Mitt Romney on banning "extreme weapons"

Well, of course they have no business being on the streets! They could get hit by cars, scratched, or otherwise exposed to the elements. Gutter-watter induced corrosion is no easy thing to clean up!

Instead of being on the streets, they should be well-kept in homes with owners who will care for them properly.

.....

On a more serious note, just about any gun can be used for hunting, sport, or self-defense. I consider competitive armor-plate-piercing (see how many inches of RHA your firearm and ammo combo will pierce, then compete with others) to be a sporting event. I also consider full-auto, suppressed plinking of tin cans in the desert to be a recreational activity. Surely this means that such guns should be legally permissible, right?

Is there any major design differences between a "hunting rifle" and a "sniper rifle"? Between a Mini-14 and an AR?

I hate it when politicians use weasel words like this...you can't "strongly support" something while calling for restrictions at the same time.

D'oh. Email address in previous post was incorrect.

But, ya' know - if it comes down to a choice between "Mitt" and "Hil", I know which lever I'm pullin'. I'll just pray that the NRA can keep Mitt in line...

Romney, like Schwartzenkennedy, will roll on gun laws to appease Dems. It won't work, but he'll try, repeatedly.

I don't know whether WJC cared about gun laws one way or the other, but he certainly cared about losing the House and Senate. Sen Clinton may have more interest in gun control than WJC, but she certainly values power more than she cares about guns. If she thinks that gun control will strengthen her politically, she'll do it. If she thinks that it will weaken her politically, she won't.

If either Mitt or Rudy become president we will likely see new gun ban proposals which will be hard to defeat if supported by the occupant of the oval office. This will be worse than a gun ban proposal by Hillary because the pro-gun supporters in the Republican party have a harder time opposing a president of their own party than a Democrat president.

I have a strong negative animus toward both Mitt and Rudy. When someone who claims to be on your side is going to stab you in the back it is such a dirty trick, whereas when it is your enemy trying to undermine you it is just business as usual.

I'm a little confused; what other types of firearms are there, other than for hunting, sport, or self defense?

What does he mean "extreme weapons"?

Aircraft carriers? Intercontinental ballistic missiles?

I don't want any frigging extreme weapons. I just want unfettered access to normal weapons: all centerfire handguns and longarms, whether manual action, semiautomatic, or automatic, in calibers below 0.50 inch. Plus all shotguns with barrels of 8 gauge or smaller.

Bob G:

Other firearms = those for the "common defense"; i.e., military-style firearms. In the minds of the antis, there is no "legitimate" use or reason for private individuals to have such things as an AR-15, SKS, Thompson SG, etc. Those are not "designed" or "intended" for huntin, sport or self-defense. Ditto things like the Tec-9, Uzi, Mac-10, etc. I love the picture of the Springfield M-14 Scout Squad Rifle. Hope to get one someday. If the antis have their way I'll never have the chance. It's much too SCARY looking. Oh nooo! It's actually all BLACK, with a "plastic" stock, barrel shroud and that eeeeeevil flash supressor!

Second Amendment supporters should consider a concerted effort to deal with the public's perception of "sporting purposes" (including hunting, of course) as it pertains to the second amendment.

I suppose the first step is to take people like Romney to task, correcting his mis-statements at every turn.

How many of you have grown entirely weary of statements such as "Well, you don't hunt ducks with an AK47, do you?"

Sheesh...of course not! (you idiot). They have far more relevant and legitimate purposes.

I want a "high-powered" "automatic" gun with a collapsible stock, pistol-grip, high-capacity "clip", that can be spray-fired from the hip without even aiming and that uses armor-piercing, long-range, high-powered, explosive, Kevlar-tipped, expanding bullets that can take down aircraft from up to a mile away. So that I can take care of the squirrels on my roof. Oh yeah, it needs to have a flash suppressor, too, because, y'know, that helps to prevent others from seeing where you're shooting from. And a bayonet mount. And grenade launcher. Almost forgot that one.

Mitt is a hollow man.

I hate to see this kind of comment from a politician but I have to sympathize with it somewhat. I knew a candidate for congress who lost largely because of a campaign add that complained that the candidate supported the right of people to carry an Uzi wherever they go. That's a principled position to take, but how can the candidate protect himself from the damage of such an add?

I'm not even sure *I* support the right of the people to keep machine guns. The militia can do fine with semi-autos. The militia might even do better with semi-autos due to the extra difficulty for a resistance force to obtain ammo. Meanwhile, if machine guns were legal, every criminal would be embarrassed to carry anything less.

The line has to be drawn somewhere. We can't legalize bio weapons and probably not stingers, truck bombs, or hand grenades. Where to draw the line and why is maybe something that should be thoroughly analyzed before Parker goes to the court.

The only principled test I can see for whether a weapon could be banned is how many people it would be likely to kill in the hands of a single person when used competently but not ingeniously. A genius possibly could kill thousands of people with a sharpened stick, and a fool might kill nobody with a nuke, so those extremes couldn't be the prime considerations. Part of the consideration for how deadly a weapon must be to be banned is an evaluation of how much it would destabilize the entire country if such weapons would be allowed. Your typical spree killer doesn't destabilize the country by any significant amount even if dozens of people are killed.

I see little chance my theory will prevail in court though because it would probably legalize grenades, machine guns, and maybe even truck bombs.

We need to draw the line somewhere.

Yes, we do. We should draw it the same place we draw it for police and military personnel -- nuclear weapons prohibited, and pretty much everything else allowed.

The line has already been drawn. No need to look farther than Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution. It defines the missions of the militia.

"the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions"

If necessary for the mission, then an arm of that type can't be (constitutionally) prohibited. WMDs would kill more Americans than invaders, so they're not useful for the militia, nor are they protected. Simple, already in place, and if you read Miller, pretty much what the decision said.

