They will be turned in fast. No one wants to be shot because their neighbor is screaming “Second Amendment, Second Amendment!!”

No, what really bothers you is that a profitable business might be actually shut down by government action and an outraged public for the minor infraction of peddling and promoting a deadly product against which we have no defense. After all, some day you might even own your own business.

It is an insult to everyone who has actually shed blood for this country to think that we owe our freedom, or may one day owe our freedom, to the likes of Wayne LaPierre and his gang of corporate yes-men and his hillbily Hitler pep squad.

Our country has its armed force, and it has its Constitution. And it has never lacked for people willing to die for it, even the last time when the rebels threw a tantrum because they couldn’t get their way. I’ve seen what the Right’s got, and I don’t trust them. They’ll sell their country out in a heartbeat for a tax cut.

I’m watching them do it right now, in Congress.

It’s odd that tyrannies, oppressors and conquerors keep using guns instead.

If I interviewed a thousand refugees from all over the world, I wonder how many would say they had fled because of the nasty CEO at their company.

(Jews being issued pink slips by unscrupulous capitalist bosses)

The 1938 German Weapons Act was highly specific in who it applied to.

Even those who are armed are usually interested solely in home defense, or sporting and recreational use. But military weapons? Street carry? Home arsenals? Bowser’s right. Those are all pecker proxies.

Packing heat makes a little man feel tough and independent, but if he has to kiss his bosses ass to feed his kids he’s still a slave. Of course, firearms give him that feeling of power that compensates for his helplessness, or distracts him from his own inadequacy. Real power comes not from a gun, but from being able to hire one. But it makes him feel like a real tough guy, he can fantasize how he is going to fight back against all those enemies, foreign and domestic, who are out to steal his stuff.

“Defending against tyranny…”. My god, these pointless little men are so full of themselves. They are so ready to fight Chinese paratroopers or Obama’s jack-booted storm troopers, but are too chicken shit to demand a raise from their boss, or start a union, or stand in a picket line like their forefathers did to feed their families.

They know perfectly well the boss can always get someone else and that scares them, and their guns are no help at all.

Let me put it another way, perhaps a bit less delicately. I don’t give a damn who owns a gun, or if some redneck needs to stroke one to get his jollies off. But they have no right to bring one into my office. In fact, they have no right to bring one anywhere near me. Who the hell do these two-bit punks think they are?

Even you, who believes “most Americans don’t deserve the right to touch” a gun, are in no hurry to get rid of your own.

As far as organized anti-gun movements go, with segregationists, only whites would have guns. With statists, only the State. There’s a centuries-long history of rulers making sure the peasants didn’t have weapons that would be effective against the rulers.

The use of firearms rights by Black Power groups, particularly how it was once viewed with terror by the Right, and how the segregationists worked so diligently to keep guns away from black hands while guaranteeing whites would always have one handy. Today, the Right is using that same history as a justification for their contemporary goals and political positions.

Another observation is the evolution of the NRA from a hobbyist group representing sportsmen to a trade association working assidiously to prevent inconvenience to the gun industry–by developing new customers in otherwise saturated markets and working to remove all restrictions and controls.

I was particularly grateful for a discussion on what the founding fathers really felt about firearms.

This is to be expected. Social conditions change, as does the technology. Firearms law seems based on an era when bayonet-equipped muzzle-loading muskets were the dominant military weapon, and pistols were a one-shot deal, useful only in home defense, dueling. Well-regulated militias required masses of infantry firing extensively drilled and coordinated volleys to be militarily effective. Accurate rifles existed, but were not really practical military weapons. They were expensive to manufacture, required extremely high training for marksmen, and had a low rate of fire–all contra-indications for 18th century battlefields. Their initial use as sniper weapons was also resisted by military custom and etiquette. The Civil War demonstrated how tactics refused to evolve to meet the new technology when percussion caps and Minie ball replaced the flintlock musket.

Cartridge ammunition, repeating firearms, smokeless powder, and eventually autoloading weapons, changed the battlefield yet again. These technological advances, plus lower costs due to mass production techniques, inevitably migrated from the battlefield to civilian firearms. If nothing else, the use of firearms in spontaneous moments of rage and the ease for accidents to occur could not have been anticipated.

Of course, no one (except John Brunner in “Stand on Zanzibar”, 1968) foresaw the “muckers”. Brunner predicted lots of things, the organic foods industry, and the inevitable fraud in it, computer viruses, hackers, the gun industry lobbying for federal firearms subsidies to the poor (on civil rights grounds), endless resource wars, and mass shootings by citizens run amuck.

It’s available on pdf download if anyone is interested.

Beautiful bit of writing there. Thank God the NRA is staunchly defending the American public from rationality, common sense and a sense of sanely dealing with a problem. Long live the emotional comfort that comes with a rapid firing pecker substitute.

Those folks remind me of Harley riders without mufflers – “Look, Ma, I’m riding a motorcycle!” Both are inadequate people seeking to impress others.