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NFR: Gun Control

Started by Logicalman, December 15, 2012, 01:42:03 PM

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hesedmedia

I hate to return to this subject, as it makes me no friends. But, in a time of high emotion, rationality must take her rightful place, or tyrants will.

"They don't need them for hunting or to protect themselves from a burglar."

Again, as gently and respectfully as I can possibly say this: you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when you say things like this. You would have people attempting to defend their homes with, what, dove-hunting shotguns? Almost every CCW weapon carried in the modern world, is semi-automatic. Even if you thought that your prohibition would stop violent criminals from using semi-automatic weapons, they can also figure out to show up in groups of 2 or more. Surely you are not serious in saying that citizens do not need semi-automatic firearms. Have you ever seen a CCW-related shooting? Any footage of police engaged with even a single armed suspect? I can't underline enough how much it does not happen like you see in the movies. People do not get hit with a round from a handgun and fly backwards as if at the extended length of a bungee cord.

Furthermore, neither hunting nor protection from bandits (of the dis-organized variety) is the purpose of the 2A or the reason many American gun owners purchase arms and training in their use. The purpose and reason, at bottom, is as a warning to would-be tyrants, be they domestic or foreign.

"For instance, I am against allowing them in a church or a bar."

Yes, places that are publicized as being gun-free zones are never a target for violence, right?

"If you think guns should be allowed in church, please tell me why?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_Sikh_temple_shooting

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57556741-504083/pennsylvania-church-shooting-man-shoots-kills-ex-wife-during-church-service-police-say/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoxville_Unitarian_Universalist_church_shooting

I could go on, if you need more.

"Honest decent people have nothing to fear from a background check and from registration."

Because tyrannical governments have never demonstrated a propensity to disarm the populace they intend to tyrannize, right? But, based on your context, I imagine that no honest or decent person (as you mean it) could look at history and infer anything of substance about the present that doesn't hold state power in high regard.

"While we're at it, I would ban the use of lead in shot/bullets."

Why? Are you under the impression that people with GSW's are dying of lead poisoning?

Forever Fulham

Hesed, you and I are never going to see eye to eye.  I think if someone is trying to get into your home at night, and you have a handgun with 6-8 bullet capacity, you have enough to protect your home and your loved ones.  You don't need a 30-round magazine.  Same thing for a shotgun holding several shells.  If you are that poor of a shot that you think you really need such extra capacity, then I don't know what to add.   What are you so scared of that you think you need a semi-automatic rifle for protection?   I've heard the "tyrannical government" argument before, and the quick allusions to Nazi Germany.  I'm not buying that argument.  Not for a minute.  There is a direct relationship between the use of lead shot and its impact upon wildlife, how spent lead ammunition sickens them. 



hesedmedia

#83
"Hesed, you and I are never going to see eye to eye."

That's fair enough. Is there any argument or set of data that you can imagine that might change your mind? I mean that genuinely, is there an X for "If X were true, I might consider a legitimate use for effective defensive firearms"?

" I think if someone is trying to get into your home at night, and you have a handgun with 6-8 bullet capacity, you have enough to protect your home and your loved ones."

Suspects in police shootings routinely fail to stop after being shot several times, this is simply recorded fact (http://www.firearmstactical.com/pdf/fbi-hwfe.pdf). Handgun-calibers do not work the way Dirty Harry would lead you to believe. Furthermore, those 6-8 rd. handguns, in modern times, are almost always going to be semi-automatics, which you're advocating be confiscated by men with semi- or fully automatic, high capacity guns. And what makes you feel qualified to arbitrate what the woman facing sexual assault should be allowed to defend herself with?

"If you are that poor of a shot that you think you really need such extra capacity, then I don't know what to add."

It is specifically because I have trained toward skill at arms with the defensive handgun that I realize how ineffective they are at stopping people. The myth of 'blowing someone away' with a handgun is borne out of film and television, not any real experience, as that DOJ/FBI study to which I alluded can attest. I would never deign to call the home owner with several large fire extinguishers paranoid because all the fires I see on TV are put out with the first one.

"What are you so scared of that you think you need a semi-automatic rifle for protection?   I've heard the "tyrannical government" argument before, and the quick allusions to Nazi Germany.  I'm not buying that argument."

That's fine. A good argument need not compel assent, only demonstrate that its premisses are more likely than their negation.

1. Every tyrannical, despotic government in history has sought to disarm its populace.
2. There are no good reasons to think that this particular feature of history can not or will not be replicated.
3. Therefore, it is likely that any future tyrannical, despotic government would seek to disarm its populace.

I am happy to let the reader decide whether bald incredulity is sufficient defeater to that inductive argument.

Furthermore, I don't live on the US-Mexico border. But, if I did, I would be facing the genuine-article, fully automatic assault weapons given to Mexican drug cartels by my own government. What kind of mad man would I be to publicly take every effective means of defense those ranchers and such have against the sort of barbaric lunacy that leaves heads on pikes and skins people on their property, and leave them only with a dove-hunting sporting arm? Do you think this is hyperbole? I have been there, and talked to people who have found these things. Do you think that any of their lives, let alone their homes, would be worth anything when the cartel gets wind that there are no more riflemen over there on the other side of those Border Patrol agents that can be bought for a wink and 1/100 of a pot shipment?

"There is a direct relationship between the use of lead shot and its impact upon wildlife, how spent lead ammunition sickens them."

I was under the impression that it was illegal already in most states to hunt game (particularly small game) with lead shot. I fail to see how the use of lead in ammunition not manufactured for that application should be outlawed.

I would ask again if there is any set of data or any argument, which, if true, would lead you to think differently on this subject?

McBridefan1

The only problem with your arguement hess is that in every great society there is compromise, sadly the gun lobby won't compromise one iota. We need to do what is best for everyone, not just those that want bigger and better killing sticks. A large segment of the population want fewer guns and smaller clips. No one is suggesting taking away all your guns. We just don't think an entire arsenal is necessary to defend yourself. What good do all your guns do you while you are separated from your children. An arsenal will not protect your children or your loved ones if you aren't there with them.

LBNo11

...apart from the sadness it brings this debate has nothing to do with a Brit, and so you can and will tell me to mind my own business, but I will not look in on this debate again as people with entrenched views keep digging until the ladder becomes too short to get out.

