I’ve been unable to turn on the news over the past 24 hours without immediately hearing about yesterday’s protests against “gun violence”. The news agencies have clearly learned a trick or two from their show-biz colleagues who call themselves “illusionists”: if these protests were about “violence”, the marchers would surely have something to say about the people who commit such violence, how to deter them, how they ought to be dealt with, why they have taken to shooting up schools. But even though the protests are ostensibly a response to the Parkland massacre, nary a word have I heard from any of the marchers, or from any of the demagogues who took to the microphone to whip them up en masse, about Nikolas Cruz, Stephen Paddock, Omar Mateen, Nidal Hasan, et al.
Instead, from what I can gather, it was a fellow named “Wayne LaPierre” who barged into Stoneman Douglas High and opened fire, accompanied by a sizable mob of otherwise law-abiding American citizens, such as myself, whose crime is membership in the National Rifle Association. Meanwhile, Messrs. Cruz, Paddock, Mateen and the rest of them, lacking any agency whatsoever, are exempt from blame. Indeed, as far as I can make out, the guns themselves have more capacity for volition, and so for the commission of sin, than the people who wield them. (I keep hearing the phrase “high-capacity” from my betters in Congress and the media; perhaps that’s what it refers to.)
Nor have I seen any reflection, on the part of the mob, upon the broader context in which these things seem to be happening. I heard a grandmother explain to a reporter that she was marching because she wanted her grandchildren to be as safe in their schools as she was in hers. Sadly, the man with the microphone didn’t ask her what, exactly, she thought had changed, which of course is the first thing one should ask when trying to troubleshoot (so to speak) a problem of almost any kind. (“This thing used to work fine, and now it doesn’t. What happened? What’s different now?“) He might have pointed out that in her childhood, “military-grade” guns were easily available to all, with almost no restrictions, yet nobody seemed to shoot up any schools or concerts. But he didn’t, of course.
No, the media and our progressive overlords (but I repeat myself!) have palmed the card, and masterfully redirected our attention. This is no march against gun “violence”: it is a march against gun ownership, against the Second Amendment, against the pre-existing right that the Second Amendment does not confer, but guarantees, and, perhaps most ominously of all, against those scores of millions of American citizens for whom this fundamental right — the right that secures all the others — is not negotiable.
The organizers of these demonstrations seek to increase the pressure, and they’re doing a good job. What I think they do not realize is that they are only compressing a spring.
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Today being my regularly scheduled “Set Myself Down to Watch the Sunday Shows” I too kept hearing high capacity as well as automatic.
Of course I heard not a peep about or of a “for instance” where high capacity might’ve been similarly or perhaps, more appropriately employed:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1927-bombing-remains-americas-deadliest-school-massacre-180963355/
And to think, at that time ‘high-capacity’ truly bore (so to speak) real meaning.
Malcolm, although I’m not a grandfather, I am old enough that I might have been one. In any case, when I was young, folk might have had access to some “military grade” weapons (i.e. WWII surplus), however, those weapons were typically not automatic or semi-automatic weapons and large magazines were very rare. While the weapons common in my youth were useful for target shooting, hunting, or shooting at squirrels, they would not be effective tools for someone whose aim is to kill lots of folks very rapidly — as is the case with the kinds of shootings that get folk concerned these days.
When I was a kid, a low muzzle velocity .22 rifle was considered almost a “toy” for a young boy. But, today, the high muzzle velocity guns with large magazines are little more than killing machines.
The world has changed. There aren’t your grandfather’s guns!
bob wyman
Mr. Wyman,
I’m just a month older than Malcolm (unlike yourself however, not only am I a Grandpa I’m actually a Great-Grandpa! Being from Arkansas may …).
Anyway. At the relatively young age of 13 my Dad who’d already at the time I was 10 gifted me the obligatory .22 LR – in order to accompany he and his pals deerhunting – gifted me additionally an M-1 carbine which magazine, if I recall correctly, had a capacity of 15. And, again if I recall correctly, with one chambered and the magazine filled would have brought its capacity up to 16 rounds.
Although such an opportunity never presented itself – but, even had it I’m certain Dad would’ve immediately “rectified” – but anyway, had the opportunity presented itself I’m reasonably certain I could’ve fairly quickly dispatched lots of deer.
There is no doubt fire arms have changed over the years, but more importantly, something(s) in our culture have changed for the worst as well. Time was not so long ago that no teenager would ever think of bringing a gun to school with murder on his mind. Not even when I was a kid and there was an occasional pickup truck in the parking lot with one or two long guns in the rack.
It wasn’t so long ago we didn’t need “resource” officers in school. When did this start and why?
Bob,
It’s nice to see you here! I hope you are well. It’s been far too long. I hope also that your daughter is recovering; I know you and she have been through hell.
