Yesterday I talked about the endless cycle of mass shooting, outrage, prayers and condolences, calls for gun control, a spike in gun sales and then rinse and repeat. To my point, although I don’t usually read the ad circulars that come with the newspaper, one caught my eye. I have included pictures of the first two pages of that circular from a local sporting goods store. Father’s Day sale – step right up and get your father, husband, boyfriend, or yourself a brand-new assault rifle!!
Notice that the price range of these types of weapons range from the one featured on the first page, “Sig Sauer M400 Tread Coil 5.56 with Rome05 30+1,” for $1,079.99 (a price drop of $170.00) to one on the second page, “Del-ton Sierra 316L 5.56 30+1,” for a mere $569.99 (a savings of $60.00). For those not familiar with firearm jargon, ‘5.56’ refers to the caliber of the gun. The ‘Rome05’ is a red-dot sight, i.e., point the red dot at something, pull the trigger, and theoretically that is where the bullet goes. ‘30+1’ refers to the capacity, i.e., 30 rounds plus one in the chamber.
Regardless of what anyone argues, these guns have one purpose – to kill or wound as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time. These are essentially military combat weapons. No hunter in their right mind is going to go hunting with a rifle like this unless they are simply interested in obtaining venison or elk hamburger. To equate these with a standard game rifle is ridiculous. Today, virtually anyone who is 18 years old can walk into this sporting goods store, purchase one of these weapons and walk out. They can’t go to the liquor store and buy some booze and a cigar to celebrate because that is illegal, but they can sure as hell buy an assault weapon with no useful purpose other than to kill and wound people! What a country! Sometimes this is more like living in Yemen or Somalia!
I was thinking more about the Catch-22 logic I pointed out yesterday where Republicans think more guns is the answer to making people safer, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Using this same type of logic, I’m surprised these people have not offered the following solution for climate change (although many of them believe it’s a hoax!)
Vehicle emissions account for about one fifth of all US emissions. The solution is quite simple according to the Orwellian Republican logic. We need to do two things. We need to build bigger more powerful cars and we need to increase the speed limit on all highways. If people had more powerful vehicles and they could drive faster, then they would actually spend less time on the road getting from point A to point B and vehicle emissions would go down – right? For those people who would object, thinking that increasing the speed limit and allowing people to drive faster would result in more highway deaths, the Republicans would argue that is clearly not going to be the case. If people are allowed to drive faster, they would spend less time on the road getting from point A to point B, so the probability of getting into an accident would be reduced – right again? Larger, more powerful cars and increasing the speed limit is clearly the solution to reducing vehicle emissions.
If you think that makes absolutely no sense, you’re correct, it doesn’t. It makes the same amount of sense as the logic behind allowing more people to have more powerful weapons in order to make society safer. They are both nonsense and yet, here we are.
Well, if you’ll excuse me, I need to run down to the sporting goods store to see what else they might have on sale for Father’s Day. I’m going to be in LA next month and I can see where one of those shoulder fired missiles would be useful on the 405 freeway. Not to worry, I’m sure they will only sell shoulder fired missiles to someone responsible like me because as we all know, missiles don’t kill people, people who fire missiles kill people – and I probably won’t fire it! :0)
My right to bear arms shall not be infringed!!
Please let me know where you find that shoulder launched missile sale – I could also use a six-pack of em. I’m willing to travel out of state to acquire them. The 405 was locked up tight last time I tried to get anywhere on it two months ago.
The more you write the more I understand why when I entered into Canada from Montana the border agent gave me the 3 times evil eye look over and check my car, despite me telling him I was aware of their laws not to bring firearm or ammunition into their country. I guess they have a lot of crazies that attempt to ignore that.