The Second Amendment

Amendment II

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.

People can think what they want about our bill of rights, but our nation was designed such that the Supreme Court has the ultimate power to interpret any law being in conformity with the Constitution. In the HELLER case they gave definition of the second amendment:

"Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home."

The United States government has the right to regulate arms which are taken outside the the self defense of the home. Here are legislative solutions to the regulation of arms outside a citizens home:

1. The federal government can issue regulations on the transport of all arms on public roads which include the following:
a. Mandated transport carriers for all arms which include a chip which syncs with a transport chip in the gun which is being transported. All legacy weapons must be chipped by a licensed gun seller at the home pursuant to federal fees for the same.
b. All foid cards are chipped and synced with the mandated transport cases.
c. Congress shall have no right to infringe on any non military weapon in a citizens home which is properly transported to and from the home. Congress shall have NO right to infringe on any weapon in the home of a citizen which was in existence at the time of the signing of the bill of rights.
d. All transport of weapons beyond the home will require a citizen to go online and submit a transport voucher.
e. All legacy gun conceal and carry transport are revoked, and in its place the federal government will create gun manufacturing specifications for multi chipped conceal and carry weapons which are limited to nine shots or less, and must sync with a foid card and the registration of that weapon which includes a transmitter which can send a signal at least 100 yards.

The gun industry would be less resistant with more guns being manufactured. No legacy gun owner would lose any of their weapons. Conceal and carry permits would still be state issued, but a national reciprocity would be honored if all states followed the standards and specs for transport of weapons, with all federal highway funds being withheld for failure to follow those regulation.

I want to go hunting next deer season in Wisconsin. I call and schedule my legacy gun being chipped, and purchase a transport carrier which syncs with the firearm being transported and my foid card. I go online and set up a transport app for my phone where I can apply for instant transport approval by simply touching three data inputs Route, Time, purpose . If it took me an hour to initially set up my phone Roku, and thereafter my phone instantaneously can change the channel, I have not heard one person in America tell us how hard it is to change your channel on the phone. It is time to solve gun issues. Oh, and the bad guys will transport and not follow any of the rules......yep, and mandatory minimum federal jail time will follow on any stop with legacy weapons or no properly chipped or registered weapon.

Criminals and crazies won't comply with your statist coercion. Fix that and I doubt a problem still exists.

As for this last incident... the system was in place and failed miserably. Why isn't that your concern?

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article201636649.html

Eight days after mass shooter Nikolas Cruz murdered 17 people inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Broward’s top cop on Thursday revealed a stunning series of failures by the sheriff’s department.

A school campus cop heard the gunfire and rushed to the building but never went inside — instead waiting outside for another four agonizing minutes as Cruz continued the slaughter.

And long before Cruz embarked on the worst school shooting in Florida history, Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies had multiple warnings that the 19-year-old was a violent threat and a potential school shooter, according to records released Thursday.

In November, a tipster called BSO to say Cruz “could be a school shooter in the making,” but deputies did not write up a report on that warning. It came just weeks after a relative called urging BSO to seize his weapons. Two years ago, according to a newly released timeline of interactions with Cruz’s family, a deputy investigated a report that Cruz “planned to shoot up the school” — intelligence that was forwarded to the school’s resource officer, with no apparent result.

The school’s resource officer, Scot Peterson, 54, was suspended without pay, then immediately resigned and retired. Two other deputies have been placed on restricted duty while Internal Affairs investigates how they handled the two shooter warnings.

The admissions, made by Broward Sheriff Scott Israel at a press conference on Thursday evening, added to the growing list of missed signs in the years before Cruz went on a rampage that has horrified the nation and reignited the debate on gun control. The FBI, in an earlier and equally astonishing admission, said last week that the agency failed to act on a tip in January that Cruz was a possible violent threat.

“I’m completely disgusted,” said Broward County Commissioner Michael Udine, a former mayor of Parkland whose daughter attends Stoneman Douglas. “There is nobody in authority talking to each other and every organization that had a chance to stop this completely failed our children from top to bottom.”

Thursday’s revelations came the week after Cruz took an Uber to the Parkland high school, armed with an AR-15 rifle and extra ammunition, and opened fire inside Building 12 on the sprawling campus. Seventeen people died, and another 15 people were injured.

Cruz ditched the weapon and escaped, blending in with fleeing students. He was captured about an hour later and confessed to the killings. He is now awaiting trial and could face the death penalty.

