There are variations of rules on a gun range, but typically there are four. There are TWO that stick in my head though, from my days with grandpa.
1. Never point a gun at someone you don't intend to shoot.
2. Never shoot someone you don't intend to kill.
Of course we were not talking about watermelons and beer bottles there. Practice is practice, hold your finger along the rail before you shoot and so forth. But the truth remains. You shoot, you shoot to kill, period.
Too many people have seen too many movies thinking that a cop should or could just hit someone in the leg or something. Right off the bat, a leg wound can be fatal from an artery hit or other complications.
Secondly, if a cop were to simply shoot to wound, that would be excessive deadly force and attempted murder.
Just something for the armchair rookies to think about.
Despite all we have been taught by 1950's reruns, the police are not there to protect you. This might surprise you, but follow along for a moment.
"To serve and protect" is a line of utter bullshit. THere is no law that says they have to do jack shat in a hat.
The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that a cop has no obligation or duty to act, even if he knows there is a crime in progress. Warren vs. District of Columbia
Yeah, they were raped and the cops were like "fuck off, donut break."
To be fair... there are so many officers out there, who will lay down their lives in harms way, in service to our community. There is no denying that fact. This piece is not meant to denigrate their sacrifice and hard work every day, in any way.
And then there are the cowards who should have never put on the uniform.
The sad fact of the matter is, no matter how many gun laws you make, no matter how may booths you have to walk through, the police cannot protect you.
Shoot, they might not even want to. They get a medal tho.
In the wake of recent tragic shootings, millions of people are suddenly familiar with the weapon, but actually have no real understanding of what they are talking about when they speak of it. The rabble rabble of gun-control advocates has become an ignorant roar. I happen to be against most restrictions on gun ownership myself, but this article is meant to inform, no matter what your stance is on the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution.
To start, the term "assault rifle" is being sorely misused by the media, as always. To be an assault rifle, the weapon must be a selective-fire full-auto capable machine-gun. Which means that when you pull the trigger and hold it, the bullets will continue to fire automatically until the magazine is empty. Or, that you may "select" your fire to a "burst" mode in which (usually) three rounds will be discharged per trigger-pull, preserving ammunition and increasing accuracy, while at the same time putting some serious lead-on-target. Finally, you may select a standard semi-automatic rate of fire, meaning a bullet will fire once each time you pull the trigger. A semi-automatic rate of fire is the most accurate, and preserves the most ammunition. Contrary to the Hollywood perception, standard semi-automatic is the most effective method of fire, whereas full auto machine gun fire is generally the least efficient selection for killing people. Full-auto fire is often referred to as "spray and pray" because you spray a lot of lead, and pray you hit something. You might also pray that you don't run out of ammo before you actually hit your targets as well.
M-16 Variants
Kalashnikov AK-47
The U.S.-designated M-16 is the standard combat rifle for our military personnel. It is a selective-fire assault rifle specifically designed for combat use. First deployed in the Vietnam War, it was not well-received at all by combat troops at the time. The weapon jammed frequently, was unreliable, and the small caliber round lacked killing power. Despite its initial lackluster performance under combat conditions, the weapon has been continually refined over the years since to become the standard, not only for the United States military, but for military and police forces around the world. "Western" nations in particular favor this rifle over its chief rival, popularly known as the AK-47, which was originally designed by Soviet hero Mikhail Kalashnikov. That weapon is widely circulated among nations with Communist leanings and/or anti-American sentiment. It might be said that the M-16 is to the AK-47 what Kentucky bourbon is to Russian vodka. The pros and cons of each weapon are debatable, but you might see either or both at any real party.
Today, the M-16 is available in a wide variety of configurations with Colt being the leading manufacturer and supplier to the U.S. military. Some other manufacturers have been licensed by Colt to produce the rifle, with many other manufacturers also producing "knock-off" versions of the popular weapon. Colt also produces the M4, which is essentially a shortened tactical combat version of the M16, initially designed for Special Operations use, as well as other military-grade variants. They also produce the now ubiquitous AR-15.
