GUN CONTROL vs VD

 

If Archie were alive today he would wear a MAGA hat.  

the Ol'Buzzard

THE LAND OF THE FREE AND THE HOME OF THE GUN

 

 

Two-thirds of Americas are temporarily outraged about the shooting of children in Uvalde, Texas.   This will pass as our collective memories are short.

 

This carnage, especially of young people, is appalling on the surface; but it is who we are.  Since the early Homo Sapiens picked up stones and wiped out the Neanderthal, mankind has been killing everything that breathes on this earth, including its own species.   

 

The only thing that ever limits the carnage is the availability of weapons and the sophistication of the weaponry. 

 

Wars, genocide, ethnic cleansing, retribution, retaliation, revenge, execution, jealousy.   We are creative in our cruelty: stoning, strangling, burning at the stake, hanging, beheading, crushing, spiking, starving, drowning, stabbing, shooting….  And these are performed by organized mobs, be they government, ethnic or religious groups; but it takes individuals to carry them out.  And we carry them out. 

 

We glorify war and we glorify veterans.   We seek out video games and movies premised on violence.  Is it any wonder, with the unrestricted availability of military weaponry to our population, that young, impressionable, disturbed individuals commit mass murder?

 

We are not as outraged as we pretend, or the government elected by the people would outlaw access to military weapons of mass destruction, and government officials that obstruct would be replaced.

 

The Ol’Buzzard                                            

THE NEW ZEALAND SHOOTING

“I forget that every day – every 24 hour rotation of Earth – people kill and get killed in the name of someone else’s conception of God, and that some people who do not kill in the name of God, kill in the name of needs or wants or political dogma.”

Neil de Grasse Tyson

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

This is a poor comment on the human race; but this is who we are and who we have always been. 

the Ol’Buzzard

THE OL’BUZZARD’S GUN CONTROL ACT

1.     Stop the sale of semi-automatic assault weapons and all accessories and kits immediately.

2.    Enact a buy-back of assault weapon clips and large capacity clips for any weapon.  Limit gun makers to the production of civilian available clips holding a maximum of eight rounds.    Enact a $500 fine per clip for anyone found in possession of a large capacity magazine.

3.    Enact background checks and a waiting list as a requirement for the sell of any firearm – including gun shows and private sales.  Fund law enforcement agencies to include the ability to perform background checks. 

4.    Charge any gun owner as an assessor to any crime committed with his or her firearm – to receive a comparable sentence.

There was an assault weapons ban enacted in 1994; but George W Bush and Republicans allowed it to expire in 2004.  

All Republican law makers and some Democrats try to pretend that implementation of reasonable gun safety restrictions is too difficult, and that we must settle for more comprehensive background checks and mental health treatment – whatever that means. 

The will to pass gun safety laws is corroded by the money lawmakers accept from gun manufacturers and gun advocates.   Their jobs, there positions are more important to them then the gun carnage we face every single day in this country.   These lawmakers are complicit in every death that occurs from assault weapons and guns with large capacity clips. 

  the Ol’Buzzard

ANOTHER BLOODY DAY IN THE LAND OF THE FREE AND THE HOME OF THE GUNS.

  

Seventeen high school children killed in Florida; or should we say, just another school shooting.

Canadian children and U.S. children are homogenous.  Some small percentage of Canadian children suffer ridicule, depression and bullying just like American kids.   Yet, Canadian children do not attend school every day in fear of carnage. 

The reason is obvious: Canada has strict gun control laws.

Any politician that talks publicly about background checks and mental health, to distract from the elephant in the room - guns, is complicit in the death of all the children that have died of gun violence over the past decade.    They may as well have stood at the scenes of the shootings and pass the clips to the shooters.

the Ol’Buzzard

GUNS DON’T KILL PEOPLE:

BULLETS KILL PEOPLE

With two mass shootings over the last five weeks you would think that the Congress would move to address the issue of the ability of disturbed people to easily commit mass carnage. 

