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Any gun theft should be questioned. Putting hot weapons into criminal circulation is dangerous. Some people steal their own guns.
The fellow with the largest collection owned well over 2,500 guns. Where most people have art hanging on their walls, he had collections of guns -- some frames contained over 100 in a single case. He had guns in his attic. Guns stacked in his spare bedroom. Guns in the rafters of his garage. His garage was a gun shop.
I knew this man as a young child.
My father wasn't around much, so I hung out with this man. It was backwater south.
He taught me to shoot. Before I was 8 I could shoot patterns at long distances you could cover with a #2 pencil eraser. I retrieved lead from his back yard trap, cast my own bullets and learned to pack my own loads.
The man may have been a professional shooter, for all I know. There were times when we would shoot special factory ammunition and special guns and he would take a lot of notes.
I was allowed to shoot so much because I was precocious with firearms and adults found my skill entertaining. As a young boy I enjoyed the attention my skill brought me. I was also incredibly disciplined regarding gun safety, ettiquette and responsibility. Once my young association with firearms began I was not allowed to have or play with toy guns. To this day I'm bothered seeing toy guns and children pointing them at each other.
I'm an expert marksman. Most likely a much better shot than you. Most often better than the sniper down on the local SWAT team.
Shooting now bores me, and I find most shooters to be pretty offensive people. You are right when you mention carelessness and stupidity. My experience tells me its an affliction with that crowd. Their arrogance is oppressive. And its usually their arrogance that leads to stupid behavior, which in turn leads to these thefts, as well as deaths. Most gun owners I see are complete idiots.
There are some exceptions to this rule, but mostly those exceptional people share my view that most folks should not own guns: most people are too stupid, careless and arrogant, and that is a deadly combination.
The people I see railing against gun registration and regulation do so because they don't want to act responsible with a firearm -- they think the second ammendment allows them to be a complete moron while in the possession of deadly force.
Of the thefts.
I don't recall there was much news about the large theft. I recall my father talking about it. The man who lost the guns may have been embarassed. I was very young then, and that did not seem important. I don't recall it was in the papers. It seemed hush-hush. It was back in the 60s before Kennedy was shot. Very odd.
Another man owned close to 400 firearms. I believe he bought out museums, gunstores and the like and resold what he didn't want to keep. I've been in the man's home, and his collecting has brought him many beautiful things. He had a lot of very heavy-duty locks protecting his home, but he was robbed by criminals who planned the crime well and robbed him at gunpoint. It was suspected they were aware of the large purchase he made and studied him.
My clearest memory of a theft was from an acquaintance who owned well over 60 firearms. Many were quite valuable. He seemed to trade in the things. He and his wife were the victims of an intense and tortuous home invasion. There was some suspiscion he robbed himself for insurance purposes, but that theory was dismissed because of the severity of the beatings. That seemed to make the news more than the gun theft.
As you can tell, I have more of a problem with gun owners and gun ownership than I have with guns.
That leads me to believe there should be an outright ban on handguns for all people outside of law enforcement and the military. Most people don't shoot enough to be effective with them, and short of efficacy they are more a danger to themselves and their neighbors. Short of a ban, I would require initial testing, logging of hours at a gun range and frequent and regular re-testing.
Mind you, the Silver medalist in marksmanship in this year's Olympics only had to hit his own target to win gold. But he hit another target and lost. In a home invasion, with untrained handgun owners, that kind of miss can travel through a wall, into a neighbor's home and kill an innocent person. It happens. And if it happens at all it is too often.
Mind you, the second amendment requires a well-regulated milita. Gun knowledge and proficiency is a necessary and prudent part of that regulation.
For most people, a Remington 870 shotgun is an excellent home defense weapon. It requires little skill to be effective, indeed the mere sound of its slide operation is enough to intimidate most individuals invading a home.
For hunters the addition of a high-powered rifle for deer and a smaller rifle for small game is fine. After that I view the owning of multiple firearms the same way I view the owning multiples of cats or dogs-- own more than three or four and there is something very wrong with you.
I've absolutely had it with self-styled Rambos with their assault-styled guns, lousy gun ettiquette, poor gun safety behavior, crappy shooting skills and just plain bad attitudes ruin hunting trips and afternoons at the gun range. I've had to kiss the ground way too many times because of these guys.
I'm absolutely furious to see Bill Clinton Thug sillouette targets in the NRA Freedom aisle of the local sporting goods store.
Ever since the NRA decided they wanted to be the National Saturday Night Special Lobby Association, or the National Assault Rifle association, the rifle range, skeet range and the woods have gone to absolute hell. And I know a lot of good gun owners who feel the same way about this.
Anybody who says any different is a goddamned liar. And for them I pray for the day Hillary Clinton and the National Guard helps these kooks make good on their "cold dead fingers" promise. Once those kooks are cleared out, we might be able to go back to the days of responsible gun ownership.
With the pro-gun, anything goes crowd it seems like it's always the "other guy" who is wrong. I think we need to put very strict controls on who that "other guy" is.
We straight on this, Skippy?
Harvey Briggs
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