RKV wrote:

"If necessary for the mission, then an arm of that type [a militia weapon] can't be (constitutionally) prohibited."

I don't see why suitcase nukes wouldn't be highly useful to the militia. They could be used to hit military bases and other hard targets without causing excessive civilian casualties. So should they then be legal for private citizens? Stingers would certainly be highly useful to a militia. So should they be legal? Can you successfully argue your case to enough of the population or the judiciary to make it politically feasible?

We disagree about WMD, and aren't going to be reconciled. There is really no point in discussing it further.

Well, of course they have no business being on the streets! They could get hit by cars, scratched, or otherwise exposed to the elements. Gutter-watter induced corrosion is no easy thing to clean up!

My good friends Papa, Mike, Charlie and Sierra would beg to differ.

What does he mean "extreme weapons"?

The same thing as "assault weapons". Anti-gun legislation is based on an incredibly deceptive and dangerous appeal to authority: the appeal to common sense. Common sense is great when most people know what they're talking about. For example, if you say that it's just common sense that motorcyclists should wear helmets, you're appealing to the common sense of a population that is over 50% qualified to drive motor vehicles and 100% of whom at least know someone who has been in an accident.

The number of people who are familiar with firearms is painfully low. And, like all good cons, the appeal to common sense uses the reader's pride against him by appealing to the reader as the authority. That's why you can oppose "extreme" weapons without even suggesting what they are... because *everyone* knows that they're bad.

I don't see why suitcase nukes wouldn't be highly useful to the militia. They could be used to hit military bases and other hard targets without causing excessive civilian casualties. So should they then be legal for private citizens? Stingers would certainly be highly useful to a militia. So should they be legal?

Suitcase nukes are out because the stuff used to build them is also used to build big nukes. If you allowed small rocket engines and good explosives, all you need to make a stinger or javelin is sensors, an embedded computer and guidance software. 1 and 2 are civilian items, and #3, once stolen, can be put up on the Internet.

The only principled test I can see for whether a weapon could be banned is how many people it would be likely to kill in the hands of a single person when used competently but not ingeniously.

What principle is this based on? "Guns kill people"?

There is no test. In every other debate of this nature, drugs (OTC vs prescription vs illegal) or pollutants or carcinogens or whatever you care to name, there is no test. But in most other debates the experts, whether they are scientists or industry experts or regulators, draw a fairly arbitrary line and adjust it based on feedback.

Only in the case of firearms is the debate dominated by non-experts and blatant fear-mongering. (Well, some other debates are dominated by laymen, but not to the same extent.)

"Meanwhile, if machine guns were legal, every criminal would be embarrassed to carry anything less."

Machine guns *ARE* legal in most states, and are almost never used by criminals.

I think the criminal logic, if such a thing exists, goes something like this:
- If I rob a 7-Eleven with a pistol, they might put a fuzzy picture from the security camera on the news, but odds are nothing will come of it.
- If I rob a 7-Eleven with a full-auto machine gun, the public, police, ATF, FBI, and other such people will flip out and definitely come looking for me. Not worth it for $50.

A criminal owning an illegal firearm is, unfortunately, not very uncommon. Punishments for this sort of thing are not terribly severe, most of the time (usually can be plead down). Illegal possession of a machine gun is a big federal crime that is routinely prosecuted quite harshly.

I know many people who legally own machine guns (I myself own a silencer, as machine guns are just too expensive for my limited budget). The guns themselves are inanimate metal objects, and the people are normal, everyday, stable folk. Nothing to be worried about.

Rudy won't push for any new gun bans.

Even the Democratically-held Congress
has pretty much shelved their idiotic
gun bans for the rest of Time immemorial.

They lost the White House because
of their gun control idiocy....they
have LONG MEMORIES.

"Rudy won't push for any new gun bans."

His opposition to the Protection of Lawful Commerce Act means he is perfectly content to sue gun makers out of existence. Is that effectually any different?

"Even the Democratically-held Congress has pretty much shelved their idiotic gun bans for the rest of Time immemorial."

Then how do you explain HR 1022?

"...they have LONG MEMORIES."

I have a long memory too... Because of what he did in NYC, Rudy cannot be trusted. Because of what he did in Mass, Mitt cannot be trusted. Because of what they've done since 1968 (or even '34), no Dem can be trusted; not even a pro-gun Dem can be trusted, because they would appoint liberal Judges.

The line was drawn in 1789 with the adoption of the Constitution. That line goes like this,".......shall not be infringed."

There are no other lines that need be drawn, they would be and are illegal.

"I don't know whether WJC cared about gun laws one way or the other, but he certainly cared about losing the House and Senate. Sen Clinton may have more interest in gun control than WJC, but she certainly values power more than she cares about guns. If she thinks that gun control will strengthen her politically, she'll do it. If she thinks that it will weaken her politically, she won't."

Hahaha, oh wow this is so true. I don't trust Hillary on anything except her ambition and her thirst for political power. THAT is her principle. I believe she would gladly push Jim Brady down the stairs if it would get her 10 points in the polls.

That being said, I definitely think her preference is against guns. She has spent too much time in gun-404 crowds to think that she would do anything pro-gun except by accident or if forced politically.

Actually, rabid hostility to firearms tends to play to our favor because it leads to miscalculation. Just look at the party Adrian Fenty threw for us by choosing to appeal the DC Circuit's opinion. Of course, our side has been prone to making the same mistakes (see Silviera v Lockyer for a shameful example).

If the Democrats are SO OUT to pass H.R. 1022
why haven't they tried????

THey have majorities in both Houses.

3/19/2007 Referred to House subcommittee. Status: Referred to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

7 Months later not much done on it lol.