Since the massacre, law enforcement and education authorities have come under intense scrutiny for their handling of Cruz over the years. BSO, the county’s largest police department, is also under the microscope for its response to the shooting — chiefly for how school resource deputy Scot Peterson responded once the gunfire erupted at 2:21 p.m. on Valentine’s Day.

Peterson — named school resource officer of the year for Parkland in 2014 — was in another building, dealing with a student issue when the shots sounded. Armed with his sidearm, Peterson ran to the west side of Building 12 and set up in a defensive position, then did nothing for four minutes until the gunfire stopped, the sheriff said.

On Thursday, Israel said surveillance footage captured the officer’s inaction. Asked what Peterson should have done, Israel said: “Went in. Addressed the killer. Killed the killer.”

Israel added: “I am devastated. Sick to my stomach. He never went in.”

Since the Columbine school shooting that left 12 dead in 1999, cops have been trained not to wait for heavily armed SWAT officers but to enter buildings to find and kill the threat.

“When we train police, the first priority is to stop the killing,” said Pete Blair, the executive director of the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University.

INTERVIEW WITH 2SEAOAT

Interviewer: Mr. Seaoat, in your most recent post, you mention a "foid card". What's a "foid card"?

2Seaoat: That's a Firearms Owner Identification Card issued by the Illinois State Police. Residents of the State of Illinois who wish to purchase or are in possession of a firearm are required to have one.

Interviewer: Do any other states require them?

2Seaoat: Well, four other states require residents to have either that or some other credential: Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New Jersey.

Interviewer: Your plan seems heavily dependent on "foid cards", yet 90% of the States don't issue "foid cards".

2Seaoat: Oh...    well, nevermind.

Interviewer: Do you have any more brilliant ideas?

2Seaoat: Well, not right now, but I just took my medical marijuana dose so we'll see what I come up with. I'm kinda hungry, wanna get lunch?

Duh. The post will require a foid car for the transport of a firearms, and any state which does not comply loses their federal funding. Double Duh.

In regard to hardening every site in America, it is just that logic which has increased the risk to all people. In 1970 you could walk in any door at the Santa Rosa County Courthouse without metal detectors or being stopped by security. With the exception of airports, all current security should revert back to pre 1970 security measures because until all government faces the same risks as ordinary citizens and their children face. Solutions will come shortly thereafter.

There is NO right to drive a vehicle in America. It is a privilege granted by government(sorry PK I know you want no stoplights, speed limits, or bridges), and government has the right to regulate firearms.

2seaoat wrote: The post will require a foid car for the transport of a firearms, and any state which does not comply loses their federal funding.  Double Duh.

There've been 100+ school shooting since Columbine and nothing has been done! How the hell do you expect a complicated, convoluted law like you propose to get through the House and the Senate?

2seaoat wrote:There is NO right to drive a vehicle in America.  It is a privilege granted by government(sorry PK I know you want no stoplights, speed limits, or bridges), and government has the right to regulate firearms.

It's pretty sad when you have to use strawmen arguments... that's how you should know that your argument is flawed. All you're doing is carrying the shiny object of the leftists when we know the bureaucracy failed. Mental issues are behind the vast majority of school shootings. You should be angry and concerned about the numerous opportunities missed by systems. 25+ police interactions... expelled by school... online threats... reports of guns and threats to local law enforcement and the fbi... etc. I mean cmon... what's it take? Fix that and soft target schools then we can talk about your crybaby gun controls.

Nothing can pass Congress if it changes the fundamental protections of the second amendment. I believe the second amendment allows any citizen to bare arms in their home which were in existence at the time the bill of rights was incorporated into our constitution. All other arms can be regulated by congress pursuant to HELLER.

The reason nothing passes in Congress is because the three hundred million guns in America are a financial investment Americans have chose to invest. The threat of taking them away is a real legitimate concern. Under this proposal no weapon in an American's home will be confiscated. However, any attempt to move a legacy weapon from a citizens home for transport to another location by a vehicle will require strict transport compliance. We require special transport permits for hazardous wastes. We require special transport permits for overweights and oversized transport. This is simple. You want to move any legacy gun in a vehicle requires a permit which can be secured by a phone app with four data entries. Weapon id, route, and date and times, and purpose. I have secured overload permits online which I paid a fee and gave my route and printed my permit within two minutes.

