Splitter
R.I.P.
Dats funny, I don't care who you are lol
I got a nice reply from him. However, he was stating more Brady Campaign rhetoric. I provided some more info from my side. He declined my range trip offer and I told him I understood why he felt the way he did but that requiring confiscation of my legally owned arms when I couldn't do anything to cause or fix the Mexico border problem is not fair. I did tell him, however, that right now his voice is stronger than mine and Congress wants to please society instead of defend the Constitution. It will lead to them winning and us losing. That's why I will speak out when I can.
Dear Mr. Culleton,
It's not your fault that you don't understand the law or the facts, it's complex and very hard to understand. I encourage you to read this whole letter, because I feel that it's important that you understand clearly what you have proposed. Fully automatic firearms are involved in less than 1% of all homicides, but bear with me, read below and investigate for yourself. I will not stoop to personal attacks or attempts to treat you poorly. I have a great deal of respect for you and your opinion, but I want it to be fully informed.
Now for those not in the know, there are variations of nearly all firearms and the AK-47 is no exception. As a matter of fact, the AK-47 has an incredible number of variants. Some legal, some illegal, some regulated, and others not regulated. Let's start with some facts and I will try to help make sense of this very complex subject.
1. The second amendment was not written to protect hunting rights or sporting use of firearms. While certainly those rights are protected by the second amendment, they are not the only reasons that the second amendment was written. The second amendment was written to protect Americans from tyranny, and although we have a military second to none today, we could for a variety of reasons not be able to sustain such a fighting force to defend our country. Imagine, us in the position of a country like Iraq or Afghanistan, citizens are responsible to defend their families from the likes of Al-Quieda or the Taliban, without an AK-47 many of these families would be defenseless. Think it couldn't happen here... with our economy in free fall and many international enemies, you might want to rethink your position.
2. Unfortunately when you state that the AK-47 is a fully automatic weapon, you are wrong, some AK-47's are fully automatic and those LEGAL machine guns often fetch more than $15,000 on the open market and require an ATF Form 4 to transfer, these weapons will never be sold to your average gang banger. Sales of fully automatic weapons are tightly regulated, and have been since 1934 and the enactment of the National Firearms Act.
3. Now back to the topic at hand, the popularity of the AK-47 and the "brisk" business in among gun dealers in assault weapons. Assault weapons are an excellent choice for self-defense and they are great general purpose rifles as well. They are rugged, simple, and inexpensive. This is important because it allows all citizens access to roughly equal levels of protection.
4. Possession of any weapon, even a club, is dangerous in the hands of the mentally deranged. All one needs to do is to look at the family of 4 who was killed this week in a Maryland motel room with nothing more than a blunt object. They are no less dead than they would have been with a firearm. Fact is that in the past year more than 3,177,256 guns were purchased every 3 months in 2008, and in that same period of time more than 1.5 BILLION rounds of ammunition was sold. Yet, we only have isolated incidents of gun violence when we consider the numbers. In fact, drivers kill far more people each year than gun owners and still, we have yet to ban automobiles. Roughly half as many cars were sold in 2006 as were guns sold in 2008. Thats right, and 13,000+ fatalities occur each year from drunk driving alone and 42,000 people die each year, making new cars MORE than 4 times more likely to kill you than a new gun!
5. You might find this shocking, but of the 10,000 or so homicides that happen per year nearly 75% of them were committed with a handgun, that's right! Only 4% were committed with a rifle, including assault rifles, and 5% were with shotguns. This means that less than 1% of all homicides could have been committed with an automatic assault weapon. So why is that 1% such a problem for you? Think about it. Are you trying to prevent violence, or are you simply reacting emotionally after being spoon fed inaccurate media information? I know it sometimes gets me fired up.
Disarming good citizens (the majority of us holding those 12 MILLION new guns and 1.5 BILLION rounds of ammunition) will not make us safer. I agree that putting weapons in the hands of criminals and the insane is a bad idea, but it's already illegal to do so. It's illegal to engage in straw purchases and it's illegal to manufacture new fully automatic weapons for sale to the general public. We have all the laws we need to keep our communities safe, but we do need to enforce the law and encourage more qualified citizens to exercise their right to bear arms and provide for their own safety. I respect the counter-argument, but it has been proven to be wrong many times before. Everywhere gun control has been tried it has either failed or resulted in genocide. As a matter of fact, most fatal mass shootings involving more than 3 people in recent history have happened in "gun free" zones or zones where firearms were heavily regulated. Research from the University of Maryland backs up this claim.
