$ 73,000,000 Settlement

 

   Seventy-three million dollars is the settlement awarded to nine families, some of the 27 victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012.  The amount was charged to the manufacturer and distributer of the Bushmaster AR-15 style assault rifle supplier, Remington.  Good news?  Be careful what you wish for.  None of the executives of the company that supplies this weapon are going to Heaven, but they supply a legal product in a legal manner to the American public.  There is no legal justification of their punishment.  They are not the bad guys.  The folks that approve the distribution of this human killing device to the general public are your elected representatives.  Not the judicial branch of government.  Their job is simply to determine if a law has been broken.  The mother of the lunatic that committed the mass murder acquired the murder weapon legally.  Remington broke no laws.  Sorry lovers of justice.

   In the long run, subverting the law is not a good decision.  Think of the recent act of Republican senators not willing to hear witnesses or view documents in an impeachment trial.  The Constitution (the law) called for them to be unbiased jurors.   One could not be an unbiased judge of anything without hearing witness testimony or viewing relevant documents.  So, the thinking, but with little or no moral rudder, Republican senators were saying, “We know he is a lunatic and a liar, but he is our lunatic and liar.”  You see they were wishing for a “good” outcome for their party, not to properly implement the law.  The law is not always right, but it should be the deciding factor in a court of law.

   So, what is the “proper application of an assault weapon?”  A battle field is the obvious answer.  Swat teams often experience “collateral damage” with their use.  Citizens often use them for mass murder.  What is the basic requirement of an assault weapon?  Rapid fire and it is a bonus for the imaginary killers if it looks mean.  So, a single shot weapon, even if it looked mean, would be relatively harmless.  It would be effective for suicide (40% of civilian gun deaths), because a well-executed suicide rarely requires a second shot.  Collectors don’t require rapid fire.  Target shooters don’t require rapid fire and hunters would be more skillful in tracking and shooting with only one shot.  With only one shot the home defender will kill less friends and relatives.  (This paragraph was obviously a plug for my “one shot” solution to mass murders.  It requires intelligent legislation.  We don’t see enough of that.  Legislation is primarily dollar driven.)

   We need not hope for bad judicial decisions to bring about desirable outcomes.  We need to demand thoughtful and just legislation from our legislators.  Political bickering and corporate bribery often get in the way of just legislation.  Can we build a truly great nation with political bickering and corporate bribery?  It has been hard.

Cheers, Old Buz     2/19/2022

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One Shot

In looking at the mass murders and gun insanity that is taking place in present day America, one wonders if there isn’t a way available to limit the loss of innocent lives, without taking away the legitimate use of guns from those who collect them and use them for sport.    The idea here is to stop the lunacy driven massacres, without punishing those not responsible.   That would be good law and the answer to it is making the only legal civilian weapon, single shot.  Let’s see how that would affect the various acceptable gun uses.

Hunting.  When I was a motorcycle dealer, during the sixties, I took a beautiful hunting rifle in trade on a motorcycle.  I am a gun collector and target shooter.  The rifle, a Remington auto-loader, 308 Winchester caliber, with a telescopic scope and beautiful wooden stock, had only been fired six times.  Five times to sight in the scope and one time, hunting, to mistakenly shoot a nine year old boy off of an ATV.  The hunter killed the boy.  Had the hunter been hunting with a single shot rifle and only had one shot to fire, the game would have been carefully stalked, better identified and the single shot would have been placed with far more care, but with this rifle, he still had four more rounds quickly available.  The nine year old he killed would today be considering his retirement and his wife and family’s future.  The hunter might still be hunting, but would be much better at it.  Most hunters would probably agree that without an easy second shot, they would be a far better hunter.  So the single shot could benefit the hunter while limiting his selection of guns.

Home defense.  All of the above applies to home defense as well.  There are far too many loved ones mistakenly injured or killed, in the act of “home defense”.  The defender, with a single shot gun, will place a well-aimed shot at an identified menacing target.  Also, from a gun safety standpoint, a single shot gun would be much harder to mistake for “empty” and cause an unintended discharge.  Many single shot guns have an exposed hammer as an additional warning of their readiness to fire.

Collectors.  It makes little or no difference to a collector, whether a gun in the collection can fire one or twenty rounds.  He or she isn't firing it, other than occasionally on a range, to test it, unless they are a hunter or target shooter, as well as a collector.

 

Target shooting.  I am a target shooter as well as a collector (gun nut).  I formed an NRA club at my high school ROTC range, in the late 50’s.  At that point in history, the NRA was primarily about gun safety, especially on the shooting range and they were very effective..  They were not a political organization or a lobbyist for gun manufacturers.  And, “We liked it that way.”  It would not be a problem for target shooters to reload their firearm after each round fired.  It may cause each round to be more carefully placed on the target.  I would prefer it and I suspect that most who use their gun in timed competition would happily agree to the competition requiring reloading after each shot, in order to ultimately end the mass murders.

Walter Mitty.  Some folks go out and spend two to five thousand dollars on something called an “assault rifle” and dress their small children in “camos”.  They would be the most damaged by a single shot civilian law.  Winning the lottery for them, I suspect, would be actual combat, that they survived, unscathed.  It is the imaginary hero in them who has played a few too many video war games.  A few even see their government as a potential threat that they are armed and ready to defend against.  These assault rifles are not great target rifles.  They have plastic stocks and short barrels and a short sight radius deeming them less accurate.  The assault weapon is not a piece of art or an example of fine craftsmanship.  The finest hunting rifles today are generally bolt action and not particularly good for rapid fire.  The auto loading hand guns pretty well fit the description of the assault rifles.  Large capacity clips, being offered by accessory manufacturers, have no logical use other than sweeping a Safeway parking lot.  There is no rational excuse for producing the large capacity clips.  In 2006 a poll of uniformed British police indicated that 82% did not wish to be armed and they aren't. Most people don’t need to be armed to live their lives.  I suppose the most common reason for “packing” is an irrational fear.  The imaginary warriors and the fearful, need to limit their favorite imagined gun pastime to video games and leave the actual guns at the sporting goods stores.

If tomorrow it were illegal to produce, sell or own a gun, other than a single shot, would the mass murders end?  No, not immediately.  You could require a simple modification to turn any gun now owned into a single shot unit, but not all people presently owning them would comply.  But, these illegal weapons would soon be too expensive and rare to be easily gotten and the homicidal lunatic who commits the mass murders would not so easily obtain them.  They would not be sold at WalMart.  Gun manufacturers and their outlets would have a whole new product market open up with the single shot legal weapon.  Gun legislation can be very effective, but it will take time to eradicate the problem of rapid fire weapons.  Have you recently heard of a silencer being used in a killing, mass or otherwise?  How about a fully automatic, machine gun?  My point is, fifty years after the gun law is implemented, it’s pretty darn effective.  Better background checks would have had little effect on the recent mass killings.  That is not to say that better background checks and psychological help to the mentally ill are not good legislation, but we would do better to limit the tools available for mass murder.   Act today to stop the problems of tomorrow.  Stand for making the rapid loading guns illegal.  It makes sense and it can be done.

Cheers, Old Buz (the gun nut)