All I will say is that in my view the it appears the bigger the weapon the safer certain people feel, so when mini nukes come on sale in the shopping malls it will make everyone feel safer, and maybe you can build giant walls surrounded by mine-fields and have neighbourhood funded watchtowers and searchlights and machine gun posts too.

Proliferation is like a cancer, it grows and it spreads and unless it it treated it causes many deaths.

OK, said my bit, now extradite me...

Twitter: @LBNo11FFC


YankeeJim

To all, especially LB, if I thought government regulation would do one thing to reduce gun violence, I'd support it. The simple fact is that, as the zealots at the NRA say, guns don't kill people, people kill people. The self appointed regulators of other's actions are even more hypocritical than the nuts that want their own armory. The capacity of weapons should be controlled and the nuts that are a threat to themselves or others, should be committed against their will. Fect the ACLU.
Its not that I could and others couldn't.
Its that I did and others didn't.

hesedmedia

Quote from: McBridefan1 on December 30, 2012, 11:19:03 AM
The only problem with your arguement hess is that in every great society there is compromise, sadly the gun lobby won't compromise one iota. We need to do what is best for everyone, not just those that want bigger and better killing sticks. A large segment of the population want fewer guns and smaller clips. No one is suggesting taking away all your guns. We just don't think an entire arsenal is necessary to defend yourself. What good do all your guns do you while you are separated from your children. An arsenal will not protect your children or your loved ones if you aren't there with them.

I agree with every claim you make here. I am doing my best to direct attention to history and data and demonstrate reason to the effect that disarming the populace is bad for everyone. If prohibition worked, we could outlaw every societal ill, but prohibition doesn't work, as YJ has noted in several posts. Advocates for state action never seem to notice this, but it's a violent proposition to advocate that some group of men that enjoy a monopoly on the use of force take things under threat of that force. It starts with that threat, and the violence then continues until it collects in the black and grey markets that invariably arise in reaction to prohibitions. Imagine any other prohibition and ask if it has really benefited the most people -- who do you think benefits from the prohibition of marijuana and other drugs?

I don't think an entire arsenal is necessary, either. I wasn't advocating for an entire arsenal. And being separated from your family is indeed a way to prevent being able to help them, but I don't see how it's relevant, my wife trains as well.

hesedmedia

"All I will say is that in my view the it appears the bigger the weapon the safer certain people feel, so when mini nukes come on sale in the shopping malls it will make everyone feel safer, and maybe you can build giant walls surrounded by mine-fields and have neighbourhood funded watchtowers and searchlights and machine gun posts too."

This is a fallacy referred to argumentum ad absurdum. No one has advocated for larger weapons or more deadly weapons or weapons of indiscriminate area of effect, and to show that conclusions based on that advocacy would have absurd implications is just irrelevant. I have presented arguments and data supporting the position that firearms that are already legal have legitimate use, and that stealing and prohibiting them at gunpoint makes no one safer, but does prevent those legitimate uses.

I happen to agree with you about proliferation as it applies to governments, but that has more to do with the nature of governments than the nature of weapons.


Forever Fulham

Hesed, you sprinkle around the words "tyrant", "tyrants", "tyranny", and "tyrannical" a lot in your postings.  Tyrants under the bed, in the closet, next door, everywhere, just waiting for their chance.  Do you have a tri-pointed hat?  Do you attend tea party meetings?  Belong to a militia movement in Idaho perhaps?  Did you booby trap your backyard with wires and explosives to stop the tyrants from storming the zoyzia and making their way to your gun cabinet in the master bedroom closet or perhaps the basement?  You've taken gun shooting/handling classes.  Good for you.  I have too.  I've seen what 9mm and .38 bullet can do from a simple handgun with a limited round chamber.  You assert such bullets fired by police routinely fail to stop suspects.  I'm calling bullpoo on that.  And as to the odd "Dirty Harry" reference, I've seen what a .45 does to a watermelon at 30 yards.   Doesn't stop the bad guy from continuing his assault?  Are you crazy?You segue into a Mexican border discussion about (the Bush Administration's) ill-conceived plan to supply marked weapons to Mexican drug gangs (in the hope of tracking their activities through the use of such identified weapons)--a plan continued for a time under the first Obama Administration.  I don't recall all of the particulars.  I'd have to research it more.  But what does such a crazy scheme cooked up by the Bush people have to do with any of the points you are trying to make?  "Heads on pikes"?  No, though this outrageous claim was repeated by Jan Brewer of Arizona during the last campaign in that state, there was not one scintilla of evidence of 'heads on pikes' or otherwise impalements of Caucasians by illegal Hispanics.  Just more scare lies cooked up by the Right, likely given the semblance of credibility by Fox network.  Behaviour modification by scary lies and distortions presented as facts.  It doesn't advance any serious discussion of addressing gun massacres to throw up the simplistic jingo that 'Guns don't kill people; people kill people."  We all know people pull the trigger.  But we also know that some guns have excessive mass-killing capability.  So, in a sense, then, guns do kill people.  A lot of them, and quickly.  We don't need or want guns in church or in bars.  Such laws were rammed through by reactionaries.  They are an abomination and must be rescinded as soon as possible.


Forever Fulham

Heads on pikes... 2010 Arizona election campaign lunacy.  Pretty much put to bed here:

Governors debate takes an ugly turn

hesedmedia

"Hesed, you sprinkle around the words "tyrant", "tyrants", "tyranny", and "tyrannical" a lot in your postings.  Tyrants under the bed, in the closet, next door, everywhere, just waiting for their chance.  Do you have a tri-pointed hat?  Do you attend tea party meetings?  Belong to a militia movement in Idaho perhaps?  Did you booby trap your backyard with wires and explosives to stop the tyrants from storming the zoyzia and making their way to your gun cabinet in the master bedroom closet or perhaps the basement?"

Ad hominem is the last retreat of those that have lost the argument on logic, mate. The answer to all of those questions is 'no', but I won't respond in kind, stooping to the level of detailing all of the ways I can imagine you nursing at the state teat, because I am primarily interested in presenting reason to the rational, and indulging in this sort of thing is the first marker for a man that has abandoned rationality to further entrench himself in an unjustified position.