I hope that I have helped provide some clarity with regard to the issue and hope that you will consider a retraction of your article, as it is factually incorrect.
Sincerely,
Dear Mr. Culleton,
It's not your fault that you don't understand the law or the facts, it's complex and very hard to understand. I encourage you to read this whole letter, because I feel that it's important that you understand clearly what you have proposed. Fully automatic firearms are involved in less than 1% of all homicides, but bear with me, read below and investigate for yourself. I will not stoop to personal attacks or attempts to treat you poorly. I have a great deal of respect for you and your opinion, but I want it to be fully informed.
Now for those not in the know, there are variations of nearly all firearms and the AK-47 is no exception. As a matter of fact, the AK-47 has an incredible number of variants. Some legal, some illegal, some regulated, and others not regulated. Let's start with some facts and I will try to help make sense of this very complex subject.
1. The second amendment was not written to protect hunting rights or sporting use of firearms. While certainly those rights are protected by the second amendment, they are not the only reasons that the second amendment was written. The second amendment was written to protect Americans from tyranny, and although we have a military second to none today, we could for a variety of reasons not be able to sustain such a fighting force to defend our country. Imagine, us in the position of a country like Iraq or Afghanistan, citizens are responsible to defend their families from the likes of Al-Quieda or the Taliban, without an AK-47 many of these families would be defenseless. Think it couldn't happen here... with our economy in free fall and many international enemies, you might want to rethink your position.
2. Unfortunately when you state that the AK-47 is a fully automatic weapon, you are wrong, some AK-47's are fully automatic and those LEGAL machine guns often fetch more than $15,000 on the open market and require an ATF Form 4 to transfer, these weapons will never be sold to your average gang banger. Sales of fully automatic weapons are tightly regulated, and have been since 1934 and the enactment of the National Firearms Act.
3. Now back to the topic at hand, the popularity of the AK-47 and the "brisk" business in among gun dealers in assault weapons. Assault weapons are an excellent choice for self-defense and they are great general purpose rifles as well. They are rugged, simple, and inexpensive. This is important because it allows all citizens access to roughly equal levels of protection.
4. Possession of any weapon, even a club, is dangerous in the hands of the mentally deranged. All one needs to do is to look at the family of 4 who was killed this week in a Maryland motel room with nothing more than a blunt object. They are no less dead than they would have been with a firearm. Fact is that in the past year more than 3,177,256 guns were purchased every 3 months in 2008, and in that same period of time more than 1.5 BILLION rounds of ammunition was sold. Yet, we only have isolated incidents of gun violence when we consider the numbers. In fact, drivers kill far more people each year than gun owners and still, we have yet to ban automobiles. Roughly half as many cars were sold in 2006 as were guns sold in 2008. Thats right, and 13,000+ fatalities occur each year from drunk driving alone and 42,000 people die each year, making new cars MORE than 4 times more likely to kill you than a new gun!
5. You might find this shocking, but of the 10,000 or so homicides that happen per year nearly 75% of them were committed with a handgun, that's right! Only 4% were committed with a rifle, including assault rifles, and 5% were with shotguns. This means that less than 1% of all homicides could have been committed with an automatic assault weapon. So why is that 1% such a problem for you? Think about it. Are you trying to prevent violence, or are you simply reacting emotionally after being spoon fed inaccurate media information? I know it sometimes gets me fired up.
Disarming good citizens (the majority of us holding those 12 MILLION new guns and 1.5 BILLION rounds of ammunition) will not make us safer. I agree that putting weapons in the hands of criminals and the insane is a bad idea, but it's already illegal to do so. It's illegal to engage in straw purchases and it's illegal to manufacture new fully automatic weapons for sale to the general public. We have all the laws we need to keep our communities safe, but we do need to enforce the law and encourage more qualified citizens to exercise their right to bear arms and provide for their own safety. I respect the counter-argument, but it has been proven to be wrong many times before. Everywhere gun control has been tried it has either failed or resulted in genocide. As a matter of fact, most fatal mass shootings involving more than 3 people in recent history have happened in "gun free" zones or zones where firearms were heavily regulated. Research from the University of Maryland backs up this claim.
I hope that I have helped provide some clarity with regard to the issue and hope that you will consider a retraction of your article, as it is factually incorrect.
Sincerely,
Yes, ducks are more deserving of protection than people. I'll stand by that statement until you show me an instance of a duck attack in a duck-free school zone, or a duck wiring up a guy's nuts to a car battery simply because the guy slept with the duck's wife.
Ducks are decent people and deserve protection!
In my Army days I didn’t like the Browning Automatic Rifle much