Contrary to popular misconceptions, the "AR" in AR-15 does not stand for "assault rifle." It was the original military designation for the version of the M16 produced by manufacturer ArmaLite, who sold the design rights for the original M16 to Colt back in 1959. You see, ARmalite, the first letters of the manufacturer name, not "assault rifle." Colt now uses the AR-15 designation strictly for civilian-use only models of the popular rifle. Civilian-use models are actually stripped of their "assault" capability, and do not have selective or fully-automatic fire. The AR-15 has the appearance of the popular soldier's rifle, but not the same capability. You might say, the AR-15 is like a 4-cylinder Ford Mustang. Looks fast, but really doesn't have any ponies under the hood. The AR-15 is no more deadly than any other rifle on the market, and is certainly no assault rifle.
The name Bushmaster does not refer to any sort of special capability either. Bushmaster is simply the name of the manufacturer who produces a rifle similar in appearance to that manufactured by Colt. The designation AR-15 is now widely applied generically to any rifle of similar appearance, but in truth, rifles produced by companies like Bushmaster are not authentic AR-15's at all. This is sort of like calling any generic aspirin a Bayer, or even like calling a Coke a Pepsi. Same, but different. So despite the menacing-sounding name "Bushmaster," once again we are left with a watered-down generic version of reality.
There's a thinker
Finally, we have the ".223" portion of the rifle's description. To the uninformed, the number sounds like a big technical number that probably makes this rifle more deadly than other rifles. Again, not actually so. Technically, the number .223 refers to the diameter of the bullet. Twenty-twos's are often used for small-game hunting, like birds and squirrel, and for backyard tin-can plinking on summer afternoons. Some BB/pellet guns even come in a .22-caliber design.
Admittedly though, there is some difference between a .22-caliber pellet fired from an air-rifle, and a .223 round fired from an AR-15. The difference here is not about the width of the round but how fast the round travels. It will still make a very small hole, but it will hit a target with a lot more energy, giving it more penetration power, and allowing the round to travel further distances. This is made possible because more gun-powder is loaded behind the projectile than in a standard .22-caliber round, forcing it out of the gun a lot faster.
The .223 is actually the smallest commonly used rifle ammunition, despite a relative high-power gunpowder load like that used in a combat rifle or a hunting rifle. Even when used for game hunting, the .223 ammo is not a large enough caliber to take down commonly hunted game such as deer. As a matter of fact, this small ammunition is used specifically in combat operations to not kill the enemy, but rather to wound the enemy instead. Why would you not want to kill an enemy in combat you ask? Because a wounded enemy will require aid from their comrades, distracting them from the fight, whereas a dead enemy can be left to be dealt with later when the fight is over. Just to make that perfectly clear, the .223 caliber rifle, when used as an anti-personnel weapon, is meant to wound the target rather than to kill it outright. So technically, this would make this rifle the "safest" rifle that a civilian could possibly own. A person is less likely to be killed by an AR-15 .223 round than by any other rifle shot. You can see from the image provided here, the difference between a .223 round used in the AR-15, a .308 round commonly used in bolt-action hunting rifles, and the 7.62mm round used in AK-47 style rifles.
Ammo Comparison
We could talk all day long about the merits and lethality of different sorts of ammunition, from rifle loads, to jacketing, to hollow-tips, to fragmenting rounds, and so forth. You can search for yourself numerous charts which display comparisons of all different sorts of ammunition. No one type of ammo is necessarily any more deadly than the other. It all comes down to how it is used. And the same goes for any firearm.
From the zip-gun to the shotgun, to your grand-dad's hunting rifle, to your brother's combat rifle, no one firearm is inherently more dangerous than the other. It all comes down to how it is used. While the public suddenly panics over the AR-15, we seem to forget that school shootings are not a new phenomenon and that even old-fashioned weapons were used in the past to commit similar crimes by bizarrely deranged individuals, such as Charles Whitman.
