Hold On To Your Assault Rifles, The Wild Raccoons, Foxes And Hogs Are Coming
The gun control argument is not about keeping the children safe from mass school shootings but it is about the right and need of all good Americans to arm themselves and their families and their homes from the scourge of raccoons, foxes and a mass invasion by roaming, bloodthirsty hogs.
And then there is the argument by ethics-challenged people like Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who is under investigation for human sex trafficking.
“If you hold schools out as gun-free zones, as soft targets, you make those school shootings more likely,” said Gaetz. In other words, Gaetz believes that psychotic, disconnected young people will orderly scope out their targets and scratch off those that have armed guards. Gaetz’s argument is as full of holes as Swiss cheese, as it appears that blind rage led the alleged shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, to use his AR-15 to kill 21 people, including 19 children, at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24. And the school had an armed security officer and even had a district wide police force.
At a House hearing on gun control proposals, Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., put forth the most absurd argument to date for allowing people to own AR-15, semi-automatic, assault style rifles. Buck said that in rural Colorado, the AR-15 is the “gun of choice for killing raccoons before they get to our chickens,” and was also the weapon used for “killing a fox.”
“It is a gun that you control predators on your ranch, on your farm, on your property,” he said, adding that denying access to the popular semi-automatic weapons “makes absolutely no sense.”
Buck also repeated the threadbare Republican argument about why guns are so important to protect students.
“The Democrats have taken away the ability of a good guy to have a gun in a school to stop bad guys,” Buck said, failing to mention that the U.S. has more guns than any country in the world and more mass shootings than any country in the world, 120.5 guns per 100 people, or about 393,347,000 guns. A total of 22 percent of Americans own one or more guns. Could there be a connection, Congressman Buck?
“We care deeply about what’s happening in our schools,” said Buck. “We disagree that these shallow, inconsequential bills will have an impact on that.” “Shallow, inconsequential” bills include banning assault rifles, shoring up background checks, limits on ammunition magazines, increasing the minimum age to buy weapons and more. “Shallow, inconsequential?” I think not.
Buck is endorsed by Gun Owners of America and has said that he would “oppose any federal legislation to compile a database of gun owners or to further proscribe Americans’ freedoms under the Second Amendment.”
Buck, 63, a former District Attorney for Weld County, Colo., has some other pretty wifty ideas. As for the COVID-19 vaccine, a proven treatment to help protect from the virus, Buck said he won’t get the vaccination because he is “an American. I have the freedom to decide if I’m going to take a vaccine or not and in this case I am not going to take the vaccine.” Yes, this vacuous statement from the same lawmaker who said AR-15s are essential to kill varmints.
Buck has played both sides as he dances around to maintain trump’s support. He supported trump’s election fraud claims but said Congress did not have the authority to influence the election’s outcome.
While he blathers on about raccoons and pigs, Puck rejects the overwhelming scientific consensus of man-made effects on climate change.
Buck also has an opinion about the LGBTQ issue and believes that being gay is a choice.
“I think birth has an influence over it, like alcoholism … but I think that basically you have a choice,” he has said. In 2021 Buck opposed the Equality Act, arguing that the legislation would force doctors to treat LGBT patients despite their religious objections, comparing it to forcing Jewish doctors to treat Nazi patients.
Buck is not the only lawmaker who says assault weapons are necessary to kill small animals. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., has said that the military-style weapons are used to kill “feral pigs” in his state. Cassidy, who is a gastroenterologist, makes me sick with his obstruction of sane gun control laws.
“If you talk to the people that own it, killing feral pigs in the, whatever, the middle of Louisiana. They’ll wonder: ‘Why would you take it away from me?’” Cassidy said in an interview. “I’m law abiding, I’ve never done anything, I use it to kill feral pigs. The action of a criminal deprives me of my right.”
Cassidy’s remarks seemed to mirror a meme from 2019 involving a hypothetical argument on Twitter made in support of keeping assault weapons legal. The meme was sparked by a Twitter user who wrote in a post: “Legit question for rural Americans — How do I kill the 30–50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3–5 mins while my small kids play?”
The tweet was widely mocked by Twitter users, who questioned the plausibility of 30 to 50 hogs rushing into a person’s yard or made jokes about hogs in general. The tweet later spawned parody lyrics, image macros and photoshops.
In January 2019, Cassidy was one of 31 Republican senators to cosponsor the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act. The bill was introduced by those two, good old boys from Texas, Republican Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz and would allow people with concealed carry privileges in their home state to carry concealed weapons in other states.
To be fair, Cassidy has not always been so wrong as he was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict trump of incitement during the insurrection in his second impeachment trial.
Democrats are wary about the political ramifications of voting to ban assault weapons. Republicans who support gun controls are fighting for their political lives.
After the May 10 carnage at a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., Rep. Chris Jacobs, R-N.Y., whose district includes Buffalo suburbs, endorsed an assault weapons ban and limits on ammunition magazines. The backlash from immoral Republicans was swift and ruthless and soon forced Jacobs to withdraw from reelection.
“I can’t in good conscience sit back and say I didn’t try to do something,” said Jacobs who has been endorsed by the NRA.
Jacobs came under a withering attack from Donald trump Jr. and other Republicans. Within seven days of the shooting, he had committed political suicide.
Despite the 2nd Amendment, the country has banned certain kinds of weapons, most dramatically the prohibition against so-called Thompson submachine or Tommy Guns, named after the inventor, John T. Thompson. The Tommy Gun differs from the AR-15 but it is similar in that it can be fired rapidly and has no purpose other than to kill.
The tommy gun was the weapon of choice for mobsters and bandits, and the debate over its legality came to a head after the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre on Feb. 14, 1929 in Chicago resulted in the deaths of seven gangsters associated with “Bugs” Moran and set off a series of debates and laws to ban machine guns. Originally enacted in 1934 in response to mafia crimes, the National Firearms Act (NFA) imposes a $200 tax and a registration requirement on the making and transfer of certain guns, including shotguns and rifles with barrels shorter than 18 inches, machine guns, firearm mufflers and silencers, and specific firearms labeled as “any other weapons” by the NFA.