A Threat We Can’t Ignore (gun owners)

New York Times ^ | June 20, 2009 | Bob Herbert

[Billthedrill]

This is the opening salvo in an effort to get the NRA declared a terrorist organization. Lame and ineffectual so far but if it looks like it's gaining traction there'll be lots more.

So jack-booted thugs destroy a private organization in Waco, murdering the members, and Herbert uses it as proof that it's hysterical to state that jack-booted thugs can destroy a private organization and murder its members. Sometimes you have to wonder what planet these people are from.

[PLD]

I know these are dangerous times and it scares the crap out of me..not for me as much as others that believe the crap these criminals are saying to them..I feel so sorry for these ignorant people that do follow these criminals they are like sheep following the leader off a cliff..

As for Fox news and Rush everyone should know what the obama crowd is doing they want to take over not just this country but the world..and you know I think there are enough ignorance to let that happen..

God help us all and watch over us..

[IGOTMINE]

Exactly. He preached an apocalyptic confrontation with the government, and they gave him one. How a leader can gain more credibility I don’t know.

[KansasGirl]

[The subsequent siege ended disastrously with a raging fire in which scores of people were killed.]

The subsequent siege ended disastrously with the U.S. Gov’t killing scores of people, mostly women and children. I have yet to figure out why.

[Yankee]

I couldn't care less about hunting. I don't hunt. This is not a slam at hunters. If they want to view hunting as the main reason for the Second Amendment, then so be it.

My weapons are for self defense. I have yet to fire one at anything but a target, and frankly I hope that never changes.

But in the event that my life is ever in peril I will shoot to kill.

[Squantos]

When I read the news I want facts first with what when where and why if known. Then pro an con opinions from subject matter experts without an agenda to promote.

Anything else is just MSM BS !

[wolfcreek]

“Did anyone ever see one of those illegal machine guns from Waco?”

I realize you're speaking to the Mt.Carmel incident but, did you know Waco, back durng Prohibition, was a major center for the manufacture of illegal weapons/

[PLD]

I sat in my living room and watched them bring the tanks in and all of a sudden there was a fire it started really fast and was blamed on the people in the compound I for one do not believe that, it looked like it was started by the Reno people..The whole country was dooped into believing these terrorist thugs of Reno's and Clinton's..

As a matter a fact it was a police officer friend that told me they could have arrested Koresh in Dallas or on the streets of Waco he hung out in some record store in Dallas if I remember correctly..And yes I do think he should have been arrested he was a sick moron..

Strange how much this Obama crowd reminds me of the people that followed Koresh.. worshiping ever breath he takes..

[behzinlea]

To a liberal, anything other than a single shot is a "machine gun" and if you are a fast reloader, that single shot is a machine gun too.

Liberals have no problem with machine guns or any other deadly weapon useful for slaughter on a broad scale--as long as agents of liberal government exercise a monopoly over such weapons and keep them aimed at the domestic citizenry that liberals seek to control.

[PLD]

Don't get me wrong Koresh was a mad man and people followed him and would have followed him to hell because they believed every word he said..

Does this sound familiar to you?Sounds like the ignorant ones that are following the Muslim commie..and they would follow him straight to hell because of ignorance..

God predicted all if this would happen..

[mvpel]

What’s important to grasp here is that this madness has nothing to do with hunting, which the politicians always claim to be defending, and everything to do with the use of firearms to resist policies and lawful government actions that some gun owners don’t like.

The murders of Iranians protesting the tyranny of the repressive government were "lawful government actions."

[mvpel]

There was a wave of right-wing craziness along those lines during the Clinton administration. Four federal agents were killed and 16 others wounded in 1993 during an attempt to serve a search warrant at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., where a stockpile of illegal machine guns had been amassed.

Yet the only machine guns that actually killed people were in the hands of government agents.

[blackie]

Hasn’t that cretin Bob Herbert choked on his on bile, yet???

Be Ever Vigilant!

[AAABEST]

Four federal agents were killed and 16 others wounded in 1993 during an attempt to serve a search warrant at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex.,

5:00 AM - 76 agents assemble at Fort Hood for the drive to the staging area at the Bellmead Civic Center. According to a later Treasury Department Review, the agents drove in an 80-vehicle convoy that stretched for a mile (1.6 km) with a cattle trailer at either end.

9:45 AM - Within a minute of the raid starting, the Davidian Wayne Martin, a Harvard-educated lawyer with a wife and 7 children, who for 7 years was an assistant professor at North Carolina Central University School of Law, called Emergency services, pleading for them to stop shooting. The resident asked for a ceasefire, and audiotapes record him saying "Here they come again!" and "That's them shooting, that's not us!"