Whitman's Weapons
In August 1966, Whitman opened fire from the tower of the University of Texas in Austin, killing numerous people. His rampage actually began with the murder of his mother and wife with a knife, not a firearm. He then mounted the tower killing several people there with a shotgun, before sniping the campus from his accomplished vantage point, with WWII-era rifles. His self-authored account of his own mental breakdown is chillingly familiar to so many mass murders and particularly school shootings. Sixteen people died in that event nearly a half-century ago.
All in all, at the end of any day, there is no single firearm which is truly "safer" or more dangerous than another. Nor are firearms any more or less dangerous than other methods of killing. Timothy McVeigh used farm fertilizer to kill 168 people, many of them children. The Unites States government used fire to kill the inhabitants of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. Among the dead there were twenty-one children under the age of sixteen.Your kitchen cabinet probably contains enough bleach and ammonia that would make enough mustard gas to wipe out hundreds of people.
Firearms are just a tool, like any other, in the hands of man. They can be used for evil, they can be used to defend against evil. They can be used for Olympic-grade sport, they can be used to feed your family. Madmen will always find a way to kill innocents, even if they do it by taking away your guns.
Right off the bat I will openly admit that my family has had a gun accident. An accidental discharge that went through the floor and could have hit the person in the room downstairs. Worse, it was a minor who fired the shot after his father's pistol slipped out of his pocket after a day at work. This crap does happen, sad as it may be, and even tragically at times.
There was another time, where I was at scout camp. I literally split an arrow in the bulls-eye. Got the top award for camp that Summer, plus another award for shooting. Next year I almost shot the instructor because I wasn't paying attention. (I was focused on the target, not the rules of the range.) No gun, just a stick of wood basically.
Part ONE:
Just a few days ago a man was found with an illegally owned and modified sawed-off shotgun in a residential community that was originally set up for women to escape domestic violence. They are also alleged to have left a baby home alone all night, with the shotgun. Neglect aside, which is bad enough of course, there is another point here.
A follower of our page also lives in that residential community that is meant to be a haven from violence. There are many children who live there, and the place is meant to help people get back on their feet after they fall. Whether it be a devastating house fire, a devastating domestic partner, or simply the devastating loss of a good job. This residential community out on Route 55 in Dutchess County is sketchy at times, granted, but ultimately a god-send to our neighbors in the most dire of straits.
Our follower ended up in a confrontation, with this character just a few weeks ago, while this alleged shotgun owner appeared to be breaking into a room there, as he was passing by to the soda machine. It quickly became violent. Thankfully the police were on scene within a few minutes as the resident tried to fend off this belligerent with a stick.
But there is the crux.
The person who was trying to fend off an attack by what he says was a "berserker" was left with a stick to poke this guy off, and waiting critical minutes for the police. What would have happened if that man got into his room to get his sawed off shotgun?
Moreover, the victim in that attack owns a shotgun legally. Bought, paid for, background checks and all. Owned and paid for right here in Dutchess County where the 2nd Amendment is dubious at best..
Now we have a man who is intimately familiar with firearms, responsibly. He is a veteran, has worked in law enforcement, as a Firefighter, and an EMT. But he can't have his own legal gun in his home because he happens to be very poor at the moment. In the very same housing community where someone left their kid alone all night to "hit da club" maybe, and leave the 1 year old with the sawed-off. The same person who attacked another resident just weeks before. But we can't protect ourselves here with legally owned firearms.
This is a the consequence of a gun-free zone.
Part TWO:
An old friend of mine suffered a brutal family tragedy. She saw her father shoot her mother, then shot her again with a fatal shot before killing himself as the police raided. I can't possibly imagine, don't want to really, what she suffered... and must still suffer as a bold survivor. Yet there is something to be learned from this brutal event.
First, the father had been sent to jail already. There was an order of protection in place. He was violent in the home, allegedly, to the point that the judge set a large bail. A very large bail actually. (Something like a quarter-mil if I remember right.) From what I understand though, the named victim was not informed when the alleged perp made bail. (If a perp gets out, a phone call should be mandatory in the case of a violent offense.)
