Also you might note the similarity to a previous post on Gun Myths and Legends.
The gun hobby is pretty vast and as such there are a lot of misunderstood facets.
The Second Amendment
It is probably the most misunderstood (by the leftists anyway) of all the twenty-some-odd amendments we have made to the Constitution. Some say it was written to protect Hunting Rights....Some will say that it protects the State's rights to maintain a militia. Others will tell you that the Second Amendment granted gun rights to Americans.
The Second Amendment was written to protect a God given, natural right to defend oneself against all enemies, INCLUDING their own government. It was never about hunting. It is a means to preserve freedom and the other natural born rights of mankind.
Also keep in mind that the word "need" is not used in the Bill of Rights, it is, however, used in the Communist Manifesto though....just sayin'
The Gun Show "Loophole"
Number one, there is no "loophole". People convicted of felonies, been found by an authority as mentally deficient and in most states, convicted of a domestic violence offense cannot legally possess or buy a weapon, so any attempt by them to get one at a gun show or otherwise is ALREADY illegal...no loophole, the law already exists. In addition it is illegal for someone to knowingly provide a firearm to someone who is prohibited from owning one. If the law exists, what is writing another law going to do? I believe those in favor of curtailing gun rights, do not care about crime, they care about control. You rarely see these same people asking for longer prison sentences......
The problem is that nobody is asking the question: "Why do we care if felons get their hands on guns?" If these felons cannot be trusted to obey the law and are truly too dangerous to allow them to own a gun.... shouldn't we be asking the question: "why did we let them out of jail?".
After all, anyone who really wants a weapon, will find a way to get one, either by buying a stolen one, stealing one for themselves or even making one from parts or from scratch.
Keep in mind there is no law against a felon owning a knife, can of gasoline, a car, a baseball bat, ball peen hammer, crow bar....shall I go on? If we remove the guns from the equation, we still have a crime problem, if we remove the criminals we wont have a gun problem.
AK-47:
Despite what the media tells you, not every auto-loading rifle is an AK-47 or even an "AK-47 style" weapon, whatever that means.
For the record...this is NOT an AK-47
Glock:
Not every handgun is a Glock
Uzi:
Not every high capacity, blocky looking pistol is an Uzi!
Enemies of Guns:
It is often said that guns have two enemies: Rust and Politicians. This is not true you can add Criminals and Fire to the list.
I do understand that the terms politician and criminal are often used to describe the same individual and that fire damage leads to rust, but I thought the two extra enemies should be added to the list.
Suppressor or Silencer:
Either is accurate, while it is true that a suppressor/silencer doesn't completely silence a firearm..."silencer" is still a correct moniker. If you want to argue, look up the first patent issued to Hiram Maxim...he called it a silencer and since he invented it, he can call it whatever the hell he wants to and for that matter so can you.
That Shoulder Thing that goes up
There is perhaps nothing more aggravating than a politician who is attempting to ban something they do not understand.
Guns are inanimate objects, tools that require manipulation by humans, their attributes do not make them deadly, the person holding them does.
Why is it the folding stock? The muzzle brake? The pistol grip? Maybe it is the high capacity magazine....I guess you are less dead when shot with the gun on top?
The funniest part about all of this non-sense is the harder the Hoplophobes push to ban these items, the better they sell.
Bullet vs cartridge:
You don't load bullets into a gun, you load cartridges. Cartridges are made up of a bullet, a cartridge case and propellant or powder, the gun will separate the three, dispensing the bullets out the muzzle and the empty case out the ejection port (I shouldn't need to explain what happens to the powder, amiright?) Again, this is one that doesn't really bother me.
Yet some people still don't understand.....
This hilarious news report was repeated by news agencies who were bamboozled by an illiterate Iraqi woman...
and this snowflake thought that foam ear plugs were rubber bullets.....
