I am not a gun person. But for the gun persons, how about you speak out?

[JohnnyRingo]

84. If you lived on a ranch in Montana....

Last edited Thu Dec 20, 2012, 01:33 AM - Edit history (1)

...you may have a different view of a Bushmaster. Though I don't have one, and personally I don't need one, a semi-auto high powered rifle can be a useful tool when out checking remote stretches of fence or searching the wilds for stray livestock. Even having one within close reach around the home for people who live in remote areas, can mean the difference between defense from nature's carnivores and losing a small child.

Certainly if one sees such a weapon in downtown Chicago, it takes on a much more sinister motive, but for those whose job requires lone work beyond the range of cell towers, it can be a life saver. An angry mother bear or a mountain lion can ruin the day for someone who frequents the outer reaches of one's land as a routine matter of necessity. You'd think a couple hits from a .357 revolver or a shotgun would halt such a threat in it's tracks, but you'd be wrong.

The picture I posted came from the interview of Rachel in Rolling Stone Magazine last year. In it she tells of how her and her girlfriend's first date was at an NRA shoot. She agrees with me that we need common sense regulation to keep dangerous ordinance out of the hands of criminals or the mentally deranged, but she'll never call for an outright ban of all firearms that would be logistically impossible to implement and enforce anyway.

That "antique musket", as you referred to it, is a late 1800s Henry lever action repeating rifle. It and it's close cousin, the Winchester '74, were considered the assault rifles of their day. Before they were invented, people used muskets where a single lead ball had to be tamped down into the barrel with a charge of black powder, a primer cap added to the hammer, fired, and repeated. The Henry, using modern brass cartridges, could be fired as fast as one could work the lever, chambering another round until the tube magazine under the barrel was empty.

If someone wants to write common sense laws that curtail mass murders, that's fine with me, but I hope they at least know the difference between a medieval blunderbuss and an M4 military assault rifle with laser sighting.