Let's say you're a gun enthusiast. You own several guns and love to shoot them at ranges and, if you're lucky enough, in the desert or woods away from urban populations.A Florida gun dealer has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for selling parts to convert weapons into fully automatic machine guns.
Wouldn't it be the most natural thing in the world to want to own automatic weapons? Wouldn't fully automatic guns enhance the fun and enjoyment you get from your arsenal? Don't many otherwise legitimate gun owners do this in the spirit of bad laws be damned?
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
Don't many otherwise legitimate gun owners do this in the spirit of bad laws be damned?
ReplyDeleteI doubt it, because we so rarely hear about someone being caught doing it.
I personally, of course, am fully on board with the "bad laws be damned" theory, and see violation of the pernicious and illegitimate National Firearms Act and Hughes Amendment as a noble defiance of evil, in the finest tradition of Thoreau, Gandhi, and King.
Still, I think it's rare (unfortunately).
If I'm wrong, of course, and people are defying these draconian and oppressive laws in any significant numbers, the fact that there is so little problem with "machine gun violence" would seem to illustrate just how victimless the "crime" of illegally converting semi-automatic firearms to fully automatic is.
A lot of gun owners don't see the point. Making a huge pile of brass at the range is something you grow out of after anywhere from a month to a couple years, depending on how much money you have.
ReplyDeletePlus, law-abiding gun owners being, by nature, law-abiding...we tend to not want to go to jail. There is at least one case of a guy's bun malfunctioning ONE TIME and him being charged with having an unregistered machine gun. So we take it seriously.
But like the man said. It's a victimless crime.
"One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."
ReplyDelete- Martin Luther King Jr.
"I submit that an individual who breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law."
- Martin Luther King Jr.
"An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so."
- Mohandas Gandhi
"You assist an unjust administration most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil administration never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil."
- Mohandas Gandhi
...Orygunner...
Orygunner, I find it the height of self-deception to associate your relationship with guns and the law with the lofty sentiments you quoted from those great men.
ReplyDeleteYou like guns and feel you need them. You feel very strongly about your rights concerning guns. That makes it very difficult for you to determine what are just and what are unjust laws in this arena.
I would suspect that if you decided that some laws were unjust it would be the result of self-justification.
Hello all,
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