I thought this article by Oliver North was interesting. Written coming from the Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show in Nevada.
There is widespread support for the NRA’s proposal to put police officers in schools. All here endorse the idea of keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals and mentally unstable individuals who pose a danger to others.
OK, nothing special there. You’d probably get the same response from anyone on the street these days.
The ideas of pursuing and prosecuting “straw purchasers” of firearms and giving longer sentences to those convicted of violent crimes have wide appeal. There were, of course, some who suggested that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. might have to prosecute himself for straw purchases if it turns out he authorized the ill-conceived “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scheme.
Support for better enforcement of laws we already have. That sounds good. Of course North had to take a dig at the administration as well.
The NY SAFE Act requires law-abiding citizens to pass a background check before being able to purchase ammunition of any kind. One retailer points out: “There is no mechanism for making such a check — no form we can fill out, no way of complying. My lawyers have told us to stop filling catalog and Internet orders from New York Zip Codes until this is clarified. The people who drafted this law spent more time concocting a cute acronym than thinking about how this could put me out of business. Maybe that’s their real objective.”
This sounds like a serious concern to me. Whatever new rules are in place, whether you agree with them or not…I think we can all agree that a poor implementation is a bad idea.
At 3-Gun Nation’s “Rumble on the Range” — where competitors are scored on speed and accuracy in firing a shotgun, a handgun and a rifle — one of the competitors, a U.S. Marine, observed: “This sport cannot happen with small-capacity magazines. Too bad Cuomo and Reid aren’t here to explain why this is a bad thing.” Citizens of the Empire State must now go elsewhere to practice and participate in three-gun competitions.
I can understand this position, although personally I feel that sports need to change with the times. We wouldn’t allow someone to play a sport that involved, say, plutonium nuggets…just too dangerous to bystanders as well as potentially devastating if the material should end up in the wrong hands. Same argument, just a matter of where you draw the line.
Finally, there were numerous complaints that “nobody in politics or the media knows what an ‘assault weapon’ really is.” Perhaps. But there is an organization that does: the National Rifle Association. If the numbers are accurate, more than 100 million Americans own firearms. Yet only 4.5 million of us are members of the NRA. This would be a good time for law-abiding gun owners to join the organization that will fight for the right to keep them.
Plug for the NRA, unsurprising.
There are two issues that I’d have liked to hear opinions on from SHOT attendees. First, who pays for things like the police officers in schools or higher levels of enforcement of existing laws? Second, how do they feel about funding non-partisan scientific studies on the effect of different gun laws? The ATF is underfunded. Police departments are being cut everywhere. The NRA has lobbied to cut funding for studies focusing on firearms, yet it’s impossible to craft effective policy without having more than anecdotal evidence. I’d be interested to hear if the rank and file is in support of these things that the NRA is fighting against.
