icebones
Member
this is a term paper i wrote for my senor portfolio writing assignment.
funny thing is, my language teacher was a rabid anti-guner, but i have rabbit hunted with the principal on several occasions. this paper caused a few anti-gun teachers to raise hell, but i havent got into any trouble and this writing was even put into the local newspaper. the language teacher tryied repeatidly to pick it apart and re-word it for "errors". but i stood my ground
it puts my mind at rest. my school hasnt gone to the dark side yet...
sorry this is thing is friggin' long, but i wanted to put the whole piece in, just to get my point across.
----
The Ice Pick Effect
In today’s world nothing is made clear for the average person. In order to understand all the fancy talk of the news, media, politics and courts across America you need a Bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. One the most controversial and debated to topic in America is the 2nd amendment. As stated in the U.S. Constitution the 2nd amendment follows as “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” The 2nd amendment covers, believe it or not two topics. During the time the bill of rights were written we had no army, no military. So the militia is defined as a sort of makeshift army composed of any willing man of age, it also states plain as day: the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Not just the police, not the military, not just the government, but the average person, the citizen.
Guns, I don’t care if you love ’em or hate ’em, these are the facts, strait, with no fancy talk or twisted myths or biased opinions. And for the record, “gun” is a generic term, it is not correct or fitting. They are called firearms. It would be like calling bacteria or viruses “germs” It makes a person look less intelligent to use a generic term.
I hate the way you hear about a shooting on the news, people raving about a “crazed madman with a machine gun” all you hear about firearms from the media is the negative stuff (just like the war in Iraq). You see people claiming to be professionals sitting in a big comfy sofa on some news show and arguing about what type of firearm should be banned just because of how it looks or how it works. I’d bet money they haven’t handled a firearm in their life. I grow tired or hearing some people saying something like “if there was no “guns” there wouldn’t be any violence.” Wrong. Since Great Britain decided to ban firearms the crime rate in Britain has skyrocketed, according to BBC News in 1998 crime rate rose by 40% two years after the firearm bans. In America according to the ATF, the number of privately owned firearms rose to roughly 35 million firearms from 1990 to 2000, and consequently the crime rate fell by almost 37%. Also the A.T.F. (Bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms) stated that dealers sell almost 4 millions firearms to private and law abiding citizens each year. If this continues, a criminal’s life in America will become very dangerous indeed. But lets say that for a moment all of the firearms in the entire world were to disappear. What would stop the criminals from using knives, baseball bats, crowbars and the thousands of other household objects as weapons? These criminals would prey on the small and weak. I also find it ironic that some of the big “important” people like politicians and celebrities, like Bill Brady, Hillary Clinton, New York mayor Michel Bloomberg and Ted Kennedy, think that no common person should have a firearm, yet they surround themselves with well armed bodyguards and sometimes even military troops. Have I got you thinking yet? Or what about the people who say that just having a firearm around makes you more likely to get shot, by your own weapon. I admit there is no cure for stupidity or ignorance but a little common sense and safety goes a long way. In fact a few years past the Clinton Justice Department (an anti-gun group) “produced” a study stating that---“guns are three out of ten times more likely to kill you than help you” If that were true then three out of ten people I know would have been killed or injured by a firearm. But, yet we still remain unscathed. Sounds like their numbers were flawed a bit don’t you think?