I rented a car to return to Illinois for my shots because our car was having new wheel bearings installed. I have not rented a car for ten years because I no longer fly because of health concerns. They gave me no paperwork which was always the norm ten years ago. They emailed me my paperwork which if I was stopped by an officer, I would give my insurance card, give the car registration, and show on my phone the rental agreement.

You want to transport weapons outside your home, those legacy weapons have to have chips installed by federally licensed gun dealers which will require a chipped gun transport carrier which syncs with the federally issued foid card.
All legacy weapons will have two chips minimum installed which will assign a unique number to every weapon. A death estate firearm transport will allow family guns to be transported to family member's homes with the goal than in fifty years every legacy gun will be chipped and registered in America.

Any person transporting a weapon without a permit, or transporting legacy weapons without proper registration will face a mandatory three day jail sentence while prosecutors gather information to determine if the perp with intent broke the law, or there was a good faith exception to the law in that incidence. If intent to break the law is found, congress will set sentencing laws. Each state will have the right to incorporate the federal rules or set more stringent rules on sentencing and the failure to comply will be the loss of all federal funds for that state.

My use of my guns would NOT be changed by this law. If I want to practice at a gun range using an ar15, I would simply use my phone and secure the permit transporting the gun in a carrier with the additional caveat that any weapon declared inherently dangerous would require a transmitter which could transmit from the gun and case for a distance of at least 100 yards.

This is not a perfect solution to gun violence in America. People will argue like they did with seat belts that people were going to drown, or people would ignore seatbelts. In one generation we have reduced traffic deaths in half. We need to look at the guns as a safety issue. People still die in car accidents. We will never eliminate deaths in traffic accidents, but we lowered the same, and we can do the same with guns.

I understand uninformed people who were not tech savy like those who said airbags will kill people and not work will make all the arguments that people will try to compromise digital gun ids, but as law abiding citizens comply with the law the ability for gangbangers and criminals to continue to get a pass transporting weapons will slowly become more difficult. Let me make this really simple for some forum members.

Gun in home. No need to do anything

transport gun. You need a permit and a locked transport case in trunk.

phone app. less than thirty seconds to get an instantaneous permit.

conceal and carry.
National permits, which do not allow any legacy guns to be permitted outside the home. All conceal and carry weapons will be limited to nine shots and will have manufacturing specs which include multiple chips incorporated into the gun in multiple locations, and a certified holster which can transmit 100 yards gun information to receivers which can be used by police, business owners, and citizens.

Gun manufacturers have a huge pay day, and the political organization of the NRA will be in direct conflict with the industry who will profit with the new law, and in a generation when my grandson goes hunting with his grandson, the youngster will not be telling papa to put his seatbelt on, he will be telling him to put the shotgun in the case.

I realize this is complicated for some. However, who visualized uber before the technology caught up to the concept. The key to gun safety is transport.

I have submitted the proposal to CNN news. We need a new conceptual paradigm. Quite frankly people would have laughed at you just twenty years ago about getting an UBER, getting an overload permit, or a fishing license online. Do people fish without a license. Yes they do. When they are caught they are punished by the courts. Over time you simply get your license on line and print the same. I think the government has NO right to regulate any arms that were available before 1800 which our founding fathers used to define the right of citizens. If we can require an online license to go fishing and hunting, why would a transport license be too complicated. Licensed gun dealers will be making a fortune over the next ten years as they chip legacy guns and sell carriers........but best of all they will be manufacturing and selling new guns and holsters for conceal and carry. Citizens who have conceal and carry will not be happy about buying a new weapon, but will be thrilled that they can go anywhere in America with one permit.

Amendments were made to be amended.   Times change, 2A needs to change with it.    What would our founding fathers do?

panhandler wrote:Amendments were made to be amended.   Times change, 2A needs to change with it.    What would our founding fathers do?

Let's not forget the Three/Fifths Compromise [Article I, Section 2, Clause 3] and The Fugitive Slave Clause [Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3].

The genius of our Constitution is that the so-called Founding Fathers understood  that they might be wrong about some things as well as the fact that times and circumstances change, so they built in a process to amend--to alter or change--the document. The "originalists", hateful scum like Scalia, Bork, Thomas and Gorsuch, ignore that.

panhandler wrote:Amendments were made to be amended.   Times change, 2A needs to change with it.    What would our founding fathers do?

