If At First You Don’t Succeed, Double Down on Failure

13 thoughts on “If At First You Don’t Succeed, Double Down on Failure”

1. “Dunblane lost pistols for the British.”

   I just need to point out that it lost more than that. It lost almost all rifles, too. Some of us have British club target rifles from that period, that Brits could no longer keep.

   When I was in England I went to a sport shop and after talking to the owner for awhile, jumped at the chance to see their arms room, where locals paid to have their shotguns — only — stored. My most striking memory is of an antique Purdey double rifle that had been rebored to 28 Ga. shotgun, as that was the only way the owner could keep it legally; the shop owner commented that it has strong sentimental value for its owner. But, it’s collector value and its entire “spirit” had been destroyed by the conversion.

2. What I think is amazing, its despite the calls for more gun control after the shootings here, there really hasn’t been any movement in legislatures to Congress. That just shows how far we’ve come.

   1. Of course, we still have to be on our toes. Especially here in PA.

   2. Of course, we haven’t had multiple assassinations of popular national figures, as we had 1963 – 1968. I think it’s complex trying to analyze public opinion.

3. MicroBalrog’s Dictum:

   “One day, Europe will have two gun owners – a hunter and a clay shooter. And the Europarliament will ordain that the hunter is to strangle the clay shooter with his own hands if he wants to keep his gun permit. And he will.”

   1. It will probably also happen here someday the way things are going, just a few years later than Europe……

4. Attempts to restrict firearms can happen here, of course, but the British experiences and the British empire country experiences do not really foretell anything for us. The British do not have the same tradition of recognizing the right to self-defense and the right to use firearms that we have in this country. Although they do have a few civil wars, and they have had at least two kings beheaded by the people within recent enough history, they have had a very uneven record of allowing private ownership of firearms and the current bans are nothing new, although they are “recently imposed”. Likewise, the British empire countries, except us, have tended to follow the philosophical lead of their mother country. The British have banned firearms ownership several times, including right after their civil wars, again when the troops came back from the Napoleonic wars, after World War One when millions of soldiers with fresh combat experience returned home, and after World War Two. Their government has always taken the view that the commoners can not be trusted with to act rationally with firearms and that they must be disarmed. To us, that is laughable, even profane since we believe that the right to self-defense comes from God.

   There are many reasons why the American tradition is very different. Too numerous to list here, but the two (probably) most important ones are: 1.) When this country was started, the citizens had to do their own defending from the Indians and the French Canadians. The British Army was not deployed in large enough numbers to defend the citizens from a constant barrage of attacks that ran for about 150+ years BEFORE the American Revolution. For that reason, the American citizens were accustomed to having military arms in private ownership, and using them in battle against other people. We had a several hundred year tradition of the “militia” where citizens went to regular drills and answered alarms, but then went back home to their everyday lives between the fighting. That is why it was such a natural process for us to be able to fight the British Army when the time came for our Revolution. The “Minute Men” did not start in 1775. It started 150 years before that and ran continuously. A fascinating, well-research book that describes this process was written by John Galvin, a former NATO commanding general http://www.amazon.com/Minute-Men-Realities-American-Revolution/dp/1597970700 It is a great read that provides a lot of the detail that many people never learned in school. 2.) Military small arms in this country have rarely had technological capabilities that surpass that of the civilian sporting firearms. One good example is that Winchester released the .308 as a hunting round long before the military developed the M-14 rifle. The Springfield ’03 and the M-1 Garands are an exception, but for most of our history, the military small arms were modifications or adaptations of civilian firearms, not the other way around. It could be more honestly said that the military has borrowed from the civilian firearms technology more so than that it would true to say that civilians are running around with military weapons. The AR-15’s, AK-47’s etc, are a little different, and it could be said that the civilians have borrowed that technology from the military, but the point I am making is to explain why historically we have not banned “military style small arms”, not that all weapons technology and cosmetic style comes to the civilian market first. There are many other reasons that the American government has long recognized our rights to own firearms.

   Just because the AR-15 originated as a military rifle does not mean it should be banned. I think there are more of them in civilian hands now than in the military’s possession, probably by a factor of 25 to 1, or maybe even as much as 30 or 40 or 50 to 1. I doubt that they will try to take the rifles away. But I am sure they are going to crack down on ammo and magazine capacity. Lead in ammo is a sleeper issue right now, but I predict that within 5 years there will be no lead-based ammo or primers being sold in this country. That will be the result of a push from WITHIN the firearms community (not imposed on us by non-gun people) and that step alone will significantly reduce availability of ammo while increasing the costs significantly. Mark my words. Particularly the part about that being imposed on us from within our community. Mark my words.

   1. Actually, Britain did have a fairly robust tradition of self-defense, until the twentieth century.

   2. The recommendation of Gavin’s book (and yes, he’s the son of that Gavin), is seconded by me. It’s very illuminating, and explains very well why the British got so firmly handled by the colonists in Concord and the retreat: they, officers and enlisted men, were much less experienced (they had in fact recently come out of Caribbean garrison duty if I remember correctly). And of course we’d learned not to play by their rules in such an engagement.

      I’d make few corrections to your history, though, e.g. the 1903 Springfield rifle is a Mauser 1898 copy, to the point that we didn’t have enough for WWI because the Army didn’t want to pay the royalties (like for the stripper clip feeding system). I’d rather say our small arms have worked both ways, civilians quickly adopting superior military concepts (e.g. bolt action, modern full power cartridge, as of late the AR-15 family after the adoption of the M16), with the US military adopting lots of innovations from the civilian side of things, as of late optics and e.g. heavy Open Tip Match bullets (Sierra Matchking design with a cannelure) to increase the range and effectiveness of 5.56 NATO ammo.

5. There has been, and probably will continue to be, too much internal fighting within the firearms community. If different factions of the shooting sports weren’t so quick to turn it’s back on the other guy’s guns being banned or limited we would be much better off.

   It started with banning machine guns and has progressed from there. We all too often don’t complain as long as it isn’t “our” niche of guns that are being targeted. This has to stop or we will be reduced to slingshots someday and most will sit and wonder why no one objected before hand.

   1. For the most part we don’t seem to want to entertain that the profit (over principle) motive can drive any opinion or policy within our community. But, it even affects our politics, if you consider some of our organizations that will create hysteria about some trivial (or even invalid) issue, just because it serves well for keeping those dimes and nickels rolling in. And, organizations have been known to launch frivolous but dangerous legal challenges, solely for their publicity and fund raising value.

6. Keep in mind that Finland has been pursuing the deinstitutionalization policy that made mass murders so common in the U.S. and Canada. No surprise.

   1. I thought mass-murders are actually hilariously rare throughuot the world? I recall a Dutch expert explaining they’re actually more common in Europe.

Comments are closed.