Link to gun violence this year

But then again, after 27 children were killed in Sandy Hook Elementary School and the Congress did nothing, why should we expect any different now?

I honestly feel that the focus on assault weapons is a distraction.   Semiautomatic rifles have been used by hunters for almost one hundred years; and the assault rifle is simply a semiautomatic rifle dressed up to look like a man killer. 

 

The problem is the capacity of the clip.   In Maine, hunting rifles have historically been limited to a clip size of five rounds.   Five rounds of ammunition are enough to hunt any large game animal in America and more than enough to protect your home. 

At the church slaughter in Texas the killer fired approximately 450 rounds of ammunition.   If clip sizes were limited to five rounds he would have had to reload 90 times. 

A federal law limiting clip size, a buy back and a stiff fine and imprisonment for possession of a large capacity clip would not stop disturbed people from committing acts of terror; but it would limit their ability to commit mass murder – and it would still allow the bad-ass wannabees to sport their assault weapons. 

All the males who feel their manhood depends on being seen carrying a ‘man killer’ rifle could still play their game; but the ability of their weapon to commit mass carnage would be greatly decreased - and lives would be saved.   

Link to gun violence in America

Common sense restrictions to control gun violence will never happen as long as Republican lawmakers are in control of Congress 

the Ol'Buzzars

TRUMP'S FIRST THREE WEEKS AS PRESIDENT ESTABLISHES A NEW NORM

DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM?

After 28 people, including 20 children, were massacred in Sandy Hook Elementary School I honestly thought there would be some concerted move to control gun access.   But instead it set a new higher standard of acceptability.

Now shooting with less than a dozen casualties don’t make the papers, or you find them on page six.

We now accept gun violence as the norm.

The danger we are facing is that the outrageous actions of the new Trump administration are coming at us so fast, that soon it will be accepted as the norm, and the bar on what is not acceptable will be raised.

We will be living in a new and scary Nation. 

the Ol’Buzzard

ONE MORE TAKE ON SENSIBLE GUN CONTROL

The argument that the Second Amendment was to allow citizens to have guns to protect themselves against their own government is blatantly false.  

I know this bothers some gun supporters that have heard this from the NRA and used this as their argument for no gun laws.  But, in 1791 when the Amendment was past, America did not have a standing army and the intent was to guarantee citizens could own guns so in time of crisis a militia could be quickly raised – not armed for an insurrection against the government.

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

In 1792 the Congress went one step further, passing an act requiring all male citizens to arm themselves in order to be able to quickly raise a militia:

Each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia… every citizen so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or flrelock, and sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball: or with a good rifle, knapsack ,shot-pouch and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear, so armed, accoutered and provided, when called out to exercise, or into service, except, that when called out on company days to exercise only, he may appear without a knapsack.

Today we have a standing army and the requirement for all citizens to arm is not necessary – neither is the argument that we must arm ourselves so we can overthrow our own government.  

We fought a Civil War against the idea of anarchy – the point should be well established. 

The need to line up at Burger King with assault rifles and pistols defies common sense and places the general public in danger.

The Ol’Buzzard

A SENSIABLE STEP TO CONTROL GUN VIOLENCE.

 Maine has always been a wilderness state, and back in the 1960’s most Maine men owned guns: deer rifles and shotguns for hunting.

  

There was no killings epidemic going on back in those earlier days.   There were no military assault weapons, the country was not flooded with handguns and there was no open or concealed carry for the average person.   Occasionally a man might be shot by his brother-in-law while out deer hunting, and later you find out he beat his wife - and there would be suspicions.   That was pretty much it for gun violence.

 

It is not just about the availability of guns.   Today there is also a kill mentality, a kill mania that goes along with the purchase of military style assault weapon and hand gun.

Most of the people that buy guns today are not hunters; they are buying a gun with the specific intent to be able to kill other human beings.    Many of these people live in a mindset where they fantasize a situation where they could use their weapon on another person, believing it would make them appear macho.

