From reading the supporting materials for the 2nd Amendment, I think it's pretty clear that the founders wanted the common citizen to have the same weapons as the standing army, if any.
They were less certain they wanted a standing army than they were sure they wanted armed citizens.
If you go full-no-true-Scotsman about the 2nd Amendment, you have to demand a repeal of the NFA so that we can go out and buy the proper small arms and scream that anything less is... I dunno, treason or something.
I'm no true Scotsman.
But the people who wrote, debated, passed and then ratified the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights would be appalled at what we endure from our government.
I think they'd, likewise, be thrilled we'd made the conceptual leap that things like radio, television and the internet are speech.
But I also think they'd have started shooting quite a while ago.
We've come so far, but lost so much.
I think that if the founding fathers took a time machine to today, they'd end up shooting at us for our stupidity.
ReplyDeleteI would be very happy to peel back all the gun control laws back to the NFA and then kick that sucker down the stairs and jump on it until it is dead. Deader than the Hildabeast's presidential plans.
I want that 105mm howitzer. Why? Because... 'Murica! (Can I afford said 105mm howitzer? No. I just want the freedom to have the opportunity to own one.)
On the plus side, you CAN own a 105mm Howitzer. They're out there! Just fill out your Form 4 and drop $200 on top of the price of the tube.
DeleteAmmo? You're left to rolling your own and using an ever dwindling supply of brass.
I can't remember if I touched on it before. There's lots of things that are legal to own, but impossible to acquire. Like a 40mm HEDP round. The company that makes them won't sell you one, even though it's the same $200 destructive device stamp process as the M203 that fires it.
Yes, I can buy one that is already out there, some surplus gun. With the aforementioned tax stamp. Storage of ammunition needing a further check with the ATF and no self-boomie rounds.
ReplyDeleteWhat I want is the ability, in case I win the lottery, is to go to Uncle Sam's Cannon Foundry and get a shiny new one, along with the appropriate ammo. Without having to fantasize about rolling my own.
Like my great-something-something-father, who rolled his own armed merchant that he used for shipping between New Orleans and points south, and then, after 1861, did a little blockade running.
Those rights. Right there, those rights he had. Those are the rights I want back. Friggin New Deal bull-scat.
I want common-sense Democrat control. After all, they're the ones always shooting and assassinating and blowing stuff up.
I don't think anyone is making shiny new 105's. They're still using up WW2 stocks of tubes.
DeleteDestructive Devices in the form of artillery and cannon are in a strange place. It's legal to buy them and own them. No restrictions on their age. But the places that make them don't sell to non-government by policy not because of law or regulation.
So it's not government that's the problem, really, about buying a shiny new 105mm gun, but private industry whom wouldn't sell us the things.
Then there's the private/public weirdness of places like Lake City Arsenal where a private company runs the government's machines and facility. We can buy overruns from Lake City's ammo production, literal surplus. The thing about guns is Rock Island and Waterlivet don't seem to have overruns and have the same private/public deal going on. They simply don't make more than the government orders so while they COULD sell us one, there's never one available for sale.
Where government being a problem comes back into this is when they DO surplus a gun, they've decided by regulation to destroy them rather than sell them.
I'd very much, someday, like to have my own M1A1. The demil requirements for the armor and gun means I won't get a tank, but a pile of scrap.
I want to be a part of a company that is allowed to make faithful reproductions of period automatic weapons and be able to sell them on the open marke… Wait, that's not allowed any more. I can buy a fully auto weapon, as long as it was made and on the civi market before a certain date, but I still want a fully auto just for fun.
DeleteAs to the 105, still in use as the M119A1/A2. New from Royal Ordinance. Both the Army and the Marines use it. So, not made in USA, which means no import for me, even if I had the cake to purchase it.
As to the whole demil requirements, those just plain suck. All those nice M113s shredded or used as targets. The later versions were really fast, well equipped, and easily uparmored and uparmed, and they float (especially the ArisGator modifications) and would be great as a hurricane bug-out vehicle (can fit a wheelchair in the back, outfit it as a camper and whoo-hoooo!) But, noooooo… Can only sell them as scrap. Bastards.
You can buy all the ex-soviet crap you want, as long as it doesn't go Bang, but you can no-longer buy new or good surplus USA stuff. Royal Bastards.
I want my rights back.
I'm with you.
DeleteWhat group supports the repeal of the NFA?
Cue crickets!
The non-aligned angry mob of grouchy guys who don't like other people.
DeleteA mob of them can be seen because they'll actually get within 20' of each other, grudgingly, while snarling at each other.
Communications is by grunting mostly, with an occasional 'ayup', 'yup', 'nope', 'uh-huh' and other low syllabic words.
People run in fear when the 'Get Off My Lawn' crowd starts using full sentences and arcane words correctly, like 'clip', 'magazine', 'cyclic rate', and similar words.
Their greatest weapon is the massed confusion spell caused by either the individual or the collective going full pundit and filling the air with way too much technical information about some of the least (for normal people) seemingly important topic possible (that suddenly comes in use involving an arcane selection of multi-tools and full 5,000 piece tool boxes...)
That group. That group right there...
Sigh. The very people who don't organize. And I am equally to blame. Though I have written my representatives more in the last year than ever in my life. (And the city (Gainesville) I live in is suing the State over the Firearms Presumption laws. (They can go F. themselves, liberal commie bastards))
Want to help start GOFU? Grouchy Old Farts United?