Mosin-Nagant Sights
Many people mistakenly believe the Mosin-Nagant 91/30 sights are graduated in Meters
The sights are actually graduated in Arshins, which are equal to 2 feet 4 inches or 71.12cm. So the farthest adjustment isn't 2000 meters, it is 1,422.4 meters (a little more than 25% less), still a stretch for open sights, but at least we can be accurate with our terminology.
Clip or magazine:
This one has been beaten to death and to tell you the truth, I don't really care....but for reference here is a picture.
Point Blank Range:
The media & Hollywood have a nasty habit of referring to any gun shot from close range (something Jeff Cooper used to call "bad breath distance") as "Point Blank Range", when in reality some guns could be in point blank range when fired from 100 yards or more away.
Point blank range is any shot fired within the distance of the bullet drop. In other words it is any target that the shooter can hit without compensating their sights for bullet drop.
Example: The .243 Winchester has a maximum Point Blank Range of 300 yards. While a 9mm Luger has a MPBR of 107 yards. The point here is that using the term "point blank range" is meaningless, as 99% gun battles happen within 50 yards, easily the point blank range of virtually every gun.
Some people think a pistol is the term for a semi-automatic handgun only, but in reality all handguns are pistols.
The term pistol predates the invention of the revolver and most certainly predates the invention of the semi-automatic handgun. The term dates as far back as the early 1400's. it comes from the word for hand cannon.
AR Rifles
Many people, especially the media, tell you that the initials AR in AR-15 stands for "Assault Rifle" or "Automatic Rifle", this is not true. They stand for Armalite Rifle, the company that developed the platform in the 1950s.
Assault Rifle
an AK-47 can be an "assault rifle", but it might also not be. How is that possible you ask?
The term assault rifle comes from the Germans who invented the concept of a fully automatic carbine that shoots a moderately powerful cartridge and can be reloaded quickly via a detachable box magazine. Their idea for the "Sturmgewehr" (Storm or Assault Rifle) was a gun that could lay down suppressing fire, clear a room of enemies or just rain down bullets quickly, yet was lightweight and easy to fire.
"Assault Rifles" must have the following characteristics:
- Full-auto fire capability
- Detachable box magazine
- Intermediate cartridge (not pistol, not full power rifle)
- An effective range of at least 300 meters
The Sturmgewehr 44 (STG44):
Fully Automatic Weapons:
The argument that fully automatic rifles are more deadly is silly when you look at the actual use of them. Here is a anecdote from Cooper's Corner (Guns and Ammo):
"Family member Dr. Werner Weissenhofer reports from Vienna: It seems that a felon armed with a 357 revolver robbed a bank. As he left the bank, he was accosted by a policeman whom he murdered with one shot. Great excitement ensued, with the felon taking hostages and racing madly around from one store to another. When the forces of law and order had been mobilized and surrounded the goblin, a policeman volunteered to trade himself to the goblin for two hostages. This offer was accepted, at which time the felon fired at the policeman and seriously wounded him. The forces of law and order opened up with everything they had, which was mostly AUG and Glock fire. Shortly, the goblin killed himself with one round. He had fired three times and achieved three hits. The police, according to their official report, fired 1,261 rounds without drawing blood.
At one time, we used to refer to an event of this sort as a "Chinese Fire Drill." Later we came to call if "Father's Day in Harlem." After the interment of the Ayatollah Khomeini, we began to call it "An Iranian Funeral." Now, I guess we can call it "A Viennese Bank Robbery."
As I have often stated, if someone wants to shoot at me, I sure hope he does it on full-auto." - Col. Jeff Cooper
Due to the muzzle rise from back to back firings most fully automatic firearms are difficult to keep a steady aim. This is the reason the U.S. Military went to a 3-round burst. The shooter ends up not getting very many shots on target.
It is easy to convert a Semi-Auto to Full-Auto:
This question came up during a conversation at a cocktail party in Canada. My Canadian brothers were under the false impression that you can simply remove a pin or drill a hole and convert a legal semi-auto rifle into a fully automatic machine gun.