  

So how could we control this gun mania without confiscating guns?

Back in the sixties, in most New England states, you could not transport a gun unless you had a valid hunting license and there was an open hunting season.  If you wished to transport a pistol or rifle to a firing range, you had to drop by the police station and pick up a transport chit for that specific activity.   There was no open carry and you could not get a concealed carry license without a specific need.    You did not have to register you guns and you could have as many as you wanted in your home; you just could not carry or transport them in public without a reason. 

An assault weapon band sounds logical, but there are already too many assault weapons in circulation; and gun confiscation is not an option.   What we need is a federal law limiting the carry and transportation of firearms.   It would not be popular but it would solve the problem.

Why do these men need to carry their weapons in public?   They don't.

Kids dying in elementary school is a step too far.   We need serious federal gun control on the transportation and carry of firearms.

the Ol’Buzzard

  

OLD MEN PACKING HEAT

 

If you are a fat old man packing a gun, you don't look any younger and you don't look macho; you look like a fat old fool with a gun.  

And when the zombies come that gun isn't going to make any difference - they are going to eat you first, because you are fat and old and can't outrun them. 

the Ol'Buzzard

A TRIBUTE TO CHARLTON HESTON

"You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hand."

Charlton Heston

The video was blocked by funny or die so click

HERE 

to see it. 

I'm just saying
the Ol'Buzzard

AMERICA'S CULTURE OF VIOLENCE

MRMacrum (Lost in the Bozone) posted about the violence in American society today.

I have witnessed a cultural change over the last sixty years that has brought us to the dysfunctional chaos that is twenty-first century America.

I was raised in the south during the 1950 by my grandmother.  I owned and hunted with a shotgun and a 22 rifle throughout my teen years.   Every boy in my school owned guns and every man I knew owned guns and hunted.   But, in that era the idea of shooting up a school, or public venue, or mass killing wasn't even imaginable.   When some violent crime occurred it was immediately denounced and people were horrified.

Today gun violence, shootings and even mass shootings are so commonplace that we talk of them for a few days and then move on.   We are a more violent society today then we were sixty years ago.  We are a different society, a people and with different value, and the ready availability of military type weapons  has unleashed a dark place in our psyche.

I don't glorify 'the old days' for there were many social injustices and the world as a whole was still fucked up; but we didn't live in fear of our neighbors.

Back then I thought the human race would become smarter into the future; but that doesn't seem to fit the trend.

the Ol'Buzzard

GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE.

PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE.

PEOPLE WITH GUNS.

 

 

Gun control doesn't mean taking guns from gun owners.  It doesn't mean that we shouldn't own guns to protect our home or hunt or shoot competition.   It means that no civilian needs to own military type weapons or guns with extended clips.   It means that background checks would keep a lot of violent and crazy people from purchasing guns and ammunition.  

No one really needs to be packing an AK-47 into a restaurant, store or other public place where it will intimidate people.

What we see now is not sensible gun ownership, but people on the down side of the IQ curve open carrying weapons for attention.  

I own weapons.  I was on the the US Navy Pistol Team and am probably more skilled with a pistol than most.  

I am not scared of terrorist; I am not scared to go downtown unarmed; I am scared as hell when I see some functional retard with a pistol on his belt or a rifle on his shoulder at some public venue.   

The Second Amendment was written when there was no standing army and it was necessary to call up a militia when the need arose; and each citizen soldier was expected to provide his own weapon. 

We now have a standing military and military reserves, and an armed militia is no longer necessary.

The Second Amendment needs to be redefined.

We now have these soldier wannabees, these military ass sniffers that are too insecure to actually join the military and place themselves in harms way; so they dress up and play militia. You talk about keeping guns out of the hands of mentally ill - these people occupy that grey area just this side of rational.

It is not guns that kill people
It is people that kill people
People with guns.

the Ol'Buzzard