" You've taken gun shooting/handling classes.  Good for you.  I have too.  I've seen what 9mm and .38 bullet can do from a simple handgun with a limited round chamber.  You assert such bullets fired by police routinely fail to stop suspects.  I'm calling bullpoo on that.  And as to the odd "Dirty Harry" reference, I've seen what a .45 does to a watermelon at 30 yards.   Doesn't stop the bad guy from continuing his assault?  Are you crazy?"

...Me, the DOJ and the FBI: http://www.firearmstactical.com/pdf/fbi-hwfe.pdf

If you think a person is a watermelon, we have larger issues, and Callahan is supposed to have carried a .44 magnum (which still doesn't do what you see in the film). One shot stops are in the extreme minority, and it is not at all rare for officer-involved shootings to involve the expending of well more than 10 rounds. Defensive shooting is not shooting on a range, and it is not done in scientifically-controlled conditions.

If you cannot accept nor engage the evidence of the best available data, nothing I can say will make a difference.

"You segue into a Mexican border discussion about (the Bush Administration's) ill-conceived plan to supply marked weapons to Mexican drug gangs (in the hope of tracking their activities through the use of such identified weapons)--a plan continued for a time under the first Obama Administration.  I don't recall all of the particulars.  I'd have to research it more.  But what does such a crazy scheme cooked up by the Bush people have to do with any of the points you are trying to make?"

It goes to the moral bankruptcy of that same government to turn about and disarm the people they put at risk. That's the point.

" "Heads on pikes"?  No, though this outrageous claim was repeated by Jan Brewer of Arizona during the last campaign in that state, there was not one scintilla of evidence of 'heads on pikes' or otherwise impalements of Caucasians by illegal Hispanics.  Just more scare lies cooked up by the Right, likely given the semblance of credibility by Fox network.  Behaviour modification by scary lies and distortions presented as facts. "

I've spoken face-to-face with people that live on the border and claim to have discovered bodies without heads, human skins, and so-called 'rape trees' on the edges of their property. Do you imagine these people are lining up to appear on national television to be more readily identified? I do not work for Fox News, nor am I affiliated with them. If you doubt my honesty, that's fine, but do you imagine that the cartels respect the imaginary line between our two countries, and keep their violence on the Mexico side? Do you suppose that they would submit to your assault weapons ban?

"It doesn't advance any serious discussion of addressing gun massacres to throw up the simplistic jingo that 'Guns don't kill people; people kill people."  We all know people pull the trigger.  But we also know that some guns have excessive mass-killing capability.  So, in a sense, then, guns do kill people.  A lot of them, and quickly."

Guns are less effective than explosives for the suicide attacker. Tim McVeigh killed far more than any of these mass shootings, but no one called for stricter regulation of fertilizer or rental trucks. Furthermore, you can't stop a suicide attacker with fertilizer, but the only historically demonstrated method by which one can stop an active mass-killer is with a firearm. Massacres do not stop until the killer is engaged with a firearm or they choose to stop.

"We don't need or want guns in church or in bars.  Such laws were rammed through by reactionaries.  They are an abomination and must be rescinded as soon as possible."

Who is 'we'? In many states, the largest number genuinely do want those things allowed. Do you know better than they what they need or should want in their churches or bars? You're starting to invoke the language of religion to justify these assertions, and it is an oft-stated, although usually unfair, characterisation of the religious that their faith exists to counter all evidence contrary. Based on your level of engagement with argument and evidence, I think the characterization is fair in this instance.


Forever Fulham

Not one scintilla of evidence of 'heads on pikes'.  But you claimed to have spoken with a guy who says he saw it.  No published photos.  No corroboration.  But you know a guy who knows a guy. 

Your reply offers up nothing of substance.   Here's something to chew on:

While I agree the Bush Administration was morally bankrupt, the Fast and Furious gun running--or whatever it was called--was a bad idea, nothing more.  It doesn't support your theory of equivalence--that the dumb idea would indicate a government willing to confiscate privately owned firearms.  That's just paranoia.

Sunday, Dec 30, 2012 06:00 AM CST
Silencers: The NRA's latest big lie

Silencers could give the next Adam Lanza even more time to kill -- but to the NRA, they protect kids' hearing
By Alexander Zaitchik

A gruesome holiday season exercise: Think of some firearms and accessories that might have added to the body counts of Aurora and Newtown. More starkly, imagine the means by which coming Auroras and Newtowns will be made more deadly.

The exercise starts with a militarized baseline, as both shooters unloaded designed-for-damage rounds from high-capacity magazines loaded into assault rifles. Improving their killing efficiency would require one of two things: the ability to shoot more bullets faster, or more time. A fully automatic machine gun would provide the first. More minutes to hunt, meanwhile, might be gained by employing a noise suppressor, those metallic tubes better known as silencers. By muffling the noise generated with every shot by sonic booms and gas release, a silencer would provide a new degree of intimacy for public mass murder, delaying by crucial seconds or minutes the moment when someone calls the police after overhearing strange bangs coming from Theater 4 or Classroom D. The same qualities that make silencers the accessory of choice for targeted assassination offer advantages to the armed psychopath set on indiscriminate mass murder.

It should surprise no one that the NRA has recently thrown its weight behind an industry campaign to deregulate and promote the use of silencers. Under the trade banner of the American Silencer Association, manufacturers have come together with the support of the NRA to rebrand the silencer as a safety device belonging in every all-American gun closet. To nurture this potentially large and untapped market, the ASA last April sponsored the first annual all-silencer gun shoot and trade show in Dallas. America's silencer makers are each doing their part. SWR Suppressors is asking survivalists to send a picture of their "bugout bag" for a chance to win an assault rifle silencer. The firm Silencero — "We Dig Suppressors and What They Do" — has put together a helpful "Silencers Are Legal" website and produced a series of would-be viral videos featuring this asshole.


This Silencer Awareness Campaign is today's gun lobby in a bottle. The coordinated effort brings together the whole family: manufacturers, dealers, the gun press, rightwing lawmakers at every level of government, and the NRA. Each are doing their part to chip away at federal gun regulation in the name of profits and ideology. Together, they plan to strip the longstanding regulatory regime around silencers, and reintroduce them to the gun-buying public as wholesome, children-friendly accessories, as harmless as car mufflers.

