For the lust of guns

[itieuglyflies]

Someone please define for me exactly what qualifies a gun as an "assault weapon"?

[Mudwall Gatewood 3.0]

Someone please define for me exactly what qualifies a gun as an "assault weapon"?

From the 2003 Factsheet: Assault Weapons, provided by the US Dept of Justice's Office of Justice Programs.

Assault weapon is defined as a civilian, semiautomatic version of a military weapon.

This from 2003.  Is this today's definition?  Damned if I know! 

[Woolly Bugger]

America's rifle fetish is destroying its sense of freedom

"(The AR-15) is an icon. It's a symbol of freedom." That is how gun manufacturers have promoted the rifle -- not as a tool for hobbyists and sportsmen but as a lifestyle accessory that stands for freedom, individualism and masculine self-sufficiency.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Jamelle Bouie is a New York Times columnist. He was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine and is based in Charlottesville, Va., and Washington.

In Anthony Mann's 1950 Western "Winchester '73," a rare and much-desired Winchester rifle brings misery and death to the unlucky souls who manage to bring it into their possession. In the West as brought to you by Mann — and his star, a troubled and morally ambiguous Jimmy Stewart — the gun isn't a symbol of freedom as much as it is a curse, destined to ruin everyone who covets its power.

It was a theme echoed that year in the Joseph H. Lewis noir "Gun Crazy," a take of sorts on the story of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Our protagonists in this film are two young people so enamored of the power of guns — and the freedom they seem to provide — that they go on a wanton spree of theft and murder. It ends, predictably, with their own deaths.

In both films, guns become truly dangerous when they become a fetish: an object worshipped for its supposed power and symbolic meaning. Guns, Mann and Lewis seem to say, aren't actually totems of freedom or liberty or youth; they are instruments of death and should be treated accordingly.

I thought of both movies last week during the search for Robert Card, the 40-year-old suspect in a mass shooting that killed 18 people at a bar and bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine.

https://www.wral.com/story/america-s-rifle-fetish-is-destroying-its-sense-of-freedom/21125061/

[Mudwall Gatewood 3.0]

Wife is on Facebook and showed me this.  Enjoy.

[rbphoto]

And then there is the lesser known history of Revolutionary-era firearms . . .

https://www.rockislandauction.com/riac-blog/assault-weapons-before-the-second-amendment

And that doesn't include private ownership of artillery pieces, which was not uncommon:

"Early gunnery was an art practiced almost entirely by civilians." Encyclopedia Brittanica, 14th Edition, 1938, Volume 2, p 464

Interesting article about Revolutionary War Artillery at https://www.jstor.org/stable/40578214?read-now=1&oauth_data=eyJlbWFpbCI6InJheW1vbmQuYmVubmV0dC41MjVAZ21haWwuY29tIiwiaW5zdGl0dXRpb25JZHMiOltdLCJwcm92aWRlciI6Imdvb2dsZSJ9&seq=21#page_scan_tab_contents

You have to register, but it's free and you can read up to 100 articles per month without payment.

Raymond

[Woolly Bugger]

Gun violence is a national epidemic that requires a national solution, yet there are essentially no federal regulations governing the sales of ammunition. @SenWarren and I are changing that with the AMMO Act. pic.twitter.com/wR3GqiaQi4

— Congressman Robert Garcia (@RepRobertGarcia) November 2, 2023