One of the main arguments I keep hearing for keeping machine guns is "we need to be a threat to the government."

It's the most idiotic (not to mention seditious) arguments ever, and every time someone makes it I stick an "idiot" label on them in my head and decide that if I ever lose my morals and decide to start pulling scams on people, they'll be my first target, because they're totally in the market for magic beans.

Back when people tried to fight off the government (and I don't know how far along they are in the Ken Burns documentary, but, spoiler alert - it doesn't work out!), everyone had pretty much the same weaponry. If your militia had a flintlock, well, that's pretty much all the federals had, too. They had cannons, but that wasn't completely insurmountable.

Nowdays, the government has so much stuff that a civilian cannot get that "fightin' off a tyrannical gub'ment with mah shootin' arn" is laughable. The government has drones. They don't even have to show up to beat you. They have an air force, navy, armored division of tanks, they've got choppers with miniguns. I mean, okay... you've got the best freakin' assault rifle you can buy.

The government's going to have these:



Buh-bye.

And the government has even more things you don't know about. Sonic weapons, lasers, gas, flamethrowers, even nukes if they need 'em... all kinds of goodies. If your militia was any really serious threat to the government, they'd crack down on it. They're content to let you play because as long as you're stupid enough to think to have some power, you'll be pacified. But if you really irritate them, they'll swat you and all your wolverinnnnnnnnes like a bothersome fly and none of it will take them more than five minutes. Ruby Ridge and Waco went on as long as they did because the government could afford to be patient and try to find a peaceful solution, not because those dudes were actually holding their own. If they'd wanted to, an Apache or Warthog would do a fly-by and there'd be a crater there and, that's it, th-th-th-th-that's all, folks.

So the whole "the government should fear us!" thing is wishful. They tolerate people like Cliven Bundy and his jackasses because they can afford to, they same as you or I might let an ant live. All that Gadsden flag shit went out when technology tilted the balance of weaponry. At the time when the best anyone had was a musket, that "we gotta be armed to resist the government" thing might have been a real argument. Now, though, it isn't. So trying to justify having a machine gun to "preserve liberty" is just a sad joke that some idiots aren't in on. It's fun in a movie, but so is Ant Man -- it's not gonna happen in real life.

zsomething wrote:So trying to justify having a machine gun to "preserve liberty" is just a sad joke that some idiots aren't in on.

Thanks for seeing through the B.S. as usual, z.

Calling the ar 15 a machine gun is just ignorant and stupid. It's demagoguery to shift the debate.

Yes, it's a long article, and no, I don't agree that the NRA is just an industry shill, because they have gone from promoting gun use to calls for violence against those who promote common sense regulation.  And let's not forget the politicians who are in the pocket of the NRA...Trump being No.
1 @ $30 million.

It's the Gun Companies, Stupid

By Michael Daly, The Daily Beast

26 February 18


CEO James Debney makes $5 million a year for manufacturing the type of gun that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.


Yes, the FBI failed to act on a tip from somebody close to Nikolas Cruz that he had a firearm and was liable to “explode” and go into a school “just shooting the place up.”

Yes, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office received two tips—one from a neighbor’s son, another from an unnamed caller—that Cruz had firearms and talked of committing a school shooting.

Yes, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office also reports it received a request from Cruz’s aunt to secure his firearms, but dropped the matter after a family friend offered to take possession of the weapons.

Yes, the Broward County deputy assigned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School failed to take appropriate action when the shooting erupted.

Yes, other deputies may have similarly failed after they arrived.

But none of that would have any immediate significance if Cruz had not obtained the assault rifle with which he murdered 17 students and staff with over 100 bullets in four minutes.

And the National Rifle Association’s efforts to thwart restrictions on the sale of assault weapons would not matter if there were no assault weapons in the first place.

The NRA has not manufactured a single assault rifle, though one of the organization’s primary functions is to take heat away from those who do, while simultaneously making it appear as if the issue is freedom, not just money.

The Tobacco Institute was never able to make the public forget that the cigarette companies are the actual death merchants.

The NRA does so continually. It manages to draw virtually all the heat in the aftermath of mass shootings, most particularly after the one this month at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High survivors can tell you right away that Wayne LaPierre is the NRA’s vocal executive director and CEO.

And the survivors got to do verbal battle with NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch at CNN’s town hall meeting.