Now, to my understanding, New York State law makes it mandatory that firearms be removed from the house when a domestic violence charge is alleged, even before being proven. That appears to be the case case here, the judge ordered that all firearms be seized from the house.
A few weeks later that father, husband, named perpetrator showed up at his home where his wife and children were. He made entry, and shot his wife, once, with a wound that was not immediately fatal. For the next few hours the police from every sort of department and specialty surrounded the house. And sat there. Until he finally murdered his wife and himself. (In front of their daughter, who lived.)
Now I wasn't there, so it's easy to Monday-morning quarterback some things. My point here is not to shit on the police or say they should have done something better.
My point here is to shit on the law itself. The law does not circumvent the 2nd Amendment.
If it were not mandatory to take the guns out of the house, those women would have been armed.
Period.
Part Three:
I have also been what is called a "first-responder." I have worked in law-enforcement, as a firefighter, trained as an EMT. (Firefighters are the best tho.) Jack of all trades master of none you could say.
But I got pissed the hell off when my department Chief banned me from carrying my legally owned firearm into the house, while at the same time giving an exemption to a volunteer who also happened to be a sworn LEO.
Now don't get me wrong here, I don't think a cop should have to disarm to come into a firehouse. But at the same time, I don't think a firefighter should have to disarm either. Granted, a FF should never carry a gun on an alarm. (Even if cop, day job or not.) Also, all firearms should be secured better than leaving it in the top of your locker. But here it how it went down...
Our Chief banned all FFs from bringing our legally owned and properly secured firearms onto the property. No just in the house, but that means I can't even put my pistol in my gun box that I have specially banged into my dash, hampering my response as a volunteer FF.
Now take it a step further. The entire reason they made this a policy was because some moron firefighter went off his rocker and carried a gun into the meeting where they fired him. He didn't actually do anything, but I admit I warned the officers that I knew he was armed.
Soooo, as it wound up, he got fired, threw a bunch of crap around the room and walked out. Then they made a no gun policy. But here's the real catch.
They made it against policy for FFs to carry their legal guns, while the guy who got fired has every right to enter a public building with his gun and shoot all of us, if he were to be a nut like that.
All in all, you can never stop a nut, a gun is just a tool.
There are better ways to kill a lot of people if you think about it. .... Whuuut?
It seems our questioning of the official narrative has pissed off the powers-that-be.
Our entire staff has just been banned from posting on any other page on Facebook. This includes posting from my own private account to other pages, such as mainstream media outlets and news pages. I immediately appealed the blocking of our page, considering we also provide information to emergency service pages and this will hinder our sharing of information with them, as well as the community overall.
We received no warning about policy violations in posts made to other pages, nor were we asked to remove any comment made on any other page. (Though I do expect our comments have probably now been deleted across many pages, wherever we challenged the official narrative of the Orlando tragedy.) I don't know if this is what did it. But this was our last post before being banned:
So he has no problems with the blacks, yet he opened fire randomly into a club where there were black people and didn't seem to care one bit about killing them. And what was his beef with Latinos then for that matter, given that this was pretty much a Latino club? The "stop bombing ISIS bit just seems thrown in there and exaggerated." But if this guy really is telling the truth, then we have a problem Houston, there was certainly more than one shooter as reported b y other witnesses as well. Which again throws the official narrative right back onto it's ass.
It appears that Facebook and other more powerful news pages feel they know better than you do, about what you should and should not be allowed to read.
The respondents employ from 10 to more than 100 employees representing 30 different industries and organizations.
Among the key conclusions of those who expressed opposition to the $15 wage:
97% said it would decrease their hiring from youth workforce development programs.
First, it's sad but true that there are adults who need those jobs much more in many instances. Yet somehow society has come to this false notion that certain jobs are simply "meant for kids" to go out and buy video games or something, rather than saving for college even. Secondly, if a youth really does need that job in order to support themselves or to help support their families, they deserve a living wage as much as any other worker. You might be surprised how many youths are out there today, on their own, trying to get by at 16 or 17 years old. So let's not base this decision on age discrimination.
