"Dumb Guns": The new "Saturday Night Special"

Smart Gun Mandate Makes Gun Ownership Rich Man's Game:
(Breitbart,  11 May 2014)

 Right now, an American can walk into a gun dealer and buy a brand new, ultra reliable Glock 19 or 26 in 9mm for between $480 and $530. Like Walthers and Rugers, the Glock line of handguns is one that families of all socioeconomic backgrounds can afford to purchase and use for self-defense. But that all changes when a state mandates that an $1,800 .22 pistol has to be sold in place of the $480 Glock.  Once that mandate takes place, only the wealthy will able to afford guns, while the poor will be left to hope the locks on their doors are strong enough to keep home invaders out.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.



Americans and the Second Amendment:  A Passion Play in Six Acts.

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Act I:

When new laws make guns more expensive, more technologically complex, and legal purchase more difficult, what happens?   The people will find ways to get around those laws and, in doing so, nullify your pompous, self-serving, highfalutin laws.

Because the people don't serve you; you serve the people.   Congress-critters forget that axiom at their peril.
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Act II:

Remember the "Saturday Night Special"?

Americans fought against the term for decades.

The "Saturday Night Special" was defined by Liberals and Journalists (but then, I repeat myself) as a small, easily concealable and "cheap" handgun.    It may, in fact, have been of dubious quality.  It had the singular attraction that .. well, it was small, easily concealable and cheap.   Usually, it was a snub-nosed revolver, holding five or six bullets of minor (eg: .22, .25, .32, .380, maybe .38 special.)

Congressmen who prostitute themselves for re-election, journalists who prostitute themselves for readership, combined forces to denigrate this genre of firearms.

Why?   Because it was readily available, and marginally affordable, to people who just had not the economic resources of the literati OR to move out of neighborhoods which were rapidly devolving into shooting galleries.

Sure, the bad guys had a lot of 'em.  And their neighbors had a few of them.  Both groups had made the decision that this was their only available resource for survival on the mean streets.

In trying to rid the populace of Saturday Night Specials, press and congress focused on the only neighborhood sub-group that they could intimate:  the responsible, the (otherwise) law-abiding, and the poor.   Nobody ever expected that the gang-bangers would pay any attention to the increasing burden of new and unenforceable laws.  But hey! the drive to rid America of Saturday Night Specials looked really good on video.

It made all four of the Four Estates (the Executive, the Legislative, the Judicial and the Press) seem to be actually DOING something!  If you are a member, and folks are dunning you to do something about "Gun Violence" .. well, there you are.   Make laws against private ownership of Saturday Night Specials, and you've done your public duty.

Never mind that all the laws you  enforced, endorsed, enacted, endorsed, enforced; that you have passed and praised ... actually served no greater purpose than to justify your Public Image.

Never mind that all you have effectively done is to remove the limited means of self-protection from the people who had nowhere to turn for self-preservation.

The unofficial mantra was "It's Cheap: Ergo, It's Bad!"

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Now ... remember the Assault Weapon Ban?

Act III:

After the Saturday Night Special Ban was no longer in vogue, the Four Estates cast about for a new bugaboo.  They discovered The Assault Weapon!

Glory Be and Hallelujah,

No longer was it BAD for a firearm to be Concealable and Cheap.  No longer was it bad to own a puny minor-caliber revolver holding five or six bullets.   Now all these things are BAD:

• rifle caliber
• long barrel
• high capacity magazines ("WHO NEEDS A 30 ROUND 'CLIP'?")
• funny looking thingie on the end of the barrel; we don't know what it does, but it looks bad!
• black plastic
• has a pistol grip .. that must be really bad
• look military
• look ugly
• has a barrel shroud ... don't know about that either, but it looks bad too
• oh, and maybe there's a second pistol grip up front.  Like a Tommy Gun!  Ban that too!
• Semi-Automatic   ...  it's a Machine Gun!  BAN IT!
• has a bayonet lug; don't know how that's going to increase firepower, but suppose we were faced with a BANZAI charge on Capital Hill or in New York city .. okay, throw that in, too.

