Is It Time To Let The Gun Grabbers Win?

As could be expected, the recent shooting in Las Vegas has brought the gun grabbers out of the woodwork (or wherever they hide) to moan and bewail the NRA preventing them from enacting what they call “common sense gun laws,” while accusing anyone and everyone who isn’t in their camp of condoning murder.

This is nothing new, as they follow the leftist philosophy of “never letting a good crisis go to waste”.

The target of the gun grabbers this time is the bump fire stocks that the killer used in murdering 59 people and wounding over 500 more.

Targeting the Wrong Enemy

This device, which the ATF classifies as an “accessory” not a modification, is legal for sale over the counter to pretty much anyone. Probably even to people who can’t legally buy a firearm. It’s not a gun and it’s not a gun modification, so the ATF has seen no reason to control it.

It’s easy to make a strong argument in support of the ATF decision, because you can do the same thing other ways, without having to spend the money on a bump fire stock.

I’ve seen people accomplish the same thing using a rubber band and a belt loop. I suppose if we really put our minds to it, we could come up with a dozen such ways, none of which require spending $150 on this accessory.

On the other hand, the left has a very graphic argument in favor of making bump fire stocks illegal. Had the killer not had access to such a device, he probably couldn’t have killed as many people. Being able to mimic machine gun fire, shooting 400 to 800 rounds per minute (the rate that a bump fire allows) isn’t up to the 750 to 950 rate of a M-4, cut it’s pretty close. Close enough for the shooter’s purposes.

Granted, a trained shooter can learn to shoot the AR-15 about that fast, while being much more accurate, but by all reports, the shooter was not an experienced shooter. He apparently had no military training and he was not known to be a shooter or gun collector. He kept that part of his life secret.

 

This is Why Conventional Preparedness Wisdom is Deadly!

 

I need to say here that I’m not a fan of bump fire. But then, I was never a fan of full-auto fire, even when I was in the military. A lot of guys really enjoyed going “rock and roll” with their M-16s, burning up ammo, but I didn’t. I wanted my shots to go where I aimed and full-auto really doesn’t allow that.

As far as I’m concerned, full-auto fire is only useful for two things:

1 – suppressive fire; when you need to get the enemy to keep their heads down, so that they don’t shoot you.

2 – mass fire; if you’ve got a mob of zombies bearing down on your position  and you need to take out as many as you can as fast as  you can. Real soldiers don’t bunch up like that, knowing it makes them too good a target, but zombies aren’t supposed to be that smart.

But for the Las Vegas shooter, bump fire was apparently a good choice, He wasn’t trying to hit individual targets, just to hit as many as he can, like shooting that mob of zombies. And like the zombies, they were all bunched up, so that he could be pretty much assured that his shots would hit somebody.

So it appears that the existence and ease of purchase of the bump fire stocks did in fact have a part in generating a high body count in this case.

But does that mean they should be outlawed? Should we give up any part of our Second Amendment rights because of a crazed madman who wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, killing as many people as he could?

Leftist politicians and commentators would want us to think so. They have introduced legislation to that effect, claiming that eliminating the bump fire stock would make us all “safer” in some intangible way.

I say that’s intangible, simply because this is the only crime on record, where the bump fire stock has been used. It’s even extremely rare to find the AR-15 used in a crime, let alone fitted with a bump fire stock.

So how is eliminating the bump fire stock going to make anyone safer? Yeah, if there were a rash of crimes being committed with this accessory mounted to AR-15s, I could see that as a possibility, but not for one single crime, no matter how horrific.

But then, the left has never truly been interested in making the streets any safer for law-abiding citizens, that’s just the camouflage they use to push their anti-gun agenda. They need something to sell their ideology to the low-information voters and public safety at least sounds good.

Of course, if they were truly interested in public safety, they’d be much more interested in getting criminals off the streets, instead of lauding them as some sort of folk heroes.

Tell me how Obama talking about the “valuable work that Black Lives Matter,” (BLM) a domestic terrorist organization which uses physical violence as a means of “expression” makes anyone’s life safer. It doesn’t. If Obama or anyone else on the left was truly concerned about public safety, they would condemn BLMs methods, even if they agreed with their goals.

What They Say We Should Do…

I don’t think there is anyone who would argue the statement that “guns are dangerous.” If anything, gun owners and shooters would be the first to say that. We know how dangerous they are, which is why the first thing that any of us teach a new shooter is the four rules of gun safety.

But guns alone aren’t any more dangerous than a rock. It’s the mind behind the gun that turns it into a weapon of murder, just like the mind of the person who kills with a hammer or baseball bat. That’s the issue and the left needs to get on board with dealing with that issue.

