Anti-gunners should visit a shooting range

Well substitute the word “sensible” about half the time for the word “responsible” and Lex was dead on in his prediction about how anti-gunners would react to the Va Tech shootings. According to these fools, all we need are more “reasonable/sensible” laws abridging the rights of law abiding citizens to protect themselves. More laws will prevent lawless kooks like Cho from killing innocent people, goes the anti-gunner’s mantra.

Oh really? Well what about the 2 plus million times a year firearms are used in self defense? Will additional gun laws have the unintended consequence of actually adding to carnage across America when law abiding now unarmed citizens are confronted by armed lawless thugs?

One need not waste time and money on another “government study” to answer that question. One need only look at gun free zones at places like Va Tech and our nation’s capital. We know how Va Tech turned out. Washington D.C. has been among the nation’s leaders per 100,000 of population in murders and violent crime since its ten year old handgun ban. Never ones to accept fact and reality, anti-gunners attribute D.C.’s violent crime problems to easy gun access in neighboring VA. How do you argue with fools that make your point for you? Criminals will get their guns in spite of the law – any law.

I could almost hear the disappointment in anti-gunner’s voices yesterday when it was widely reported that Cho used two semi-automatic handguns, not a so-called assault weapon (you know a weapon that operates and fires the same ammo as a hunting rifle but looks military). Damned Cho. Had he just used one those “assault rifles” we could have more meaningless laws banning weapons for the way they look rather than how they function.

So the assault on anti-gunner’s favorite target, the assault rifle, was a no go. Oh well, their second favorite target is handguns. So that’ll just have to do for now. Leading the anti-gunners uninformed charge yesterday was the clueless Paul Helmke, of the Brady Campaign to Prevent gun Violence. As he made his rounds to a sympathetic MSM yesterday, Helmke relied on the anti-gunner’s favorite weapon – emotion.

Since Cho’s weapon of choice was a hand gun not an assault rifle, Helmke rolled in what he called “high capacity clips” that allow a shooter to 20-30 rounds very quickly. According to Helmke, "When you have a weapon that can shoot off 20, 30 rounds very quickly, you're going to have a lot more injuries."

Helmke’s uninformed, ignorant statement’s indicate why it is impossible to argue from fact with these people. First and most obvious, we are not talking about a “clip” which is a device with a prepackaged number of rounds. A clip is discarded when the last round is fired. We are talking about magazines that are loaded by the shooter and reused. This is a small point but it demonstrates how willfully ignorant Helmke and most anti-gunners are.

So Helmke is out railing against high capacity magazines. A good question that was never asked would have been, what’s a reasonable/sensible capacity for a magazine? Let’s say 5 rounds. Then ask Helmke, how long does it take to change a magazine? Let’s give the long estimate for a guy that just got the weapon and hasn’t practiced much - 3 seconds. So what Helmke is advocating is a law that will cause Cho to spend 15 more seconds getting off his 30 rounds. An experienced guy would tape the magazines over and under and change in about a second. Good thinking Paul, that’ll solve everything.

Then idiot Helmke is under the illusion that rapid fire is more dangerous than slow fire. This would be true for only the most experienced and well trained shooters. If I’m going to have an inexperienced guy shooting at me, I’d prefer a guy shooting 3 rounds a second than a guy shooting one well aimed round every ten or so seconds. No doubt lives were saved at Va Tech by Cho’s inability to control his rate of fire. A handgun when fired by a right hander will naturally rise and drift to the right. If rounds are fired in rapid succession that error accumulates to the point that an inexperienced shooter is soon shooting into the ceiling.

So the Helmke’s of the world will call for five round magazines or a ban magazine fed hand guns altogether. Then the next tragedy will be from a guy using a revolver and a dozen or so speed loaders. This why anti-gunner should get themselves to range and discover what exactly it is they are opposing.