Random Gun Stuff

To mark my triumphant return to blogging (posts about Slayer don't count), I think I'll hit three items that I noticed last week and just didn't have time to write about. I should have some editorial stuff on the way either tonight to tomorrow, depending on when I finish it up. For now though, this'll have to tide you over.

1. Check out what Bitter Bitch had to say regarding an anti-gun editorial she found. Here's a taste. From the editorial:

You know the saying well: Guns don't kill people. People kill people. But the cause of death of two people at a picnic at South Shore Park on Memorial Day is gunshot wounds. Three others shot at the same picnic are not recovering from people wounds.

To which Bitter replied:

No, they are recovering from people inflicted wounds. Take the people who inflicted them out of the situation and you have a group of healthy people and a gun that just sits there. Insert criminals and/or stupid people and you have wounded people. (emphasis mine)

Any firearm-related injury or death is because someone is either a criminal, uneducated about firearms, or just stupid. Seriously, do people just not get that? I guess not. Punish the criminals, teach the ignorant, and pray you don't run across an idiot. Read the whole thing, it's worth it.

2. Moving on, I ran across an interesting Op-Ed all the way back on May 21st that I bookmarked and am just now mentioning. Of course, one would expect that any article titled The Myth of the Easy Machine Gun would pique my interest. The author (who seems like a gun novice, but that's only an impression of mine) calls into question the ease with which one can create a fully-automatic "assault" rifle from a legal semi-automatic rifle, one of the central themes of fear-mongering proponents of "assault" weapons bans. After all, isn't it just super easy to MacGuyver a legal gun into a flame-spouting, death-dealing, baby-killing Übergun? Well, no, as the author found out:

Does any of this make sense to you? It doesn't to me. And so I suspect you are getting the point: The easy machine gun is a myth. In fact, if I weren't so polite, I would call it a blatant lie.
...
The very same people who accuse President Bush of playing the "fear card" on terrorism are themselves playing the "fear card" on machine guns. The true motive behind this ban is to take another sneaky step toward prohibition of all private firearms of every kind.

Damn straight. Yeah, you can make a semi-auto into a full-auto, but you either need already-regulated parts or you need to make those parts in a decently-equipped machine shop; and if you have the latter and are making/selling those parts without registering them, you're probably breaking the law already, thus negating the need for yet another gun-control law. It's a great editorial; read the whole thing here.

3. Good news out of Louisiana, for once:

The number of people applying for concealed handgun permits has risen since Hurricane Katrina hit southeast Louisiana, but Louisiana State Police aren't sure why.

Um, could it be that people are realizing that their nanny-state, government-will-protect-us-from-everything mentality is misguided? Could it be that people saw and understood that it was ultimately up to them to protect themselves? And check this out, from the same article:

Since Louisiana enacted the 1996 concealed-weapons law, no one has died at the hands of a permit holder, State Police said. In two cases, someone was injured.

So you have properly, legally vetted gun-carrying people out there for ten years and not ONE of them killed anyone? But I thought ALL gun-owners were irresponsible, no matter if the guns are legally carried or not. Because of the lack of relevant data, I won't comment on the two injuries; they could be the result of self-defense, improper gun-handling, etc.

Here's the best news out of the NOLA.com story though:

Font said the monthly concealed-weapons safety classes with the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office have been either full or almost full since they resumed in April.

GOOD. Safety should ALWAYS be the priority, and stories about unsafe gun-handling drive me crazy. So if you're going to carry, learn how to do it safely and responsibly.