The mere presence of a firearm means a solid and dependable source of security and defense. Sure a home security system or more cops out on the street can make you safer but a good firearm by your nightstand makes for a very comforting feeling. Besides, when the electricity goes out or the phone lines are down the security system also fails, and you can call the police, if you’re prepared you may also have a cell phone. Even if you manage to call the police it takes minutes for the authorities to respond to a call. What are you going to do with a criminal inside your house with the police still minutes away? According to the National Safety Council, firearms are used approximately 2.5 million times a year by law-abiding citizens for self-defense. And in most of those cases a citizen simply brandishing a firearm is enough to scare off a would-be robber, mugger, rapist or killer. It sickens me to live in a country that allows some of its elected officials to erode away our right keep firearms in our homes. The “ice pick effect” I have developed, is a theory that the anti-gun crowd will not try to take away all firearms at once. It can’t be done. Instead that will chip away at our freedoms. For example, they will first ban those .50 caliber rifles because they are “too big” then handguns “because they can not be used for hunting most types of game” then high capacity magazines “because you don’t need more than a few shots” then semi-automatic firearms “because they don’t serve a practical purpose” then firearms that are larger than a certain caliber “because they are too powerful” This is akin to chipping away at a block of ice with an ice-pick. Before you know it all guns are banned “because of some ridiculous reason” It also pains me to see how many people that own firearms are misinformed. For example an “assault rifle” is classified by the ATF as a fully automatic military weapon, and like all other fully automatic weapons can only be legally purchased through a licensed dealer, even then you need to pass a back-ground check and you must obtain a special license. The ATF also has restrictions for suppressors (or silencers, as sometimes they are incorrectly called), rifles with barrels shorter than 16’’ and shotguns with barrels shorter than 18’’. To avoid confusing people, a fully-automatic and a semi-automatic weapon are two completely different things and are not to be confused with each other. A full-auto weapon fires as long as the trigger is held in, a semi-auto fires one shot with each pull of the trigger and requires the trigger to be released in order to fire again. Simi auto firearms are widely used for hunting, target shooting and competition. They serve a practical purpose and they must not be put down or banned because of how they operate. Nor should a firearm be banned due to its physical and cosmetic appearance. This is the case when dealing with sporter type rifles such as AR-15 style rifle that simply look like military weapons. They are not “machine guns” and they are strictly semi automatic in operation and its design is purely cosmetic in appearance..
The sporter rifle case can be strengthened by looking at the case involving the shootout in North Hollywood California on February 28 1997. As two armed bank robbers try to escape they are literally spraying police with illegally obtained fully automatic weapons. To make matters worse, the body armor they have, also illegally obtained stops the return police fire from relatively low powered handguns. As the battle rages on two police officers race to a local, civilian owned gun shop and acquire two AR-15 .223 caliber rifles and ammunition, given to them by the store owner. Armed with rifles now capable of defeating the armor worn by the robbers, the police and SWAT teams wound one suspect which later dies, while the other shoots himself. Thankfully no officers or bystanders are killed. It is very possible that if the AR-15 rifles used by the police had been banned, or the store itself had not been there because of “gun bans” the shootout could have been much worse
As I stated above the mere presence of a firearm is a deterrent to crime. A wise man once said that history repeats itself. Just think if the 6 million Jews that Hitler and the Nazi party slaughtered during the holocaust in WW2 had been armed. 6 million armed people fighting for their lives against a fanatical military dictatorship is indeed a force to be reckoned with. Or the 800,000 people massacred in Rwanda. They weren’t killed with firearms, but with knives, machetes, gardening tools and other common objects. If those souls that were lost in the holocaust and the genocide had been armed they might have lived. Or think if the pilots on the aircraft involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon has been armed. Thousands of innocent lives would have been saved and a war would have been prevented. Training pilots on the use of firearms for defense and arming them would certainly help prevent future hijack attempts by terrorists. True that some criminals use firearms, but do we need more laws restricting firearms that will only hurt the law-abiding citizen but will go completely ignored by that criminal? No. That’s why they are criminals; they do not obey the law. Do you think the criminals in Britain handed in their firearms when they were banned, No they didn’t. We need to be tougher on the psychos and nut-cases that commit these heinous crimes. And even then the firearms used by these thugs are procured by illegal street buys or from theft. We need to make it impossible for criminals to get their hands on weapons. An autocratic iron-fisted dictatorship style of a government that tries to oppress and control its people fears nothing more than an armed public. It’s like a black freed slave one said in the novel Freedom Road. His name was Howard Fast. At a dinner table talking with some of the other guests they get into the topic of slavery. At one point Howard Fast says “Take a man who got a gun, you want to enslave him, you got to take that gun away.” That phrase can’t put things any clearer. The people of countries such as North Korea where the government controls their daily lives are denied firearms. Do you see a trend here?