Okay, I'm running out of nonsensical and bizarre cosmetic features which "typified" an "Assault Weapon.  You can probably come up with some more; add it to the comments, for the amusement of your friends.

So:  "Concealability" is no longer the stigmata of a Bad Gun.   Now it's firepower!

Oh, did I mention "Cop Killer Bullets" and "Defeat Police Armored Vests"?  My bad ... ban me!

Now, "cheap" is no longer bad.  If it costs two or three thousand dollars, it's probably not just bad but really bad.  "Who needs a $2,000 gun?"

SO:  The Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 .. to the rescue!

(I've deliberately linked to a WaPo article by "Wonket", because sometimes even liberal wonks can't disguise failure of their policies .. yet they never cease to promote the policies.)

Here's the deal:

Republicans in Congress (differentiated from Democrat congressmen by ...  oh, I'm not sure any more) agreed to almost ALL of the credo, with one provisio:

We'll let it stand for ten years.  Gather all the data.  If the law shows a remarkable reduction in gun violence, then we'll talk about making it permanent.   But, if the level of "Gun Violence" is reduced at the end of that period ... we'll quietly let that set of outrageous, stupid, brain-dead Liberal laws sunset and we'll say no more about it.  Agreed?

Liberals latched onto that like a sucker-fish to a shark, and began loudly to trumpet how they have achieved "Peace For Our Time!" (evoking the image of Neville Chamberlain waving a piece of paper in which Hitler agreed to avoid war with Great Britain just before WWII; you know, "The War To End Wars To End Wars"?)

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Act IV:

Well, you know how well that worked out for England.

And the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban worked out almost as well for the Liberals.

First, there were no significant reductions in "gun violence" in America, due to the Assault Weapons Ban.

Turns out, Assault Weapons were not the Weapon of Choice for bad guys who were inclined to assault their fellow man.

Second, Democrats whined that the bill was either too narrowly defined, or too widely.  Their choice.

For example, it was laughably easy to purchase "high capacity magazines".

Also, when specific firearms manufacturers' make-and-model of guns were specifically 'verboten', they changed the name of the model and serenely continued to build the same gun for an eager market ... more guns were sold during that decade than in any of the five decades before it!

Or in any 3 of the ten decades preceding 1964!

Turns out, people get antsy when they can't buy guns .. so they buy more!

And when verboten firearms were defined too widely, manufacturers either dropped cosmetic features, or re-named them; and serenely continued to fill orders from many new wanna-be gun owners.

At the end of the decade, there were over twice as many guns in America.  They were more popular than ever, and they had the same functions as before.

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Act V:

President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address:  

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

The Constitution of the United States of America includes many unique participles, enshrined not only in the general context but especially in the Bill of Rights, which includes the first Ten Amendments.

The first amendment acknowledges (not "grants", but "acknowledges") that certain rights are "God Given". 

As does the second .. and all succeeding.

Over the years, we Americans have modified our Constitution to recognize the changing mores of our society.  For example, we have included the right citizenship (and to vote) to Women, to non-Caucasians, and 'naturalized citizens', and to all citizens of a younger age than was envisioned in the 18th Century.

One thing we have never done:  we have never REPEALED any constitutional amendment .. except for that one significant amendment which had proved itself to be more disruptive to society than helpful: the 18th Amendment, which legislative against the consumption (use, possession, etc.) in 1918.

It was repealed by the 21st amendment in 1933.

What is the significance of these two constitutional amendments?

Simply that, when Congress (in its infantile wisdom) presumes to enact odious laws to prevent The People to do want it wants to .. The People will ignore it, defy it, ridicule it, and ultimately obviate it.

This is Part and Parcel to "A Free People".

We are willing to humor our politicians, up to a point. That's because we are a people with a sense of humor.

But when our elected idiots become too big for their britches, we will cheerfully do the "tar and feathers" thingie, send them home with their tails tucked between their legs, and do what we know is right.

That's the down side of "Codified Rights".  We The People honor them more ... much more .. than we do our elected representatives.

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Act VI:

Remember: 

a Liberal is someone who has been arrested.

A Conservative is someone who has been arrested for exercising his Constitutional Rights.

In the words of Faye Dunaway as Joan in "Mommie Dearest":