In case you're wondering, the answer is yes, the gun lobby's grand strategy rests grotesquely on fake concern for child hearing health. Among the opening shots in the campaign was a feature in the February 2011 issue of Gun World, "Silence is Golden," penned by the veteran gun writer Jim Dickson. "One only has to look at children in the rest of the world learning to shoot with silencers, protecting their tender young ears, to see what an innocent safety device we are talking about here," writes Dickson. "To use an overworked propaganda phrase, legalize silencers 'for the sake of the children.'" [Emphasis mine.]

Proponents of healthy hearing will be heartened to know the NRA shares Gun World's concern for America's tender young ears. The organization officially entered the silencer-awareness fray in November of 2011, around the time the Utah-based American Silencer Association was founded. It's opening statement took the form of an article posted to its lobbying division website: "Suppressors: Good for our hearing... And for the shooting sports." With this piece, the NRA finally acknowledged the relationship between health care costs and guns.

"Billions of dollars are spent every year in our healthcare system for hearing loss conditions, such as shooting-related tinnitus," explained the NRA. It was a very important point that had long been overlooked in the gun control debate; because if there is a single pressing gun safety issue in America today, it is the hearing, comfort and convenience of recreational shooters who find orange earplugs unsightly. The NRA is also extremely concerned about the fright children may receive from shooting or standing near the reports of high-caliber weapons. These jolts could have a lasting and detrimental developmental impact, possibly imbuing America's impressionable and tender young brains with the notion that guns are loud, dangerous things. The NRA firmly believes that American freedom is best served by giving 9mm gunfire the feel and sound of a toy cap gun. As the NRA's Lacey Biles put it during last April's Dallas Silencer Shoot, silencers are good for "getting younger folks involved [in guns]. They're less afraid of the loud bang."

For these reasons, the NRA believes America must "move to eliminate the laws, regulations and policies that discourage or prohibit suppressor use."

And move we have. The NRA has enjoyed state-level success chipping away at restrictions on the use of silencers around the country, an effort that has proceeded largely unnoticed in the shadows of higher-profile battles over the spread of Concealed Carry and Stand Your Ground laws. Silencers are currently legal with permit in 40 states, a growing number of which are rescinding bans on their use while hunting.

The gun lobby's silencer campaign has bigger prey in mind than state hunting laws. Silencers are among the few accessories regulated by the National Firearms Act. To purchase or transfer a silencer, you must acquire a special license, enter the serial number in a federal registry, and pay a $200 fee. (The fee, which equaled a de facto ban in 1934, has not been adjusted for inflation in 79 years.) For gun extremists who struggle with introductory-level American history and political theory, the licensing regime is half Stamp Act, half Yellow Badge. What most outrages the manufacturers about the regime is that it works. By licensing silencers, tracking and taxing their exchange, the government has kept them from flooding the market like so many other military-market gun accessories with cameos in recent massacres and serial sniper attacks. "Simple licensing requirements weeds out both blatant criminals and a certain kind of stockpiling insurrectionist who refuses to engage with the federal government," says Ladd Everitt of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. "The law has been effective."

Aside from offering a very expensive alternative to earplugs, what conceivable sporting or personal-defense purpose is served by pouring silencers into a gun market dominated by semi-automatic pistols and assault rifles? If history offers any useful clues, and it usually does, the answer is none. The history of the silencer is a twentieth century tale populated by Mafiosi hits, hidden snipers, and special ops ambush teams. It all adds up to decades worth of "negative branding baggage" that the gun lobby is now trying to scrub away like a used car-salesman winding back the speedometer on a lemon.

The silencer began innocently enough. When Hiram Percy Maxim patented the first silencer in 1908, he was just a nice fellow working in the family business, a guy who simply enjoyed finding ways to make loud things quiet. Among Maxim's many other inventions was an early muffler design for car engines. A quarter-century later, silencers still hadn't acquired the bad rep they have today. Their best-known criminal use at the time of the 1934 law was as an aid in late-night poaching.

Society did not form its lasting perceptions of the silencer in the decades of Percy's .22 pistols and midnight pig poaching. The image the NRA must scrub is the one that formed early in what might be called the Second Silencer Age, when a new breed of steel "cans" emerged and became associated with rapid, discreet, controlled killing. The silencers the gun lobby is trying to mainstream can make ninjas of high-caliber handguns, long-barrel sniper rifles, and assault weapons, all commonly featured in military-themed silencer ads. The Second Age that produced these tools was commenced not by a charming dynastic American industrial engineer with wide interests like Percy Maxim. Rather, it was born in the rural Georgia kill-gadget lab of a notoriously cracked and ruthless CIA black ops contractor, known in gun circles as the Wizard of Whistling Death.

*   *   *

Mitch WerBell gained his reputation for cold-blooded efficiency during his days with the CIA's wartime precursor, the OSS. After the war he maintained his ties to the Agency as a man who could be depended on to figure out how make problems go away. His accomplished his revolutionary leap in silencer technology in 1967, during a short break from international intrigue. The previous year, federal agents raided WerBell's mercenary training camp in Florida, where he was in the final stages of preparing an army of Miami-based Cubans to invade Haiti and oust "Papa Doc" François Duvalier.

WerBell patented his silencer under the name of his boutique weapons development firm, SIONICS, or Studies In the Operational Negation of Insurgents and Counter-Subversion. WerBell's silencer was the first to successfully muffle automatic and semi-automatic weapons fire. On some weapons, the silencer also increased accuracy and power. Knowing he had a big breakthrough on his hands, WerBell convinced a group of rich investors that his invention would make them new fortunes, and just maybe win the Cold War for the West along the way. Oddly, the gang of investors included the eccentric and liberal antiwar philanthropist Stewart R. Mott. According to some accounts, WerBell sold Mott by telling him the principles behind the silencer could be adapted to lawn mowers and other devices to reduce suburban noise pollution.

WerBell's silencer not only decreased the volume of the gun's report and increased its accuracy; it also reduced the powder flash of machine gun fire, opening up new possibilities for nighttime ambush and assassination missions. WerBell packed his silencer and flew to Indochina, where he wowed American and South Vietnamese brass. Orders from the Pentagon soon followed, and in 1968 WerBell began large-scale production of his silencers under a SIONICS subsidiary he named Environmental Industries, a sarcastic reference to his intended contribution to solving the strains of overpopulation.