Yes that's it, they were just "serving a search warrant."

I'm sure that neglecting to mention the dozens of men, women and children killed in addition to the four agents "serving a search warrant" was just an oversight on the part of the author.

[kenmcg]

Hypocritical Bob Herbert is quick to go after legitimate gun holders but nary a word is said regarding “saturday night specials” used by black thugs mostly against law-abiding citizens black, white & latino.

[Titus-Maximus]

You can’t take Herbert seriously, he is unreadable, a lightweight blabbermouth who fills a politically correct spot. He’s one of the reasons the Times is heading for bankruptcy. He claims Waco was about gun control? I thought Janet Reno told us it was about child sex abuse? He views history through a very distorted leftist lens and his stuff is always weak and tendentious.

This isn’t about Ruby Ridge or that psycho at the holocaust museum. (Strange he doesn’t mention the Black Muslim, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, formerly known as Carlos Bledsoe, who shot Pvt William Long, the US soldier, at a recruiting station in late May. I guess those types of terrorists don’t meet this hypocrite’s definition of right wing crazy. Perhaps he believes we face no Muslim Terrorism on American soil.)

Unfortunately, the psychos do command too much news print and makes everyone think America is under siege by these nutjobs - so Herbert throws gasoline on that tiny fire because it serves his leftist tendencies to take away gun rights. It is more alarmist bull. Statistically it is completely insignificant. If all the crime this nation had to worry about were these psycho gun crimes then we would be living in close to a perfect world. But Herbert doesn’t talk about the real gun crime or the fact there are places that life is very very cheap. The real gun death is in the inner cities - where thousands die and there are no nightly newscasters reporting it. When they do comment they try to blame Republicans, talk radio, and right wing gun nuts for supplying guns to the ghetto. People like Herbert actually use it for political gain rather than dealing with the catastrophic human tragedy that it is. (Why waste a good tragedy?)

This all stems back to inner city violence.

Why doesn’t Herbert dig deep into the gun crime statistics. Ask him if we exclude the top 50 urban areas of the US, what would gun crime in America look like? (Ans. Because it would look like Sweden.) So, do we have a gun problem? If not everyone with a gun goes around killing people than the answer is no and that has been the absolute majority case from the beginning. If people can responsibly own guns, they should be allowed to enjoy their constitutionally protected rights to own them. Why does the liberal always seek to punish the many for the sins of a few? Why does he insist on stripping America of this right because people are killing themselves with reckless abandon in the inner cities. Why don’t we stop for a second and state the fact that this gun control debate it isn’t about gun control, it is about avoiding the 800 pound gorilla in the room which is inner city violence? Can he speak the truth one time and stop falsely blaming Republicans for gun crime. Hell, the Democrats have been controlling these cities for centuries now, and the school systems are terrible, the corruption is legendary and they continue to push out violent convict after convict. The ex-Mayor of Newark, NJ, Sharp James, himself convicted, should take a bow.

This column is a lying alarmist piece of tendentious trash, and it speaks absolutely no truth. There are places where good people cannot live safely in this country, and it has nothing to do with crackpot violence, but more to do with everyday violence that Herbert does not talk about.

[Eska]

What is going on in Iran could well happen right here in the good ole USA; from either party in power too; we are no better or different.

I do believe most gun owners realize this even if they don't speak it publically. I quit buying guns and cases of ammo back during Clinton years, wifey figured I had enough that my grandkids would still be burnin it off. Now we both talk about the changes we have seen in last year and wonder if it will be in my kids or my even my time that we see what is occurring right now today in Iran? I temper that with the realization that the pendulum swings back and forth, or it always has in the past.

I bought a few guns this year myself and spent even more on bunch of ammo; not ready to stop either. I remember when I bought my first A2, 440 bucks; this year a good 15 clone is over a gran; still got another one. Back in late 80's, 223 was $169/case, now around 400; even the wifey concurs when I tell her buyin all that ammo way back when was smart move; that rarely happens about anything.

[Titus-Maximus]

.

[gnarledmaw]

"Did anyone ever see one of those illegal machine guns from Waco?"

That depends on exactly what you mean...

If you dig back far enough on this site you will find a government distributed picture of an AK variant with factory new wood furniture that was supposedly pulled from the fire.

Your nick suggests that this is a good question for you to ponder:

Now riddle me this BATFman...If the church members had access to the point blank full auto sheetrock penetrating lethality of a milspec AK (presumably milsurp ammo), then why did the Davidians use their nonpenetrating bullet fragmenting relatively short barreled incompatible twist rate/grain weight combination AR-15s during the seige?

[Freedom2specul8]

Him and his brady brethren are U.N. puppets