Russia wants Steven Seagal to reform U.S. gun laws (To Sell More Guns)

Foreign Policy ^ | Tuesday, March 19, 2013 - 5:10 PM | John Hudson

[Red Steel]

Action movie star, fitness guru, animal rights activist, and Dalai Lama enthusiast Steven Seagal may be adding the job title "gun lobbyist" to his name if Russia has its way.

Today, the country's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin formally asked the martial arts star to lobby for fewer restrictions on the sale of Russian rifles inside the United States.

"Your connections within the American establishment could help resolve this issue," Rogozin told Seagal, according to The Moscow Times.

The Kremlin is for real:

" Rogozin said his question concerns a 1996 U.S. government regulation allowing Russia and other former Soviet countries to export hunting and sport rifles to the United States.

Russia sees the regulation as discriminatory, since it only allows it to export weapons made before 1996 and because it does not cover all types of rifles.

"Those restrictions are detrimental for our country," Rogozin said.

[Perdogg]

I would love an AN-94.

[Red Steel]

Pooty Poot and Seagal

[Dead Corpse]

Free up all Eastern bloc weapons for import. I've been drooling over a Hungarian Gepard M4 for about ten years now.

Not sure why, I just like the way it looks.

[Westbrook]

> I would love an AN-94.

What round does it use?

I’m guessing this design does not use the 7.62x39 round.

[Doogle]

...and next Lindsay Lohan as social director

[Roger_Wildcat]

Yes, please. I want to buy some surplus SKS, Makarovs, Mosins, etc at a low price.

[Vince Ferrer]

We need to import ammo.

[Hot Tabasco]

fitness guru?

LOL! The most recent pics I've seen of him makes me think he became a doughnut junky while working with the cops.....

[Perdogg]

5.45mm X 39mm

[demshateGod]

Please do it! If this happens, I’ll take back everything bad I’ve ever said about Russia!

[Steamburg]

I can’t see why Russia would ever sign on to the UN arms treaty when there is such a potential lucrative market for their weaponry in the U.S.

Americans need to push congress for repeal of the Clintoon import ban is a rational step.

[dfwgator]

Funny how more and more I find myself siding with the Russians.

[factoryrat]

The feds are absorbing all of the manufacturing capacity of ammuntion and arms that are available to the public. The Russians see this and know this, and having lived under communism, are throwing up all sorts of red flags as a warning. My great-grandparents emigrated to the US just before the bolshevik revolution. I heard the stories. I have no current relatives living in Russia. They were wiped out. If the Russians are offering to sell you arms, buy them, because there’s a shitstorm coming our way.

[Nowhere Man]

Funny how more and more I find myself siding with the Russians.

Me too. We live in a weird world. BTW, I did foresee this coming in a way. I asked in 1983 just for "s###s & giggles," "what if the US became the USSR and the USSR became the US? What if the US ever became the Evil Empire?" I was a 17 year old junior in high school, this was just after KAL-007 was shot down.

I generally like want respect Putin. I'm not saying he is on our side nor should we cave in to him, but my admiration comes from where he is doing what is the best interests of Russia, at least the way it look to me. He has his warts and Russia is not exactly in freedom to where the US was but they are freer than we are now and have a flat tax system. I wish we had a leader or leaders who put the US interest first.

[TurboZamboni]

If the government wants to ban law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines with more than ten rounds, but gives 20 F-16 fighter jets to the crazy new islamic leaders in Egypt and gunrunning unmarked machine guns to Mexican cartels ... you might live in a country founded by geniuses, but run by idiots.

[dfwgator]

The way I see it, when the Czars were in power in Russia, we had cordial relations with them. They have their ambitions, we have ours, and I believe we can come to an understanding such that our ambitions won’t collide. But dumb things like going into Kosovo, and going into Syria will wreck any chance of that happening.

[TexasCajun]

Seagal is a big lefty, his Hollywood friends won't be happy.

[Nowhere Man]

The feds are absorbing all of the manufacturing capacity of ammuntion and arms that are available to the public. The Russians see this and know this, and having lived under communism, are throwing up all sorts of red flags as a warning. My great-grandparents emigrated to the US just before the bolshevik revolution. I heard the stories. I have no current relatives living in Russia. They were wiped out. If the Russians are offering to sell you arms, buy them, because there’s a shitstorm coming our way.

Some of mine came over at that time too. My great great grandfather was a general (according to a family story, I'd like to verify it somehow) for the Bolsheviks and he supposedly knew Lenin. He told his son to get out and go to America. My great grandmother who later married the son came over here because she was Jewish, she had two villages burn out from under her by the pogroms.

I joked about rewriting Red Dawn where the Russians come over to help us liberate ourselves from an oppressive government, I hope I'm not right like I was in 1983. B-P Well, to bring up the John Titor story, a part of the story was where there was a civil war between an oppressive government on one side and rural/suburban America on the others as well a some States that broke away IIRC. The Russians and Red Chinese panic and launch nukes at some of our cities, the powerbase of the oppressors and the rebels are grateful for the "help."

What a weird world we live in. Welcome to Bizzaro World.

P.S. - I told Mom the other day, I feel like Alice in Alice in Wonderland where she fell into that world, but compared where we are now, that world made more sense.

[rarestia]

Funny how more and more I find myself siding with the Russians.

Sad but true. I was saying the same thing to my father the other day, and he was inclined to agree.

I started learning Russian in college but dropped out due to course load. I'm going to regret that decision, I fear.