The timing of the new silencer's introduction to Vietnam was just right for business. By 1968, the U.S. had pivoted from away from its early strategy that included an effort to "win hearts and minds," and had embraced a model of search-and-destroy exemplified by the death squads of the CIA's Phoenix Program. The M-16s carried by these special units were retrofitted with SIONICS silencers. They soon reported increased lethality and accuracy in ambushes and targeted killings. In his out-of-print 1978 masterpiece, "Spooks," former Harper's editor Jim Hougan reports that Green Beret officers singled WerBell's invention out for praise in Congressional budget hearings.

According to Hougan, WerBell consumed the Army's official kill counts like a 12-year-old reads box scores. From his compound in Georgia, he relished Pentagon data demonstrating his silencer's economy and lethality. In the late 1970s, he boasted to Hougan that Army rifles equipped with his silencers helped kill nearly 2,000 Vietcong in the first six months, and reduced the number of bullets per kill to one-point-three rounds, a feat he boasted was "the greatest cost-effectiveness the Army's ever known." Whatever the actual numbers, the SIONICS silencer was widely recognized as a huge advance in the science of killing. WerBell emerged from the shadows to become a patriotic cult hero to the fathers of those now agitating for silencer deregulation. In 1972, WerBell played a starring role in David Truby's admiring study of these new tools and their uses, "Silencers, Snipers, and Assassins: An Overview of Whispering Death."

WerBell didn't stop tinkering after reinventing the silencer. He also developed the gun he thought his silencer deserved. The result was the ultimate greaser. The ultra-sleek and compact MAC 11 weighed and sized little more than a conventional pistol and spat 14 bullets per second, or 850 a minute. Had WerBell been working today, he might have produced a semi-automatic version for the civilian market. In the early 1970s, the Pentagon was the only game in town. WerBell fought hard for but failed to land a massive contract to make the MAC a standard-issue weapon. Had he succeeded, SIONICS might be a household name today. (This is how gun empires are born. Gaston Glock designed his first gun competing in an open tender bid to produce a sidearm for the Austrian Army.)

The Pentagon's rejection was the first of two that deepened WerBell's bitterness at the government he served for so long. As he courted clients among foreign intelligence agencies, the State Department denied him an export license, arguing that the spread of WerBell's silencers was likely to increase the risk of assassinations around the world. A sign of saner times gone by, there was in the early 1970s no American Silencer Association to help WerBell market his products to preppers with "bugout bags," and no Wayne LaPierre or Chris Cox to strategize state and national-level assaults on the National Firearms Act. Instead, WerBell the Wizard of Whistling Death hit the road to peddle his remaining inventory on the global grey and black markets. He sold his wares out of a suitcase like the house-calling gun dealer in Taxi Driver, shooting up stacks of telephone books before giddy prospective clients who marveled over the little machine gun emitting such seductive sibilance, ssyyyt ssyyyt ssyyyt, the contract killer's lullaby.

Before leaving the sideshow stage of history, WerBell made one last lunge for greatness. His hopes of building a gun empire stymied, in 1972 WerBell began planning an amphibious invasion of a tiny Bahamanian archipelago known as Abaco, which was home to a small separatist movement. WerBell enlisted financial support from real estate mogul and Libertarian Party leader Mike Oliver, whose Phoenix Foundation existed to seed utopic Libertarian projects like the one WerBell imagined on the beaches of Abaco — an independent global tax haven, home of SIONICS headquarters, and the Undisputed Silencer Capital of the World. As with his planned invasion of Haiti eight years prior, WerBell was still training his mercenaries when the whole thing fell apart from infighting and a surprise visit from the Feds.

*   *   *

Telling Mitch WerBell's story is just a long way of demonstrating why the new NRA-backed Hearing Heath First! silencer-promotion campaign is a particularly hideous and towering architectural example of the Gun Lobby's Nouveau Bat poo Style, which if not ridiculed and condemned is guaranteed to crash down on all of us, leading to new and yet more lethal mutations in our national plague of gun violence.

There are very good reasons why the silencer industry is contending with a nasty case of Vietnam Syndrome. The reason the public associates silencers with death squads, assassination raids, and mafia hits is because these were the uses WerBell had in mind when he engineered them. They are also the uses to which they are best suited and most needed, if that's the word. It wasn't all that long ago that even the Freaks of Fairfax understood that the silencer's dark reputation was deep and well deserved. As recently as 2000, the NRA showed a rare sensitivity for public perceptions and forbade a silencer manufacturer from exhibiting its wares at the NRA's national convention. Kevin Brittingham, of the silencer maker Advanced Armament Co., says the NRA's executive office called him before the millennial year convention in Charlotte and told him not to come. "We don't want the news media focusing on your table and putting guns in a bad light," the NRA explained.

A decade later, the NRA has cozied up to the industry view that everyone should have a silencer, and that the days are over when WerBell's toys were the accessory love that dare not speak its name. The NRA now sees the widespread negative view of silencers as a branding problem to be corrected through advertising and public relations.

Toward this end, the gun lobby is on multiple fronts advancing the argument that silencer-phobia is the product of popular culture demonization and sensationalism.

"Unfortunately, too many Americans (including some gun owners) still fall victim to the unfair portrayals of silencers by Hollywood," the NRA-ILA gently chides its members. Gun World's Jim Dickson, meanwhile, prays for an America that allows its film industry to assist in "the transformation of an innocuous safety and noise-reduction device to a sinister assassin's tool in the public mind."

If anybody reading this needs one more nudge before abandoning in finality the idea of any kind of "dialogue" with the gun lobby, I suggest reading the NRA and the gun press bleat about the way violent movies have besmirched the good name of the honorable American silencer. They're pointing to the same Hollywood gun makers routinely employ to product-place its wares, from best-selling pistols to fully automatic shotguns. (In 2011, Glock handguns made corporate cameos in 15 percent of No. 1 films.) The gun lobby pointing to Hollywood is as rich as Wayne LaPierre censuring video games, which thrives at the service of the gun-industry in ways we're just now beginning to understand.