All the scorn and invective prompted by LaPierre and Loesch only means that they are doing their job and that the NRA is earning the millions in contributions it receives from the gun companies.

Proof that the NRA earns its big bucks from the gun industry comes if you ask survivors about James Debney.

Huh?

Who?

A quick Google search shows that P. James Debney is the CEO and president of American Outdoor Brands, which until last year was named Smith & Wesson.

By whatever name, the company Debney heads manufactured the AR-15 assault rifle that Cruz used to kill 14 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students and three staff members.

LaPierre and Loesch are just mouthpieces and the NRA is just an industry shill.

Debney and American Outdoor Brands actually made and marketed the monstrously lethal murder weapon.

And Debney continues to do so even though he has a daughter of an age where she could have been among the dead, were she attending Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.

Back in 2000, Smith & Wesson briefly became a good name among gun control advocates—and therefore an anathema in the gun industry—when it became the sole company to enter into an agreement proposed by the Clinton administration to reduce gun violence.

“CLINTON ADMINISTRATION REACHES HISTORIC AGREEMENT WITH SMITH AND WESSON,” a March 17, 2000, statement by the White House read.

The statement noted, “Today’s agreement represents the first time a major gun manufacturer has committed to fundamentally change the way guns are designed, distributed and marketed.” Smith & Wesson figured on getting some good publicity along with immunity.

In exchange, the company agreed to install safety locking devices in future handguns and devote two percent of its revenues to developing technology that would allow only an authorized person to fire the weapon. The company also agreed not to produce guns that could accept magazines holding more than 10 rounds.

Additionally, Smith & Wesson pledged to cut off dealers who sold a disproportionate number of guns subsequently used in crimes. And to insist upon background checks even at gun shows. And to collect ballistic “fingerprints” from sample shell casings and bullets from each new firearm, the results to be fed into a national database.

Smith & Wesson further agreed not to produce for the civilian market large capacity magazines or semiautomatic assault weapons.

The last one was easy for Smith & Wesson, which at that point only manufactured handguns and produced no assault weapons in the first place.

Besides, the assault weapon ban was still in effect.

Of course, the many companies that had produced and marketed assault rifles for civilians and hoped to do so again were incensed. They denounced Smith & Wesson as a traitor to the industry.

In keeping with its role as an industry shill, the NRA announced a boycott of Smith & Wesson. The NRA declared that Smith & Wesson had committed “an act of craven self-interest” and had become “the first to run up the white flag of surrender… leaving its competitors in the U.S. firearms industry to carry on the fight for the Second Amendment.”

In keeping with their longtime role as chumps of the shill, a significant number of NRA members declined to buy Smith & Wesson products. A good many sold the ones they had.

Hey, it’s all about individual freedom, right?

Sales of Smith & Wesson firearms dropped by some 40 percent. The company seemed to be headed for bankruptcy when a startup safety lock company bought it. The new owner voided the agreement with the Clinton administration.

“It was important that we be an active part of the industry again,” a senior executive of the newly configured Smith & Wesson Holding Company was reported saying.

In September of 2004, the assault ban expired and gun companies began cashing in big time with what were at first euphemistically termed "tactical rifles” and then even more euphemistically called “modern sporting rifles.”

Smith & Wesson was in the midst of getting new leadership, having been further shaken when its chairman, James Minder, proved to have served time in prison for a string of armed robberies while a journalism student at the University of Michigan. The young Minder had started with one of his future company's revolvers but had then opted for a sawed-off shotgun.

In a general shakeup, Smith & Wesson recruited Michael Golden, who was then president of the cabinetry division of Kohler Company. Golden took over Smith & Wesson in December of 2004 having never fired a gun. He reportedly did not know the difference between a revolver and an automatic pistol.

“You’re going to be a bad-ass,” his son reportedly told him upon learning he was going to helm the same gun company that made the revolver carried by Dirty Harry in the movies.

One difference between the gun business and the cabinetry business became apparent when Golden was invited to witness President George Bush sign the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005. The new law made firearms manufacturers immune from being held liable when criminals used their products. That was the same protection Smith & Wesson had briefly received from Clinton in exchange for accepting a host of gun-control measures, these including a ban on assault rifles.

The whole industry now got that benefit without agreeing to so much as a safety lock. And Smith & Wesson saw in assault rifles an opportunity to make up for lost profit and regain some of its former standing in the industry. The company set to designing and producing its first AR-15.

