In 2000, at the NRA convention, and again in 2003, when Charlton Heston held that iconic musket over his head and said, "From my cold dead hands," he was more right than most folks realize.
Heston held the weapon of choice for real hunters. It was a rifle that could hit a buck at 500 yards but not a room full of children. He held a weapon that looked at home over a fireplace and could be used to defend a home without putting it at increased risk. Muskets are notoriously poor weapons when it comes to drive by shootings, mass murders, suicide and domestic violence.
If the picture of a musket in your mind is a little hard to grasp, substitute the picture of any hunting rifle or shotgun with a small ammo capacity. Think of something your father or grandfather used when they taught you gun safety.
More importantly, Heston did not have an assault rifle in his hand with a large capacity magazine full of cop-killer bullets.
Was Charlton Heston trying to provoke a conversation? That overdue conversation by moms and dads about common sense solutions to improve gun safety is late in occurring but hopefully not too late for your children or grandchildren.
If you support the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution, and abhor the death and carnage inflicted upon so many in its name, your participation in that common-sense conversation is necessary. If you are a hunter, your participation in that conversation is essential.
For too long, hunters have been pushed out of the conversation by extremists from the militias, conspiracy groups, gun manufacturers and political opportunists. Yes, Grover Norquist sits on the NRA board, which was elected by 7 percent of its membership. Now is the time for hunters to retake control of their sport, their way of life, and their reputation.
Many remember Charlton Heston as an over-the-hill actor with a bad hairpiece, a drinking problem and diminished mental capacity who could only get attention by saying the most outlandish things to extremist groups in his later years.
In Wikipedia, it says that, in 2000, Heston publicly disclosed that he had been treated for alcoholism at a Utah clinic in May–June of that year On August 9, 2002, Heston publicly announced (via a taped message) he was diagnosed with symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease.
Others remember the Academy Award-winning actor who walked with Dr. King in 1963 at the civil rights march on Washington. If we close our eyes, we can see the both real hero and the movie hero standing with the teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School, defending the children and not defending the weapons that made the massacre possible.
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What does our next door neighbor, Canada, do differently? They see the same movies, and videos. They teach their children much like we teach ours. They are a nation of hunters but they rarely kill each other. What about other countries? Do states with stricter gun laws have fewer deaths? Google is full of facts that are waiting for you.
Rifles for hunting, fine. Pistols for home protection, fine. But seriously, a semi-auto AR-15can be converted to fully auto by anyone (just google it) - it has no place in the civilian world.. That being said, this is not a gun issue. Guns are as dangerous as cars, or knives or anything else misused. This is control issue - mental illness is a huge problem - people will point to violence in video games, on tv, in movies, and while those are contributing factors, it starts with the misfire in the brain because a normal, rational person doesn't go off based on what they see. Now, sitting there fixated on something for hours and hours and days and weeks is a different deal, but then again, try watching the news every day and not feel depressed - one political party blaming the other, every news story sensationalized and about negativity or violence - the media is as much to blame as any video game.
If you read a bit more into this guy that committed the murders you'll see that what he needed was mental health availability. If he didn't get a gun he probably would have found another method...maybe a car on the sidewalk when school let out, who knows. But honestly, no matter how many laws are put in place, gun "control" isn't going to do a thing.
Everyone believes in gun control - somewhere between sharpened sticks and the Tsar Bomb, we all agree there are limits. Why does the gun control debate distill to guns v no guns. Handguns, shotguns, and manual action rifles were given 2nd am. protection this century by the Supreme Court with DC v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago. But even Scalia admits that no right is limitless and allows for regulations. So, reasonable regulations are on the table, and the distance between the lower legal limit and the current limit doesn't even seem that far apart.
Back in the 1970s here in Cobb County Georgia we had an elective class in high school called “Outdoor Education”. We used material that was produced by the Ga. Dept. of Natural Resources and covered areas such as conservation, outdoor skills, wildlife identification, boating/water safety, hunting, hunter safety and fishing. We had axes, knives, matches, saws and other outdoor equipment on campus. What will shock the bed-wetting demographic is we had firearm instruction and demonstrations on campus as well. I still remember our teacher bringing his own firearms for one class, in which he instructed us on the workings, handling and dangers. He showed us the destructive power of his 30/30 lever action rifle and that it wasn’t hard to imagine what it would do to a human if handled or used in the wrong way (no graphic 3d animation necessary). That demonstration still stays with me to this day because up to that point I had very little contact with firearms. In a later class we even shot skeet on the practice field behind our school. Continued in Part 2
The reason I bring this up is to ask; what has changed? Guns haven’t changed much, a civilian AR15 then is pretty much the same as one now and a handgun is still a handgun. What has changed is our culture. We have graphic video games, graphic movies, graphic TV shows and graphic news stories, all of which desensitizes young minds to violence. Couple that with over medication, broken families, one parent households, rampant moral decline, the killing of the unborn, materialism gone insane and a political system that's a joke. It's been 37 years since I took that class in high school and sadly this nation no longer resembles what I grew up loving and respecting. If the liberals/progressives want to identify what's wrong with this country all they have to do is look in the mirror, the decline is squarely on their shoulders. Its policies they’ve implemented over the last 50 years that has set the stage for this tragedy. Liberals/ progressives blaming inanimate objects for what happened in Connecticut is an act of cowardice, deal with the culture you created, man up and admit you’re wrong, I’d wager the American people would be willing to forgive you. BTW, I may not have said it, but I hold traitorous progressive republicans at fault as well…..
Conservatism has led us down the drain and has killed our children, I think it's time they take responsibility for that.
Only thing I'd add is the fact we now have a generation of folks that accept no responsibility for their actions. We've become a litigious society, failing to accept blame for anything, always deferring or denying, or finding a way to pass it along onto something or someone else. We have 30+ years of kids growing up with that mindset, and raising children with even more overindulgence.
"Assault rifle" and "cop killer bullets" are made up, propagandist terms that serve only to inflame the discussion by implying that those of us who own AR-15/M-4 pattern sporting rifles are all potential cop killers. (No, "AR" does NOT stand for "Assault Rifle".) In using them, he betrays his lack of sincerity with respect to his call for "an adult conversation" about guns.
Yes, we have a homicide problem in the US, but it's mostly a function of the willingness of gang members to get into gun fights with one another--and the unwillingness of liberals to lock away violent, repeat offenders.