If the current campaign succeeds in delisting silencers from NFA regulation, the gun lobby likely won't wait long before targeting the remaining regulatory regimes limiting the circulation of fully automatic machine guns and even hand grenades. Do not be surprised when you see a 2014 Gun World feature extolling freshwater blast fishing as a great way to connect kids and nature, while reducing the risks of fishing with sharp steel hooks, some of which have dangerous double jags. If you can't see the safety rationale here, or the Freedom Logic that undergirds it, then you obviously do not care about America's children and their millions of young tender fingers.


hesedmedia

#93
"Not one scintilla of evidence of 'heads on pikes'.  But you claimed to have spoken with a guy who says he saw it.  No published photos.  No corroboration.  But you know a guy who knows a guy."

No, I've spoken to a few different residents of Arizona that live on the border that claim to have discovered and reported several disturbing remnants of cartel violence. That is second-hand evidence, not third-hand. Further, when I asked if you imagined the cartels respect the border, or would abide by an assault weapons ban, you gave no response.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/04/us-beheading-arizona-idUSTRE7230L320110304

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/us/23border.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://abcnews.go.com/US/bodies-found-arizona-related-drug-cartels-police/story?id=16485975#.UOFBOG9QV8E

Are these less violent than heads on pikes? Are those right-wing conspiracy news sources?

"Your reply offers up nothing of substance."

This is the level of engagement to which I've grown accustomed in this discussion. Sheer incredulity and bald contradiction belong to the level of rhetoric that offers nothing.

"While I agree the Bush Administration was morally bankrupt, the Fast and Furious gun running--or whatever it was called--was a bad idea, nothing more.  It doesn't support your theory of equivalence--that the dumb idea would indicate a government willing to confiscate privately owned firearms.  That's just paranoia."

I'm starting to get the impression that you aren't bothering to read anything I post in response. I clearly said that wasn't the point, there is no theory of equivalence. The point is that it is a morally bankrupt sort of hypocrisy you're advocating to arm the violent criminal and then publicly disarm the victim. You are the one advocating the confiscation of all effective means of defense for these people that must deal with the threat of US-armed, cartel-backed violence in their collective backyard.

And then you drag yet another red herring -- sound suppressors this time -- across the trail.

This will be my last contribution to this debate, as I'm quite happy to let the objective reader come to their own conclusion about which position is supported by evidence and sound reasoning, and it feels as if the discussion has reached a level of ad hominem I haven't any interest in continuing to facilitate. I do want to review some threads of the discussion here, though, before I cry off. (this will be lengthy - though not as many words as your silencer article- fair warning)

(If you skip reading the rest) I truly hope I've caused no offence, and I wish you and yours a safe and happy New Year (also, FFS, let's get a point or three)!


I initially gave a few observations and arguments:

1. Active shooters always attack soft targets in which personal defensive firearms are prohibited.
2. A firearm is the only practical means of defense for the physically less-capable against the more physically-imposing.
3. Every time a spree killer is engaged with a firearm, they stop. They do not stop until then, or until they choose to stop.
4. Your unwillingness to use a firearm defensively does not grant you moral authority to arbitrate someone else's ability to do so.
5. Prohibitions have predictable results: trade becomes violent and less predictable, and those disposed toward criminality engage in the most trade, and prohibitions expand in scope until unqualified failure is achieved.

To these arguments, you responded with:

1. Ft. Hood as a counter-example of a spree-killer attacking a hard target
2. No response - assume argument stands
3. Accusation that engagement of a spree-killer with a firearm is a 'pipe-dream' -- I'll mark that unsupported incredulity.
4. No response - assume argument stands
5. Incredulity, call for justifying rationale.

In addition, you introduced some observations and arguments:

1A. Armor piercing rounds should be illegal.
2A. Armed personnel in schools are equally likely to hit children as the assailant, so arming personnel is not acceptable.
3A. The idea of oppressive government is laughable, at least insofar as it is used to object to registration of arms.

To this, I responded:

1. The victims at Ft. Hood were unarmed, the location of the shooting a gun-free zone.
2. Argument stands.
3. The historical fact that spree-killers either stop when engaged with a firearm, or when they choose to stop.
4. Argument stands.
5. I ask "How many government agencies can you think of that have relinquished their role and declared 'job done'? How many government agencies can you think that have gradually expanded their defined mission until they are bickering with other agencies over the areas they overlap?"

1A. The three most recent spree-killers were wearing body armor. Stopping a spree-killer is a legitimate use for armor-piercing ammunition.
2A. Armed personnel could be trained to roughly twice the standard to which police officers are without undue expense.
3A. Laughability is irrelevant. Historical fact is that every oppressive government has sought to disarm its populace.


Your response as follows:

1. Ft. Hood had security details on the base, and guns at training ranges.
2. No response - argument stands
3. No response - argument stands
4. No response - argument stands
5. You attribute something another poster said to me, then on those grounds charge me with changing an argument from blaming the left to characterizing governments in general.

1A. You engineer a straw man -- "because law enforcement might need AP rounds, they should be legal", then meet the straw man with incredulity.
2A. No response - rebuttal stands.
3A. Expansion in scope by government agencies does not entail expansion in scope of prohibition, at least not to the realm of total confiscation. TSA as an example(?)

In addition, you add another point:

4A. Demand for support for the claim (I didn't make) that crimes with assault weapons didn't increase when the AWB was lifted.

My response:

1. Quote the Ft. Hood CO to the effect that personal defensive arms were not permitted in the area Hassan attacked.
2. Argument stands
3. Argument stands
4. Argument stands
5. Correction on assertion that I had charged the left only with mission creep: it is a feature of all state efforts.

1A. Identify the straw man, the point is that police are not there in time to make a meaningful difference in spree-killer cases, what they have is irrelevant.
2A. Rebuttal stands
3A. The inevitability of confiscation is a straw man, the point is that oppressive governments seek to disarm the intended oppressed, whether by degree or in total is a methodological difference, not an essential one. I agree with your TSA example.
4A. Evidence:  "Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003", a Federally-funded study from 2004.

Your response:
1. No response - argument stands
2. Argument stands
3. Argument stands
4. Argument stands
5. Argument stands

1-4A. No response - rebuttals stand

5A. The NRA lobbies in a bullying, heavy-handed, and dishonest manner.

My response:

5A. Lobbying is evil, expectations of grace and decorum in political lobbying are misplaced.

I add:

1B. Sportsmanship has nothing to do with debate of the Second Amendment.