I’m afraid, however, that JK is right: the weapons haven’t changed in any meaningful way. When I was growing up in rural New Jersey, semiautomatic rifles with removable magazines were not at all uncommon. Furthermore, they were (and are) no different, in any functional sense, from the scary-looking “assault rifles” that are the bugbears of modern liberal hoplophobes (most of whom, it seems, know almost nothing about firearms). They can fire, and be reloaded, just as rapidly, and in many, if not most, cases, shot a more lethal round.
As for “our grandfather’s guns”, our grandfathers fought with the M1 rifle and carbine that JK mentioned, chambered in 30.06 (most ARs are chambered for the smaller .223 round). Millions of these rifles are in private hands today. They are excellent all-purpose guns, and remain extremely popular. But they are no less deadly than an AR-15; if anything they are more so.
Let us note also that rifles, which seem to be attracting all the attention here, are responsible for a tiny fraction of homicides: fewer than knives or even fists. To a rounding error, the weapon of choice for homicide is handguns. I know you to be a reasonable and exceptionally intelligent man, Bob, and one who understands quantitative data. If you are genuinely seeking to lower homicide rates by banning guns, you should be going for the handguns, not the rifles. (And you should be focusing on what really drives the U.S. homicide rate above that of other First World nations: homicide by inner-city blacks, which almost never involves a rifle.) But I must warn you: if you come after the fundamental right of law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms, you will be compressing a very powerful spring. Proceed with caution.
Finally, yes: guns are killing machines. That’s what guns are for: to kill, or, by their presence, to prevent killing. The world remains a dark place. It never won’t be.
Whitewall,
Your reminiscence triggers (so to speak) several reminiscences of my own.
Many times and oft’ as I progressed from having to ride the schoolbus (driver’s licenses being outta reach for sub-sixteen year olds) I noted uncountable instances of those “gun-racks” you note and in many of the instances from my youth there were both a rifle and a shotgun. More rarely, a belt suspended from one of the hooks plainly of a type I understood almost certainly contained some type of handgun. (Most likely I reckoned to be loaded in whatever caliber with what today is most commonly – in these parts – called “rat-shot” or snake-charmers).
A notable instance from when I was a sophomore in high school occurs to me: Our principal was not unknown to, during lunch-hour, climb atop the schoolhouse roof to keep a sharp eye out for … no, not that … rather students hiding out behind some obstacle where an illicit smoke (sometimes an illicit liaison) might be occurring.
On this one occasion of which I speak the principal noted my gun-rack carried a shotgun which prompted the fellow to clamber off his perch get in his pickup and drive around to where I was parked whereupon he exited carrying his own shotgun.
And thus the occasion was set for what turned out to be “a comparison” of which either of our shotguns held the better quail pattern.
Something I’m pretty sure in “these more modern times” would be an occasion to call out the 82nd Airborne. And Trauma Counselors galore.
(Incidentally, mine held the better pattern.)
P.S. Bob, are you still at Google? Can you find out why my posts never appear in Google results anymore? I’d be immensely grateful.
JK,
Seems I do recall only one or two long guns in any rack and like you say, a shot gun(single barrel) as well as a .22
Rifles were useless for me as I had no skill aiming one, even with a scope. I did much better emptying the ammo in my hand and walking out there and throwing them at the target. Now a side arm…that was different. My aim and skill there was termed accurate and merciless by “they who rate such things”.
Funny about smoking. In H-S we had a smoking pit-The Pit- next to the cafeteria. No sneaking needed! I did grow up in tobacco country you know. That was so long ago…cigarettes were actually “good for you”!
Well Whitewall,
As it occurs when I was in Junior High (and I suppose it held true as I came up the grades of Elementary) we had a “smoking pit” too.
Then, just at the transition between Junior and Senior levels the uhm “School Builders” had provided a replacement for our 1935 era quarters. Carpeted if you can believe it! (And no longer had we kids to “help” the janitor load the firebox with wood which heated the whole former place.)
In laboro brevis esse obcurus (In laboring to be brief I become obscure – if my Latin holds) Anyway, I left out the bit concerning the Agri/Shop “Classroom” which occupied a kind of set-off place. There “the smoking lamp” to use the Navy term, was able to be lit.
And I left off that the “pattern comparison” which took place that long-ago day was held there. That’s also interestingly enough, the place where during The Thanksgiving Day recess when the entire school was let off for the observance (conveniently near coinciding with the opening of deer season) The Annual Turkey Shoot was held.
In my Senior year I actually found myself competing against our local State Trooper as well as the County Sheriff and, best as I recall, two of his deputies. We all used .22s on a pie tin at fifteen yards as that was the rule.
The cops competing that day forever thereafter didn’t “seem to enjoy” being reminded they’d been bested that day by the seventeen year old known later as, JK.
But they were reminded. And not just by me.
Those days I expect are, long passed.