In 2006, Smith & Wesson introduced the M&P15 rifle. The M stood for military and the P for police, but the primary customers were civilians.

“RELIABILITY FOR LIFE & LIBERTY,” trumpeted an introductory advertisement, which showed the rifle with a 30-round magazine.

The ad continued, “MEET THE NEW M&P FROM SMITH & WESSON…. This rifle offers the latest standard of reliability when your job is to serve and protect and your life is on the line.”

The magazine Shooting Industry named Smith & Wesson “Manufacturer of the Year.” Production increased from 4,650 rifles in 2006, to 24,676 in 2007 to 38,372 in 2008 to 110,057 in 2009.

“Tactical rifles were up almost 200 percent versus the same period the year before,” Golden enthused in a 2009 conference call, adding that sales had been “extremely hot.”

But, where the stock had jumped from $10 to over $20 in the first 10 months of 2007, it then declined to $5 despite the rise in profits. The stock hovered around there through September of 2011, when the board of directors decided to replace Golden with Debney, who had been vice president of the firearms division. Debney had previously run a company that produced trash bags and plastic wrap.

Debney kept selling assault rifles as if he were just selling more plastic after a madman with a Smith & Wesson assault rifle murdered 12 people in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. Debney told investors at a gathering two months later, “What we get excited about is that expanded user base and the level of social acceptance that we see now out there. It is socially acceptable to carry a firearm, more so than before—to carry a firearm for protection, have one at home for protection, go to the range to shoot as a pastime, as a hobby.”

Three months after that, another monster, this one armed with a Bushmaster assault rifle, murdered 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. The possibility that the mass murder of little kids might result in meaningful gun control caused a spike in assault rifle purchases by people who feared the weapons might soon be banned again. Bushmaster and Smith & Wesson and the other companies raked in the profits and just kept on selling assault rifles after a ban failed to materialize.

In 2013, Debney was inducted into the NRA’s Golden Ring of Freedom. An NRA video announcing the honor explains, “The Gold Ring of Freedom is reserved for individuals and corporations who have made gifts of $1 million cash or more. These selfless, passionate and devoted leaders are vital in the effort to protect our freedoms now and in the future.”

The video goes on, “What James Debney has done for Smith & Wesson has been truly incredible… James is changing the firearm market in a very tangible way.”

Debney appears in the video as a “gold jacket recipient” and says, “It certainly has been a fantastic time at Smith & Wesson.”

He says nothing about the profits, but makes sure to mention the Second Amendment.

“We are true believers in that and defenders of that and we are very closely aligned with the NRA,” he says. “The time had come to step up and do the right thing.”

By that, he meant contributing the $1 million plus in cash. The company’s profits came to include the sale of the M&P15 that was used in the 2015 terror attack in San Bernardino. Fifteen were murdered.

In December of 2016, Debney proposed changing the company name to American Outdoor Brands in a move toward diversifying. The board of directors approved. The company had produced 1,851,642 assault rifles along with a considerable number of handguns. The worry was that there would eventually prove to be only so many weapons you can sell even in America.

Meanwhile, the company enjoyed another bump in assault weapon sales when it appeared that Hillary Clinton might become president and seek to institute a new ban.

But the whole industry suffered a “Trump slump” after the unexpected election outcome. Remington, the company that owned Bushmaster, sought bankruptcy protection.

Smith & Wesson did experience a modest bump after a madman used one of its M&P15s to murder 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High on Valentine’s Day.

In the aftermath, the survivors of the shooting have been so passionate and determined and precociously articulate that it seems that something might actually happen this time.

Much of their fury is directed at the NRA, which views being the subject of outrage as just part of its job.

In focusing their anger on the likes of Wayne LaPierre, the survivors are distracted from the likes of James Debney, whose company actually designed, produced and marketed the weapon that killed so many innocents at their school. Debney knew it was a weapon of war. He also knew, or at least should have known, that M&P15 fires bullets of such velocity that when it hits flesh the accompanying shock wave extends the damage considerably outside the path of the bullet, shredding tissue, destroying entire organs, disintegrating blood vessels. He also knew that the M&P15 is a virtual twin to the Bushmaster AR-15 used with horrific effect on little kids at Sandy Hook.

And yet he had kept selling it.

Debney earns more than $5 million a year in what the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High survivors would no doubt consider blood money. He owns a large tract of land in Massachusetts, not far from the company headquarters in Springfield.