Your response:

6A. I am engaging in sophistry
7A. The Newtown shooter might have been unable to secure the rifle with which he committed the crime if his mother had not had it.
8A. The killer was too quick to allow for armed response.
9A. Your second grade teacher would not want to be armed, and would be ineffective if pressed into service.

My response:

6A. Ad hominem is a sign of a weak position
7A. Many tools are available, a few more effective, to the spree-killer.
8A. The killer was an untrained 20-year-old, with no special ability or training. Speculation about the speed of the attack is sheer conjecture. To insist that only mad men can effectively handle weapons is insulting, unfounded, and dangerous for those that would otherwise defend life with force.
9A. No one wants to arm your second grade teacher, or any other unwilling personnel.

Your response:

6A. Apologise
7A. You say my counter-argument doesn't support arming school staff.
8A. No response - rebuttal stands
9A. No response - rebuttal stands

My response:

7A. Of course not, it isn't meant to. It goes to the level of impact on facilitation of spree killing the AWB would have.

Your responses at this point, I think, turn to YJ. Would that we had won a game or two, maybe this would be over :).

So, at that point,

1-5 of my original arguments stand un-rebutted.

1A-9A of your arguments have been rebutted without response.

Now, you introduce new points:

10A. Semi-automatic weapons are unnecessary for defensive or hunting application.
11A. There is no need for guns in church, demand for counter-reasons.
12A. Good people don't fear registration of arms.
13A. Lead bullets and shot should be illegal.

My response:

10A. The evidence of CCW-involved shootings requiring multiple rounds. The evidence of police-involved shootings requiring multiple rounds. Criminals will still use semi-automatic weapons, even if the victims will not, and even if prohibition is successful in limiting criminal access, criminals sometimes have been known to show up in pairs or more.
11A. I give several examples of spree-killers in churches.
12A. I question your definition of 'good people', and note that some good people apply lessons from history in a different manner than you do.
13A. I ask for justification for prohibiting lead bullets.

Your response:

10A. Your assertion that 8 rounds is enough for a defensive handgun, and that the only need for any capacity beyond that is down to poor marksmanship.
11A. No response - rebuttal stands
12A. Bald incredulity -- "I'm not buying that argument"
13A. Lead shot makes animals sick.
14A. You will never agree with me.

My response:

10A. Sourced DOJ/FBI document on the wounding properties of handgun cartridges to the effect that multiple shots are almost always required to stop an assailant. Note that even lower-capacity firearms are going to be largely semi-automatic, which you've advocated prohibiting.
11A. Rebuttal stands
12A. I give an inductive argument from recorded history for thinking that "oppressive governments seek disarmament of the populace"
13A. Concede the argument, note being under the impression that lead shot for small game was already prohibited in many states.
14A. I ask for clarification: does this mean that there is literally no argument or evidence that would change your mind on the matter?

I add:

2B. What qualifies you to arbitrate what a potential sexual assault victim of small stature may be allowed to defend herself from a larger assailant?
3B. Show a legitimate use for semi-automatic, high-capacity rifles: defense from military-grade equipment in the hands of cartels operating within US borders in the Southwest that have noted dispensation for violence.

Your response:

10A. Your experience watching 9mm and .38 shells fired from lower-capacity handguns, and your experience watching a .45 hit a watermelon at 30 yards as counter-examples to the DOJ/FBI report I cited.
11A. You again assert that 'we don't need or want guns in churches or bars'
12A. Ad hominem about where I may live, political leanings, etc; essentially to the effect that no, no good (on your definition) person could infer the possibility of government oppression from history.
13A. Argument stands
14A. No response - Assume literally no argument or reason could change your position.

2B. No response - argument stands
3B. You charge that border violence in view of the Fast and Furious business is irrelevant to the discussion, and that one of the evidences I gave for the Mexican cartels dispensation to do violence on both sides of the border is a spurious claim.

Then you add:

15A. Guns are really effective at killing lots of people, really quickly.

My response:

10A. Note that people are not watermelons. I am happy to let the reader decide between your experience with ballistic-ly testing said watermelons and the DOJ/FBI document I've cited twice now.
11A. I point out that, in addition to churches already being targets for spree-killers, the people in many states really do want guns allowed in these places, and ask for your qualification to arbitrate what they can have under threat of force.
12A. Identify the ad hominem. Rebuttal stands.
13A. Argument stands
15A. Explosives created with commonly available ingredients are far more effective. Also, firearms can be used by good men to stop evil men.

2B. Argument stands
3B. I appeal to my personal experience speaking with border-area residents, and also note that, irrespective of whether or not heads were ever discovered on pikes on the US side of the border (perhaps all of the AZ residents with which I spoke were lying), the sort of people that decapitate, skin people, set fire to them, and mark the spots they commit rapes, are probably not the sort to abide by US firearms law. Source the information.

Your response:

10A. No response - rebuttal stands
11A. No response - rebuttal stands
12A. No repsonse - rebuttal stands
13A. Argument stands
15A. No response - rebuttal stands

2B. No response - argument stands
3B. You charge that my personal claim is spurious, again. And invent a straw man: "Fast and Furious equates to arms confiscation", then knock it down.

So far as I can count, then:

1-5 of my original arguments stand un-rebutted.

1-12A of your arguments have been rebutted without response.

13A Your argument in favor of outlawing lead shot -- I concede in ignorance -- stands.

15A has been rebutted with no response

1-2B of my additional arguments stand un-rebutted

3B stands or falls on whether or not the reader thinks that the Mexican drug cartels will respect US law along the border.

I am quite happy at this point, then, to let the reader determine which position is the more rationally defensible.

LBNo11

...my apologies for coming back on, but I have just seen this and I think it is extremely relevant:-

Twitter: @LBNo11FFC


YankeeJim

Quote from: LBNo11 on December 31, 2012, 12:49:25 PM
...my apologies for coming back on, but I have just seen this and I think it is extremely relevant:-




Funny and strangely accurate!

As to the fisticuffs between our other two, I don't know about beheaded bodies in Arizona but the reality of our southern border is one of lawlessness. Mexico, which has draconian gun laws, has managed to slaughter in excess of 40,000 of its people in the last 6-7 years. Next time I am on Interstate 8, which runs along the border, I'll snap a picture of one of the federally installed signs warning people not to stop for any reason due to the potential violence.