To explain why this is not easy to do we need to get into the mechanics of an auto-loading firearm. Any auto-loading firearm will have to have a disconnect that requires a reset of the trigger (releasing and then pressing again) for semi-auto or a delayed function so the hammer doesn't simply follow the bolt (for full auto).
If the hammer were to follow the closing bolt (called "hammer follow") you could very easily fire the gun out of battery (the cartridge will go off before being seated in the chamber). An out of battery ignition will very likely destroy the gun and injure the person holding the gun or at the very least render the firearm unusable.
Now there are some firearms that were designed for the military as full auto or select fire weapons and then converted to fire in semi-auto mode only for the civilian market. With SOME of these guns it easy to swap out the parts and make the gun full auto, but (and this is a big but) those parts (called full-auto sears) are tightly regulated and very expensive (remember ownership of full-auto firearms has been highly regulated since the passing of the 1934 National Firearms Act).
A talented machinist could build the parts if they had specs, a schematic or an original part to copy, but again this isn't "easy".
The real proof in the pudding is this: When was the last time you heard of a criminal in the United States using a fully automatic firearm?
The only one in recent memory that I can think of was the 1997 North Hollywood Bank of America Shootout. You might also note (as stated in the section above), the bank robbers fired 1,100 rounds and while they did achieve some hits, they didn't kill anyone. Some say it was a miracle that no police or civilians were killed, but I believe it was (at least in large part) due to the inaccuracy of the fully-automatic weapon.
The final word is this: if it were truly easy to convert a weapon to full-auto (and it was worthwhile to do so) you would be hearing about it a lot more often then we do.
Handgun Grips or Stocks
These are two more terms that can be interchanged. Some insist that all guns have "stocks" which includes hand guns. Some refer to them as grips or grip panels. I don't think it really matters....
We see it on the news all the freakin' time....a man was arrested, authorities found an "arsenal" in his home....the pictures shows a handful of weapons, not even enough to outfit a squad. How is this an arsenal?
While the true definition doesn't put a number to the quantity of weapons that constitutes an "arsenal", the traditional use of the term as a military stronghold where the Army's weapons are stored, leads us to believe that an "arsenal" should consist of a considerable amount. .......and what is the point of posing the edged weapons with the firearms??
High Powered Rifle:
We hear all the time on the news.....the suspect opened fire with a "high powered rifle", then we find out the rifle was an AK-47 or AR-15. Neither of these are "high powered". They both fire an intermediate cartridge, not even in the same class as a 300 Magnum, 7mm Magnum or even the .30-'06.
Accuracy vs. Precision:
Accuracy is often used to describe a rifle that can provide a tight grouping. This is actually called precision. Accuracy means the gun will hit what it is aimed at (or close too it), precision is being able to hit the same place over and over (not necessarily what you aimed at).
Accuracy is basically having the sights dialed in, so you hit what is aimed at. If the gun cannot hit the target it is aimed at twice in a row, it is not just inaccurate, but also imprecise.
The graphic below explains it pretty clearly, it assumes the shooter is aiming at the bull's eye with every shot.
The National Rifle Association doesn't do enough for local gun rights abuses....
- First: Remember the National Rifle Association is a NATIONAL organization...they are not the California Rifle Association or the New England Rifle Association....
- Second: The NRA's charter is to teach and promote safe and effective marksmanship, they only got into lobbying government when government decided to infringe on the Second Amendment.
- Third: The NRA has just over 5 million members yet we have somewhere between 80 and 150 million gun owners in America....it seems to me there is a disconnect, we can't expect 5 million members to do all the work for the rest of the gun owners. Just imagine how safe our rights might be if the NRA had 100 million members?.....if you are not a member, YOU NEED TO JOIN! click here for to sign up
References
Ocabj
Nina Kaytel
Guns & Ammo
Daily Mail
Wikipedia
Everydaynodaysoff
Chuck Hawks