The property includes a riding facility, for Debney’s daughter is said to be something of a prodigy equestrian. Debney’s wife, Karen, is so dedicated that she reportedly drives their daughter seven hours each way on the weekends to work with a top trainer in Maryland.

The daughter—who seems to be an altogether nice kid—won a big championship in October, when she was just 13. Had she been living in Florida rather than Massachusetts and were she a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, she could have been in the freshman building on Valentine’s Day when one of daddy Debney’s modern sporting rifles proved so murderously reliable.

But hey, business is business.

And those were somebody else’s kids.


http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/48671-its-the-gun-companies-stupid

PkrBum wrote: Calling the ar 15 a machine gun is just ignorant and stupid. It's demagoguery to shift the debate.

Machine gun or assault rifle, with or without bumpstocks, IT"S IGNORANT AND STUPID NOT TO SEE THAT IT MAKES NO FRIGGIN' DIFFERENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!! The point is ANY SUCH WEAPONS don't belong in the hands of civilians for any reason whatsoever. ANY REASON!!!!!!!! You are purposely ignoring the entire point, because you don't like it. TOO DAMNED BAD.

You can base your opinions on emotional reaction instead of informed reason... you just won't be credible. I'm most amazed that the laws and enforcement were in place to have prevented this and failed miserably... but it's guns y'all are spun up about. That's not rational... it's a conditioned response at best. Very useful.

A semi-auto with extended clips might as well be a machine gun. I'm calling it that rather than laboriously explaining the difference, because the difference is negligible... especially when it can be made into a machine gun with a bump stock. Besides, people do have fully-automatic weapons now -- NRA's made that legal.

The right-wing arguments against this are pathetic nit-picking. It's all they've got anymore. They're just trying to justify doing nothing.

You can call it a "scary gun" if you want... that would probably be more accurate and as effective to the leftist base. It still won't mean shit in a technical sense. It's a small caliber semi-auto... not even approved to shoot deer in most states. It does work well on sitting ducks in gun free zones... as evidenced. Thank you Dems.

Congress will define what is inherently dangerous and needs to be banned. The Supreme Court has told them the same in three of the most recent gun cases. I personally do not mind folks keeping legacy weapons in their home as long as they are registered, a background check has been completed, the guns are chipped and placed in approved locked gun cases in the trunk for transport on public roads. Driving is a privilege and the courts have always put fifth amendment property rights behind public safety on our roads. Prohibition rarely works. I would rather have guns legal at home which only get regulated when they attempt to transport. 90 gun deaths a day have little to do with getting more incompetent LEO in the schools and more to do with people who have NO right putting a gun in a car and not facing swift and certain punishment. No transport permit and a mandatory three day jail sentence as the state decides to take to preliminary hearing and seek felony charges and mandatory jail sentences. This includes everybody in the car going to jail for three days.....grandma.......uncle Joe........and the two gangbangers sitting in the back sit.

2seaoat wrote:Congress will define what is inherently dangerous and needs to be banned.

Congress ain't gonna do shit! There've been over 200 hundred school shootings since Sandy Hook and look where we are--nothing's happened--and that's just the SCHOOL shootings.

There's a mass shooting every couple of months, everyone gets all excited and nothing happens--interest dwindles and other events push the shooting off the front page. The only time there's a chance of something changing is in the first 10 days or so when the event is prominent in the news and everyone is pumping for change. The Anti-gun control people know this so all they have to do is keep their heads down for a couple weeks and everything will blow over.

So here's the solution: MORE MASS SHOOTINGS! If we had a shooting every 10 days or so, the horror would remain fresh and something might change. That's the problem, we just haven't hit the critical mass threshold yet.

I did not say which Congress will pass sane gun transport laws, but they will eventually do the same. I think sooner than later. The biggest problem in my mind is using the word gun control. I see that in every congressman's website they include the same as a subject matter. I would prefer gun safety. We did not talk about car control. We did not talk about drug control. We did not talk about food control. We simply talk about car safety, drug safety, food safety, and yes......gun safety. Trying to ban weapons should be the last resort. Just keep them off the street, and allow citizens to protect their homes as they see fit. As the supreme court said, government has limited authority to restrict hand guns and rifles in citizens' homes. Transport of guns is an entirely different matter. Some weapons should not be allowed outside a home. Period.