Its not that I could and others couldn't.
Its that I did and others didn't.

Forever Fulham

You offer up nothing of substance.  The support you offer for heads on pikes is a story about a drug deal decapitation over 400 pounds of stolen marijuana.   It doesn't support your claim that we need assault rifles to stop the illegal border crossing Mexican drug gangs from killing innocent Arizonans and putting their heads on pikes.  Violent crime numbers  have actually been going down in Arizona.

And as to your tyranny theory, consider Nazi Germany, Iraq during Saddam Hussein's reign, and, at all times, Switzerland.  Germany never confiscated guns from any of its citizens except the Jews.  My grandmother fled Germany with her brother and sister.  I have her first hand stories, as well as historical reports.  Did the non-Jewish German citizens--those who kept their guns--rise up against the tyranny of the Nazi regime?  No.   Were there enough Jews in Germany that if they had been able to keep their privately owned guns they could have stopped the holocaust from happening to them?  No.  Saddam Hussein did not disarm the heavily-armed citizens of Iraq when he rose to power and maintained his grip on power.  He was certainly a tyrant.  No argument there from me.  Did all of the privately owned guns prevent or overthrow tyranny?  No.  The U.S. military did it.  People like to claim that Switzerland is the most armed country on earth.  I don't know where they get that statistic--maybe from the same people who talk of heads on pikes.  The Swiss have mandatory military service.  They are issued a semiautomatic rifle.  They keep it for life.  Other than those individuals, there is very strict gun control in that country.  13% of the country have such guns.  13%, Hesed.  Heard of any tyrants subjugating the Swiss people?  After all, it's only 13%...  Neither have I. 

Let's agree to stop.  You aren't going to convince me, nor I, you.  We are both fairly entrenched in our views.  At this point, we are really addressing the larger audience (which is likely getting tired of this back and forth).  I promise to stop, just as you have promised to stop.  No more then.  Let's see how all this plays out, post-Newtown.   You're a Fulham fan, so I like you.  Period.  Next game I get to, if you're there, I'm buying the first two pints.  I leave you with this piece from the NY Times:




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 28, 2012
The Deadly Fantasy of Assault WeaponsAdam Lanza shot 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., using a semiautomatic, military-style assault rifle made by Bushmaster. William Spengler Jr. used the same type of Bushmaster rifle to kill two firefighters last week in Webster, N.Y. The Washington snipers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, also used a Bushmaster in a spree that killed 10 people in 2002.

Bushmasters are by no means the only assault weapons of choice among mass killers (the Aurora shooter used a Smith & Wesson), but the brand's repeated presence in murderous incidents reflects Bushmaster's enormous popularity in the gun world, the result of a successful marketing campaign aimed at putting military firepower and machismo in the hands of civilians. Gun owners once talked about the need for personal protection and sport hunting, but out-of-control ad campaigns like Bushmaster's have replaced revolvers and shotguns with highly lethal paramilitary fantasies.

The guns, some of which come in camouflage and desert khaki, bristle with features useful only to an infantry soldier or a special-forces operative. A flash suppressor on the end of a barrel makes it possible to shoot at night without a blinding flare. Quick-change magazines let troops reload easily. Barrel shrouds allow precise control without fear of burns from a muzzle that grows hot after multiple rounds are fired. But now anyone can own these guns, and millions are in civilian hands.

"There is an allure to this weapon that makes it unusually attractive," Scott Knight, former chairman of the International Chiefs of Police Firearms Committee, told USA Today, speaking of the Bushmaster rifles. "The way it looks, the way it handles — it screams assault weapon."

The company's catalog and ads show soldiers moving on patrol through jungles, Bushmasters at the ready. "When you need to perform under pressure, Bushmaster delivers," says the advertising copy, superimposed over the silhouette of a soldier holding his helmet against the backdrop of an American flag. "Forces of opposition, bow down. You are single-handedly outnumbered," said a 2010 catalog, peddling an assault rifle billed as "the ultimate military combat weapons system." (Available to anyone for $2,500.)

In case that message was too subtle, the company appealed directly to the male egos of its most likely customers. "Consider your man card reissued," said one Bushmaster campaign (pulled off the Web after the Newtown shooting), next to a photo of a carbine. "If it's good enough for the professional, it's good enough for you."

The effect of these marketing campaigns on fragile minds is all too obvious, allowing deadly power in the wrong hands. But given their financial success, gun makers have apparently decided that the risk of an occasional massacre is part of the cost of doing business.


YankeeJim

Agreed, time to get back to Fulham with one exception. Had the Jews been armed and rose up in self defense, the rest of the world, to say nothing of decent Germans, would have had to take notice. Likely too, the Roma people as well as gay folks and perhaps even the relatives of the handicapped would have joined in. Thing is, we'll never know. What I do believe is that the reason for the belligerent stance of Israel is based on the fact that they were unable to fight back and have resolved to never be a helpless victim again.

Nevermore!
Its not that I could and others couldn't.
Its that I did and others didn't.


hesedmedia

"You're a Fulham fan, so I like you.  Period.  Next game I get to, if you're there, I'm buying the first two pints."

I feel the same, and I've got the next two. Happy New Year!

Logicalman

#99
Quote from: Forever Fulham on December 31, 2012, 04:28:08 AM
Not one scintilla of evidence of 'heads on pikes'.  But you claimed to have spoken with a guy who says he saw it.  No published photos.  No corroboration.  But you know a guy who knows a guy.  

Your reply offers up nothing of substance.   Here's something to chew on:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/10/12/us-mexico-drugs-zetas-idUSTRE69B3LZ20101012


Whilst not wishing to intervene, or take sides with any of those in this interesting and informative debate, I would ask that it not take the form of the recent presidential debates with the 'prove it' shouts.

Above is a link to a story about Mexican  cartel, using a gang of thugs, that do, in fact, behead people and put their heads on spikes. Just because a witness is unwilling to publicly identify themselves, the fear of retribution must be obvious to any reasonable person, does not mean it doesn't happen, and to someone out whilst first failing to check what they say is correct or not, displays a somewhat presidential manner of debate. I do not believe I need to explain that term after what we witnessed this past year.

So, keep it clean, keep it honest, and above all keep it respectful.