91% would likely or definitely hire fewer employees.
This is always one of the big threats whenever there is talk of wage increases, but it is actually a hallmark of bad business leadership, and empty rhetoric. If it takes, let's say five people, to operate a shift at your store, that's how many people you have to have per shift. No more, no less. No one hires workers they don't need. Business isn't charity. You aren't going to go out and hire a bunch of people to stand around.
47% said it would somewhat or significantly drive up wages for other employees.
I don't see this as a problem at a time in our nation's history where wages have never been lower for the majority of blue collar workers. Driving up wages is the entire point here.
46% would likely or definitely curtail expansion plans.
Expansion plans are not based on what you pay an hourly worker, but rather demand for your product in the market place. Less money in the pockets of working class means less demand for goods and services. If you want to expand your business, that can only be done by creating market liquidity. In other words, paying the working class better wages, in order to create demand and to support expanded business.
42% would likely or definitely reduce employee benefits to make up for the increase.
Benefits? Who has benefits anymore? Even the very few places that do offer them, offer them at some ridiculous amount like a quarter of your salary with a $5k deductible.
37% said it would likely or definitely cause layoffs.
You can't lay off workers you that you need to make your business operate. We have already established that business is not a charity, and no reasonable business owner hires workers they don't need. Again, if it takes five people to operate a shift in your store, it takes five people, simple as that. Sure, you could try to make the other four people work harder, and create a disgruntled staff in the process to the point that they go out of their way to actually sabotage your business. It's a "cut off your nose to spite your face" approach. It will only degrade the quality of the goods you are producing and the service you provide to your customers, sending buyers elsewhere, to businesses where workers are happier, and business owners are wiser.
15% said they would need to close their businesses.
Don't blame the working class for your failed business model. It doesn't matter what someone does for a living, or who they are, no one should ever be paid any less than what is needed for basic survival without need for public assistance. Don't expect taxpayers to subsidize the labor costs for your failed business model.
One of our favorite admins has been banned from Facebook after being attacked by a troll in the review section of our own page.
The review apparently stemmed from that admin's comments on a story published over at PoliceOne. Some state, I can't remember which, just passed a law allowing retired police officers to carry a gun into a bar, while still banning anyone else from carrying their legally licensed and owned gun into a bar. Presumably, even the bar owner himself is still barred from carrying a firearm into their own bar, unless they were a police officer at some point. So our admin commented that he disagreed with the law, and any law which gives police special privileges, elevating them to a separate class above the citizenry of this nation. This latest exemption for police is yet another open assault against the Second Amendment rights of the citizens.
Someone who was not even involved in that discussion hit our page with a bad review, after reading that comment. We are not typically very concerned about bad reviews. We aren't here to win a popularity contest. What is popular is usually ignorant crap that is not at all in the best interest of the people, or in accordance with the founding principles of this nation. But this particular person was not simply content to leave a bad review.
They went on to continue attacking the page, in true troll form, posting insulting memes, blaring out that we were all "cop-haters" so on and so forth, even to the point of threatening legal action against the page. Although we have only banned, literally, about 3 or 4 people in the lifetime of our page, our admin tried to ban this troll after incessant attack, but found that the function no longer worked, even when operating the page in administrator mode. So the admin went on to defend the page, in a tit-for-tat shootout of sorts, in the review section. The troll then reported a complaint to Facebook. This resulted in Facebook actually banning our own page administrator, who was simply defending our page against an extremely aggressive attack, stemming from a relatively minor debate.
Now, as the senior page administrator, I have a few observations to make in light of losing one of my best commentators for the time-being.
First, I don't believe a page should even be required to have a review section. We aren't a restaurant or a cab service here. Our admins wade into the thick of contentious issues and current events with their opinions in an effort to inform, and inspire fruitful debate. So really, it's no wonder that our review section has simply become a sounding-board for people to attack the page, after they have lost a debate or want to simply derail a legitimate discussion happening elsewhere. Essentially, our review section is a troll's best friend. An open forum for ad hominem attack to discredit the source, while ignoring the actual issue at hand. This is a classic tactic of disinformation.
