings: ban the sale of those weapons. But robbers are clever; they will switch to using two door sedans! Okay, ban all cars! Simple. My example: ban all weapons! Simple.The only problem is both of these attempts are stupid, too.Where is the problem and what can be done? It’s the person doing the killing, robbery, etc. that is to be stopped. How? The answer, as I see it, is to stop the person from buying and possessing weapons of the type used in the felony. And how can we do that? 

Think about this: could be set up a system that could prevent (to a high degree) the sale and possession of a person who can be shown to be a risk to have a weapon of one or more types? I have tried to come up with such a system, which doesn’t try to control the “gun” (gun control), but tries to control the “gunner” (gunner control). My initial system for doing this I first came up with some 45 years ago. I have modified it from time to time, and currently have a system I describe in a blog entry that hasn’t gotten much traction.I have been on a popular call-in radio show with it, have sent it to my senators and representatives and have gotten such stupid letters back from them that I know they (and probably staff members handling their mail) didn’t read it. Useless. It’s comical how I know this; ask me about it sometime if you are interested.

My current suggestion is in my blog for October, 2017. You can get it using link https://garythecommonman.blogspot.com if interested.
This, plus my rationale above is the current argument.
Thanks for reading.