Apparently, the Las Vegas killer was mentally unstable, as pretty much all mass shooters are. As in many other such cases, his mental instability had not been diagnosed, so there was no warning of what he was planning. Had there been, he could have been stopped, before doing any damage.

For that matter, existing laws on the books would have prevented him from being able to buy the firearms that he used in the attack. That would have made a real difference.

Eliminating bump fire stocks won’t make anyone any safer. Even Dianne Feinstein admits that, and she’s the loudest voice pushing to eliminate them.

As she has before, she has introduced legislation into the Senate to follow the pattern of California and restrict our Second Amendment rights.

Video first seen on ABC News.

Yes, let’s punish honest, hard-working, law-abiding Americans for what a criminally psychotic person has done! What rubbish.

While it wouldn’t bother me personally to see bump fire stocks taken off the market, I don’t think there should be a law passed to do so.

Such a law would be impossible to enforce anyway, as it requires people who currently have them to turn them in. Without going door to door and searching people’s houses, there is no way of knowing whether everyone turned theirs in.

That’s not only absurd, it’s illegal, breaking our Fourth Amendment rights. Of course, Feinstein isn’t concerned about that.

But then, leftists never really worry about whether a law is enforceable or not anyway. Nevada passed a law requiring universal background checks for gun sales. This means that background checks have to be done in private sales, as well as when a FFL gun dealer sells one. This includes when a person dies and leaves their guns to their children.

The FBI’s NICS has already stated that they cannot and will not perform background checks for private gun sales. States do not have any right to mandate that the federal government provide services. So there is no way for gun owners in Nevada to get the background check that the law requires.

Of course, that doesn’t matter to those on the left, who are suing the governor for not implementing that law. They are claiming that he is breaking the Constitution, by not using his powers to enforce laws that the state legislature passed.

Even so, that might just backfire on them, as the courts could throw the law out, as not being enforceable. As things stand right now, it is impossible for the governor to enforce that law, so it should be thrown out.

…And What They’re Actually Aiming For

The only way that it would be possible to enforce universal background checks would be to vastly increase the size of the NICS, so that they could deal with those individual sales, or to implement universal gun registration. But the law does not allow for registration. So that can’t be done, without changing federal law.

Even if they did, it wouldn’t stop the criminals, who buy stolen guns on the black market anyway. Once again, punish the law-abiding, hard-working Americans, for what criminals do.

While Feinstein’s proposed bill doesn’t address universal background checks, it does go much farther than just eliminating bump fire stocks. As one conservative commentator put it, “This doesn’t put us closer to the slippery slope, it is the slippery slope.”

Feinstein’s bill is a perfectly crafted piece of liberal legislation. I say that because it is sufficiently vague enough to allow leftist politicians and bureaucrats to use it as a means of creating all sorts of legislation to outlaw all sorts of firearm accessories and modifications. Specifically, it outlaws any device that can increase the rate of fire of a semi-automatic firearm.

That’s actually a very broad term, able to be redefined repeatedly over time, in order to make it mean whatever bureaucrats, who are mostly Democrats, want it to.

To start with, what’s a “normal rate of fire” for a semi-automatic firearm? Even the manufacturers can’t agree on that; and does that mean for an experienced shooter or a novice? I’ve seen video of experienced shooters who can pull an AR-15’s trigger as fast as a bump fire stock can, and a whole lot more accurately.

Upgraded triggers can be said to increase the rate of fire, as they make it easier to fire faster; so can spring kits to lighten the trigger pull. Magazines holding more than one round make it easy to fire faster as well.

So do telescopic gunsights for that matter. I have an extended slide release and magazine release installed on my Glock, those both make it so that I can shoot faster, or at least reload faster, which makes it possible for me to shoot faster. I also have a laser sight and tritium night sights, both of which can be considered aids in shooting faster.

My AR-15 has a piston instead of a gas tube, another modification that makes it easy to shoot faster. I’ve also got a foregrip handle, which helps get back on target quicker, another aid in shooting faster. Then there’s the red dot sight, which is definitely faster to use than iron sights are.

I could go on and on. The point is, anything that anyone would do to modify a firearm, improving it from the original, can be considered a means of making the gun shoot faster.

So about the only thing that Feinstein’s law doesn’t make illegal are the guns themselves, holsters and slings. That’s apparently the next step in her nefarious plan.

The point is this; if we allow the left to take away any of our gun rights or to pass a law which restricts the guns we are allowed to have and the modifications we can make to them, they will just keep going.

Their goal is to take all guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens; and nothing short of that will satisfy them.

Are you going to let them do it?

This article has been written by Bill White for Survivopedia.