Second, the overwhelming majority of bad reviews and outright attacks have come from police officers and friends of police officers. Despite the fact that one of our admins actually worked in law enforcement for many years, despite the fact that several of our admins have worked as first-responders in general, despite the fact that we often support the police and routinely share "good cop" stories, we are branded a "cop hater" page because of the few occasions where an admin has had the audacity to disagree with the status quo.
Keep in mind that we cover all sorts of news material, current events, politics, and social issues. We get into debates all over Facebook, here on our own page, and on pages from which stories we have shared originated. Many of these debates get pretty heated. People can be vicious when debating things like the minimum wage, poverty, marriage and family issues, left vs. right politics, and so on. Yet none of those discussions stir the wrath of a troll attack so much as questioning the police. Now keep in mind, that there are many law-enforcement officers out there who are "oath keepers" and "three-percenters" and Constitutionalists who take their oath seriously. Many of those officers themselves disagree with the direction our country has taken, toward a totalitarian police state, and instead strive to uphold the values of the Constitution. Yet any challenge whatsoever to police in general, and the status quo, are met with the most aggressive and underhanded attacks.
This latest troll to attack our page wasn't even a police officer, but a bulldozer operator. Though often we have been openly attacked by police officers themselves too. Rather than discussing the issue at hand, the page itself is attacked. This hits on a whole bunch of tactics of disinformation.
Seeing now that proportion of bad reviews regarding police issues, the action taken by Facebook against our page, along with so many current headlines and stories, leaves me truly frightened as to our current state of affairs in this country. The police, more and more each day, demand blind obedience. Police "supporters" are fanatical in defending the police, even when the police themselves openly admit they have crossed the line. We are not talking here about obedience to our country, nor obedience to the Constitution, not obedience to the values of liberty and freedom, nor obedience to achievements of wisdom and truth, but obedience to the police themselves. This is an extremely dangerous precedent. Are we now expected to pledge allegiance to the police? Having one look at our review page, the answer appears to be "yes."
We do quite a bit of chatting behind the scenes, both online and in the real world. Some of our admins are or have been first-responders, another works closely with the poor, and so on, so we hear and talk about a lot more than just the news headlines we share daily with you folks. From time to time these private discussions are quite interesting, to say the least. On this particular occasion, we were given permission to share this letter which was written to a local police department:
Dear Town of Poughkeepsie Police,
I wish to extend to you a letter of thanks, and apology.
A few weeks ago I was found in a drunken stupor, and acting belligerently. Though I remember nothing of the incident myself, being "blackout" drunk, I am told by those who witnessed the incident that I was, quite simply put, out of control. I recently suffered yet another family tragedy, which led up to my foolish behavior and bad choices. That is not meant to be an excuse, just a point of explanation of how the situation evolved. It is also true that I suffer from both mental and physical disabilities. Again though, my own poor choices are ultimately what led to my embarrassing state that day.
I am told that during a melee with several officers, I actually kicked one officer. I want to apologize whole-heartedly to that officer in particular for my offense. Now too then, my apologies go to all of the officers involved, for being called out to manage my foolish behavior in the first place. I also want to thank those officers for the manner in which they handled the situation. I am well aware that things could have absolutely gone a lot worse for me, but the officers at the scene managed to de-escalate the situation successfully with distinct professionalism and discretion.
Although this was ultimately just a blip on the radar in the day in the life of a police officer, I intend to make this letter public, in order to show how police handle situations. In America today we often see headlines and news stories showing police in a negative light, but I feel it is important to show another side. Police officers respond to thousands upon thousands of "routine" calls just like this one, that the public never sees nor care to think much about. So as a token of my appreciation for you officers being there to help, how you handled my situation, and for the work that you do in general, I will be posting this letter to social media as well.
Once again officers, my most sincere apologies and warmest thanks. Stay safe out there.
Humbly,
A Local Citizen
Police were assisted at the scene by local EMS services.
