guns

I know a guy who lives in the great American West.  I am not going to name him or where he lives.  I am not even going to give him a pseudonym.  Well, maybe I'll call him the Gun Guy.

Anyway, a few years ago, black talon bullets, the ones that expand outward into a sharp prism like pattern upon impact with their target thereby creating and inflicting the maximum possible damage, were going to be outlawed.  The bullets had come to be known as "cop killers".  In their wisdom, the geniuses in congress never did get around to completely outlawing these bullets that have absolutely no use in civilian life, but some state governments, seeing the carnage or the potential for carnage that these bullets posed did.  So, at least on the federal level, there was a threat that the cop killer bullets were going to be outlawed, but nothing ever came of it.

But that did not stop the Gun Guy.

When Gun Guy thought black talon bullets were going to be outlawed in his state, he went straight to his local gun shops and bought up cases and cases of these bullets.  As many as he could find.  As many as the shops would sell him.  He then brought them back to his home, where he stored these cases in his garage, I guess because he could not store them anyplace else in his house.  They barely fit on the shelves in the garage.  He proudly showed me the boxes of these bullets.  He then admitted that he could not hunt with them, nor could he target shoot with them, as they were not practical for either use.  In jest, I asked if he planned on hunting humans, which he rightfully laughed off.  I then asked if he had any of the bullets loaded in any of the weapons he had in his house to use in case he needed to defend himself from an unwanted intruder, and was told that he would not use these bullets in his house because of the potential collateral damage they would cause to his property, even if it meant defending his life.

So, Gun Guy spent thousands of dollars, maybe even tens of thousands of dollars, on bullets he never could and never would use.  Why?

"Nobody in Washington is going to tell me what I can buy".

I called Gun Guy a moron.  We walked out of the garage and into his house.  We never talked about his armory again.

And in a nutshell, that demonstrates what the rest of us are dealing with.

Which brings me to Las Vegas, the latest stop in the can you top this mayhem tour of the goons who run the NRA.

It is illegal for a civilian to own an automatic weapon, the kind that I am told can fire up to nine bullets per second.  The reason should be obvious to anyone.  There is no legitimate reason for a civilian to need a weapon that fires nine bullets a second.  Self defense would seem to dictate that one single shot, or perhaps two or three should do the job.  So you cannot go into Joe's Gun Shop and buy a fully automatic weapon.

But in Nevada, you can go into Joe's Gun Shop and for somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred bucks, you can buy a modifier that turns a semi-automatic weapon, which for some reason is legal to own, into a fully automatic weapon, which is not.  Let us contemplate this lunacy for a moment.

You cannot buy a fully automatic weapon, but you can buy something to modify a weapon that is sort of automatic along with a product that has no use other than to make your sort of automatic weapon fully automatic.  You can make both purchases simultaneously and legally.  You might as well hang a sign around your neck while making the purchase that announces to the dealer that you intend on taking your sort of automatic weapon home and converting it into a fully automatic weapon, which the dealer is not allowed to sell to you.

And that is legal in Nevada.

And you can take that now fully automatic weapon, and load it with cop killer bullets.

And use it.

You can sling that now fully automatic weapon over your shoulder and walk around Las Vegas showing off to the world the immense size and firing power of your penis.... I mean your weapon, you know, the gun, not your penis, because Nevada is an open carry state.  You can announce to the world that you bought a sort of automatic weapon and converted into a fully automatic weapon, which is illegal to buy, and in Nevada, that is legal.

You can then take as many of those weapons as you want into a large hotel/resort/casino in Las Vegas and openly carry that cache to your suite on the 32nd floor of the hotel, a suite that overlooks the venue of a large outdoor country music festival, because in Nevada that is legal, and nobody will stop you.

You can then bring hundreds, maybe thousands of rounds of ammunition up to your 32nd floor suite overlooking a large outdoor country music festival, where you have brought and set up dozens of modified, and now fully automatic weapons, and nobody will stop you because in Nevada, this is still legal.

You can then spend three days in your suite setting up your weapons in such a manner as to aim them in the general direction of a large outdoor country music festival, because until you overtly threaten anyone or fire the weapons, in Nevada, that is legal.

And the great part about all of this, aside from the fact that all of this is legal in Nevada, is that all of the casinos have comprehensive surveillance systems throughout the common, public areas of the grounds.  I know this because I have represented a number of casinos over the years in my law practice.

So the hotel/resort/casino knows that you are carrying dozens of weapons into your suite, although I will concede that the surveillance may not have picked up on the fact that you were also carrying all those rounds of cop killer bullets, but they will do nothing about it, because in Nevada carrying all those weapons and all that ammunition through a hotel lobby into your suite is perfectly legal.

Move on.

Nothing to see here.

You can then spend a few days setting cameras up in your suite that will let you know if the police or hotel security is coming to see if you are having a nice day while you set up your array, because in Nevada, this is all legal.

And then the firing starts.

And in one instant, which cannot be stopped, because everything that led up to that one instant is legal in Nevada, everything changes.

Fifty-nine people are dead.

More than five hundred are wounded.

And the NRA wants to make it legal to put silencers on those weapons.  Why?  To protect the hearing of the shooters.  It seems to me that for five bucks, they could buy ear plugs.  In the mean time, at least the rest of us can hear where the shots are coming from and make some sort of attempt to find cover, even if it is just about impossible to run from somebody shooting up to nine cop killer bullets a second at you.

And by the way, they also want to further loosen the restrictions on fully automatic weapons.

And they also want to prevent jurisdictions from restricting people from buying these weapons of mass destruction and carrying them into their state where concealed or open carry is not permitted.  In other words, they would like it so that that you can go to Nevada, where all of this is legal, and take your stash to California, where is it not, and make it so California can do nothing about it.

And they say now is not the time to talk about this.  So when is the right time?  Just let me know.  I will be there.  I will look you, the NRA, the gun manufacturers, who we all know are the same people, and their bought and paid for buddies in congress in the eye, and tell them this one -- and all the other ones -- is on you.

I do not want your thoughts and prayers.

Thoughts and prayers will not bring back the dead or unwound the wounded.

Thoughts and prayers will not prevent the next attack, and we all know the next attack is coming.  The only questions are when and where.

We do not want thoughts and prayers.  We want action.

The ultimate job of our government is to protect us.  That is what they say when they go to foreign lands and shock and awe a civilian population that has done nothing to us.  But protection starts at home.

And protection does not mean to protect profits of gun manufacturers.

Repeal the Dickey Amendment and allow government funds to be used to study the public health effects of gun violence.  We all know what every single one of those studies will find.

Repeal the laws that protect gun manufacturers from civil liability.

GET THE GOD DAMN GUNS OFF THE STREETS AND OUT OF THE HANDS OF THOSE WHO HAVE NO BUSINESS OWNING OR POSSESSING THEM.

We are watching.  The NRA likes to remind you that they vote.

WE VOTE TOO, AND THERE ARE MORE OF US THAN THERE ARE OF YOU.