Friendly
The only way to defend “the right to bear arms” is to make sure everyone has more and more and more guns. Literally everyone: toddlers included.
South Dakota’s governor told an audience of people that her two-year-old grandchild has several guns.
While speaking on Friday at a National Rifle Association (NRA) lobbying leadership forum in Indiana, the Republican governor Kristi Noem told audience members her toddler grandchild has multiple guns, reported Mediaite.
The toddler granchild is not yet two, and she has a rifle and a shotgun. (It’s not clear what “having” means. I don’t suppose they’re in her toy box. It could just mean that they’re officially her guns, but she can’t just grab one and start shooting. Then again these are lunatics, so maybe she is literally packing heat.)
Noem also signed an executive order during her remarks that seeks to “further protect the second amendment rights of South Dakotans”, and was joined on stage by the NRA’s CEO, Wayne LaPierre.
“South Dakota is setting the standard for the most second amendment friendly state in the nation,” said Noem when discussing the executive order.
By which she means gun-friendly. The way you demonstrate your extreme cuddly friendliness toward the second amendment is to have more guns than anyone else, which requires buying new guns every few days in order to keep up.
How about animals? Should pets and farm animals be armed, so that they can do this?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-hunter-pet-dog-shoot-dead-saratov-owner-pet-jump-sergei-terekhov-a8174356.html
https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-shot-dead-after-dog-steps-hunting-rifles/story?id=96688192
(And a number of other google hits for non-fatal, but very harmful, incidents of animals shooting people.)
“Second-amendment friendly” sure as hell doesn’t mean they regulate the heck out of all their militias.
“Should pets and farm animals be armed,”
and we should definitely have the right to arm bears.
And livestock!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQMbXvn2RNI
A little perspective on firearms
https://farcornercafe.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-arms-race.html
Pliny the in Between, the problem is that the ballistics of an “assault rifle” aren’t any different than that of a hunting rifle of similar caliber. There isn’t anything unique or particularly lethal about a bullet coming out of an AR-15 compared to other rifles. Articles that talk about how much more lethal they are invariably compare an AR-15 to a handgun, usually a 9mm. I think the use of AR-15s in mass shootings has become something of a self fulfilling prophecy. The media says the AR-15 is the weapon of choice of mass shooters, so people who want to shoot up a school, grocery store, etc., go out and buy an AR-15. The problem with trying to regulate “assault rifles” vs. any other semiautomatic hunting rifle is that there isn’t much of a difference other then aesthetics.
Women are killed every day in the US in domestic violence murders that overwhelmingly involve hand guns. I’d rather see gun regulation advocates focus on improved screening and background checks that look at more than criminal convictions and involuntary commitment as opposed to focusing on specific kinds of guns.
Eava, I agree strongly with your last point regarding domestic violence. But equating hunting rifles to assault riffles misses an important distinction – magazines.. A typical bolt action hunting rifle (which the majority are) holds a 3-6 rounds and takes 3-4 seconds to cycle unless you are an expert shooter. An assault rifle magazine may hold 28-30 rounds and a decent shooter could squeeze off close to 90 rounds in a minute, each one of which is lethal for hundreds of meters. That’s why they are the preferred choice for mass shooters.
Pliny the in Between, semiautomatic rifles are used for hunting, not just bolt action. Any semiautomatic rifle can accept a magazine, whether that hold 10 bullets or 30, or 100. What people really want is to ban all semiautomatic rifles, and I don’t see that ever happening. Even the 1994 Assault Weapons ban did not go that far. Put a wood stock on a gun, it looks like a hunting rifle. Put the same mechanism on a black metal stock, it becomes an assault weapon. It is an aesthetic difference.
Eava, I’m going to partially disagree with you.
“Black guns” were not a common or socially approved hunting weapon in the USA, or anywhere else, until comparatively recently. I saw a link to an interesting article on exactly this point (via Post.news) in the last week or two. The article made the point that even after civilian production of AR-15 types began, the NRA initially wanted nothing to do with them. People representing the early makers described how at gun fairs and conferences organised by the NRA they were scowled at, barely tolerated and their stands were in the worst locations. That didn’t change until such weapons became part of the culture war and then the NRA attitude changed markedly.
As for hunting, yes, there are specialist situations where they are useful weapons. Low calibre, close range hunting, of pest species such as rabbits, wallaby, goats. You’d go up in calibre for pigs and deer (eradication shooting from helicopters say). New Zealand, which has banned such weapons still has a licence category that suits professional pest-control hunters. They’re closely regulated and supervised by the Police.
Around the time the ban came into effect and all non-complying weapons had to be handed in, there were a small number of people who threw a wobbly and said they had to have them for hunting to put “meat on the table.” most other gun owners told them to stop being ridiculous. A 5.56 high velocity round is also very short. It’s unstable and tumbles on penetration. They cause massive damage to flesh, ruining it for consumption. In addition, people hunting for meat should be aiming for a quick and clean kill. They don’t need to spray rounds around the countryside (and shouldn’t). Very very few people will make a second, third, or multiple shot in quick succession that is any more accurate than their first. Especially since then they are invariably tracking a moving target making the chance of a quick clean kill very unlikely. In the SI of NZ at least, most hunting is at long range. A short weapon like an AR-15 makes little sense if you’re after high accuracy on your first shot. I bet that’s the case in much of the USA as well. Sure, in some situations (hunting in dense bush) a short rifle might be useful, but again, you’re not going to need semi-auto for such situations if you’re hunting ethically. It becomes nothing more than a style statement. I might add that based on the people I know who hunt more than I do, hunting with such rifles was popularised by ex-military who also engaged in service shooting.* If anyone is interested in seeing what ethical hunting looks like (plus some truely impressive scenery at times), you could do worse than watch episodes of NZ Hunting Adventures, especially the more recent series. High quality practices, lots of educational snippets added in, and some epic mountaineering and tramping.
The purpose of rapid fire weapons with high capacity magazines is not hunting. It’s carnage. NZ law was changed following the Christchurch Mosque shootings to forbid long rifles that are semi-auto with the exception of rimfire rifles with a magazine capacity of more than 10 rounds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_New_Zealand). Note that possession of extended round magazines is also an offence.
Whether the USA as a whole could ever pass such laws is an open matter and unlikely I grant. But if the 2A movement were half as into States Rights as they are when it comes to any other amendment, I’m sure some States would pass similar laws and others would pass some sort of restriction. The “well regulated militia” and all that.
* Small arms shooting for service purposes by means of collective competitions, matches being framed to induce practice in methods which lead to increased efficiency on the battlefield.
Rob,
Lots of US hunters use “regular” semi-automatic rifles for big game hunting, in regular hunting calibers (but less frequently with large magazines).
Rob, I can’t speak much on hunting in the US; I know a lot of people who hunt, but don’t talk to them much about it, since I find it a rather boring topic.
One thing I can be pretty sure of is that they’re not shooting wallaby. ;-)
Jeff @10, what is the perceived benefit of a semi-auto for hunting? What’s your ratio of first shot clean kills to multi-shot kills (not clean), to multi-shot misses? I’d suggest that if you have a very high ratio of first shot clean kills, you don’t need a semi-auto, and if you have a high ratio of multi-shot kills or misses, you still don’t need a semi-auto.
iknklast @ 11, horses for courses. Hunting isn’t the centre of my life, but I like to do my bit controlling introduced noxious pests that destroy native ecology.