A Republican Candidate has got to have a position on God, Guns and Gays. Here is mine on Guns
After looking at Cathy McMorris Rodgers record on Gun Control, it looks to me like I would vote the way she has in the past.
Just like every boy in this country, popular entertainment whetted my appetite for toy guns. It was a natural progression to want real guns when I got older. Popular entertainment continues its fascination with guns, and continues to make many people want to own them, though it seems that now President Obama is the best motivator for gun purchases that we have ever had. I spent about four years in the Marine Corps as a Tanker. I never heard a shot fired in anger, so I don’t associate guns with the fear and danger of combat. Some of the most fun I had in the Corps was at the firing range. In addition to a personal pistol for everyone, our tanks had three rifles, two machine guns and a CANNON! Rifles and pistols and machine guns are fun, but a TANK CANNON, now that’s shoot’n!
I was never much of a hunter but I enjoy shooting. I don’t shoot much any more, I would rather play with my wife. Even if you reload, shooting large pistols as I came to prefer, gets expensive very fast, and after many years other interests squeezed out the shooting.
Guns provide the opportunity for a lot of self righteous demagoguery for politicians. This has led to some insultingly stupid laws. The best example of this is the so called Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, which had a sunset provision and expired in 2004 after 10 years. To anyone who isn’t a gun nut, if they had gone into a gun shop before the ban, and during the ban, they could not have noticed any difference in the guns offered for sale. The law banned magazines with more than 10 round capacity and rifles that had detachable magazines and two or more of the following features:
1. Folding or telescoping stock
2. Pistol grip
3. Bayonet lug ( I must have missed the stories about a bayonet fighting problem )
4. Flash suppressor
It was ridiculously easy to make minor cosmetic changes to almost any military style semi-automatic rifle to meet these criteria during the ban. All the politicians that touted this ban as actual gun control are either ignorant or think that we are ignorant.
I believe that responsible law abiding citizens of this country should have the right to own and carry when appropriate, shotguns, rifles and pistols. I am not a student of this issue, but since this is not the case in many cities in this country I do not believe that the Second Amendment to the Constitution is protecting this right. The right to own and carry an effective weapon is a citizens final defense against criminal attack or tyranny. If you have the courage to resist, then you should have an effective weapon in order to make it count.
The January 2006 National Geographic magazine has a chart that includes data on citizens killed by their own governments in the twentieth century. Stalin killed over 20 million of his own citizens, Mao over 30 million, in Sudan 2.8 million, in Cambodia 1.7 million, in Rwanda 1 million. One thing these 55 million citizens all had in common was they had no personal way to protect their lives from their governments, no means to effectively resist, had they the courage to resist.
7/9/14 The paragraph below has caused some controversy, people claiming that I am for facilitating a list the government could use to come collect our guns. Let me make clear where I am coming from. Your privacy is gone. It left years ago, long before NSA started collecting every bit of electronic communications. I was an early paranoid about the Government collecting the information that would allow it to collect our guns. I was on a Junior NRA Rifle team in the late 50’s. But for that period, I never joined the NRA and never subscribed to a gun magazine. I bought gun magazines off the rack, much more expensive than at subscription rates. I figured that if the Government was ever going to confiscate our firearms the first place they would look for a list of gun owners would be at the NRA and the subscribers to Guns & Ammo. With the advent of computers, credit card purchases, and vast marketing databases they facilitated, my concerns have became moot. If you have ever carried out a credit card transaction regarding a firearm or firearm related item, you are in a database that can be accessed, for a price, by anyone, including the Government. The data on gun owners that I and many of the rest of you fear, already exists, and has existed for some time. It is extractable at any time, up to date, to that moment, for anyone willing to pay for it or willing to subpoena it. The databases for this extraction exist at numerous marketing companies such as infoUSA. Also, many of you know fellow gun nuts that you would rather not have guns. I have direct personal experience with a gun nut who made a habit of threatening to kill people in the ’80’s, including me. I had a fight with him at that moment, and have not subsequently been threatened. This particular idiot had a history known to law enforcement of threatening to kill people, harassment of women by stalking and intimidation and restraining orders, yet he still goes around armed. No one would have been surprised if this idiot had killed someone in the 80’s. I have subsequently lost track of details of him and don’t know if his weirdness with women persisted. He should have been disarmed in the 80’s and prohibited from gun ownership. Responsible gun ownership should include insisting that this kind of idiot not be allowed to own firearms.
I do not see any circumstance where our government will be perverted into one that will kill its own citizens, but it has happened in other places. The ability to resist tyranny should not be surrendered. I think that this right for law abiding, competent, citizens should be absolute. As a practical matter this requires establishing a system to positively identify and license citizens so that it can be determined that they are law abiding, old enough, not mentally deficient and do not have a history of restraining orders or low level behavior problems that come to the attention of mental health organizations. The permit should be renewed periodically, every five years, as with our Washington State Concealed Weapons Permits. Yeah, I know, this licensing raises privacy concerns, but I think we should weed out as many idiots as possible. There are plenty of gun enthusiast lawyers to contest abuses of well crafted laws that would make this right clear.
When is it appropriate to carry a firearm? In the case of a rifle or shotgun, I would say it is appropriate to carry them when you are going to an appropriate place to shoot them, hunting or to a target range. In the case of a pistol, it is appropriate to carry one any time the weight and bulk are not a bother, except when going to an establishment whose main line of business is selling alcohol for on site consumption, meaning bars and taverns. To avoid being intimidating, or offensive to those of other opinion, I believe that pistols carried in urban areas should be concealed.
If elected, what would I do? In 2014, forty states have “Right to Carry” laws as opposed to ten states in 1987, so things are going my way at the state level. I will vote for any legislation advancing the right of law abiding, competent citizens to keep and bear firearms, meaning rifles, shotguns and pistols. I will vote against Feel Good Laws such as the above mentioned Assault Weapons Ban which do nothing and insult the intelligence of the electorate.
The above describes my attitudes about guns and gun rights and would inform the way I would vote on legislation affecting gun rights.