Sure there are a few accidents and sadly people do get accidentally hurt with firearms. I can only stress how important safety and responsibility is when handling a firearm. But that number is small compared to other deaths. According to the National Safety Council, Injury Facts: 2003 Edition, Deaths from heart disease for 2003 was 710,760 people, 553,091 deaths from cancer, over 250,000 from stroke and respiratory arrest and over 43,000 people died in vehicle accidents. A total of 776 people died as the direct result of firearm accidents. Please note that I didn’t add in the number of people that died as a result of crime and homicide. This statistic is purely based on accidental deaths. It would be nice if no one died as a result of firearm accidents, it would also be good if no one died in car crashes or cancer either. As I said, safety, responsibility and common sense are paramount when shooting, hunting or participating in any other activity involving firearms.
So, now it is the time to make a decision, stand up for our 2nd amendment rights or face the wraith of anti-gun politicians who want us to be defenseless and weak against criminals and those who want to slowly pick away at our freedoms, a tiny bit at a time, until nothing is left. Firearm can’t be banned simply because of cosmetic reasons, or it looks like an military weapon, or because it is “too powerful” or simply because it can hold a certain number or rounds in its magazine. We don’t need more gun laws; we need more common sense and an end to the brainwashing by the anti-gun media. Seemingly harmless groups such as Violence Policy Center, the AHSA, PETA, the Hand Gun Free America Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, and even the Million Mom March are groups with antigun agendas. Also many news channels and media producers such as CNN are also anti-gun. Funny what’s in a name isn’t it? I hope you found this article very enlightening on a subject many people fill with lies and distorted facts. Here’s to the right of the individual to keep and bear arms. For the sake of the future, prosperity and the satiability of our country and our Democratic government I hope my “ice-pick” theory turns out to be wrong. God bless America.
---
funny thing is, my language teacher was a rabid anti-guner, but i have rabbit hunted with the principal on several occasions. this paper caused a few anti-gun teachers to raise hell, but i havent got into any trouble and this writing was even put into the local newspaper. the language teacher tryied repeatidly to pick it apart and re-word it for "errors". but i stood my ground
it puts my mind at rest. my school hasnt gone to the dark side yet...
sorry this is thing is friggin' long, but i wanted to put the whole piece in, just to get my point across.
----
The Ice Pick Effect
In today’s world nothing is made clear for the average person. In order to understand all the fancy talk of the news, media, politics and courts across America you need a Bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. One the most controversial and debated to topic in America is the 2nd amendment. As stated in the U.S. Constitution the 2nd amendment follows as “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” The 2nd amendment covers, believe it or not two topics. During the time the bill of rights were written we had no army, no military. So the militia is defined as a sort of makeshift army composed of any willing man of age, it also states plain as day: the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Not just the police, not the military, not just the government, but the average person, the citizen.
Guns, I don’t care if you love ’em or hate ’em, these are the facts, strait, with no fancy talk or twisted myths or biased opinions. And for the record, “gun” is a generic term, it is not correct or fitting. They are called firearms. It would be like calling bacteria or viruses “germs” It makes a person look less intelligent to use a generic term.
I hate the way you hear about a shooting on the news, people raving about a “crazed madman with a machine gun” all you hear about firearms from the media is the negative stuff (just like the war in Iraq). You see people claiming to be professionals sitting in a big comfy sofa on some news show and arguing about what type of firearm should be banned just because of how it looks or how it works. I’d bet money they haven’t handled a firearm in their life. I grow tired or hearing some people saying something like “if there was no “guns” there wouldn’t be any violence.” Wrong. Since Great Britain decided to ban firearms the crime rate in Britain has skyrocketed, according to BBC News in 1998 crime rate rose by 40% two years after the firearm bans. In America according to the ATF, the number of privately owned firearms rose to roughly 35 million firearms from 1990 to 2000, and consequently the crime rate fell by almost 37%. Also the A.T.F. (Bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms) stated that dealers sell almost 4 millions firearms to private and law abiding citizens each year. If this continues, a criminal’s life in America will become very dangerous indeed. But lets say that for a moment all of the firearms in the entire world were to disappear. What would stop the criminals from using knives, baseball bats, crowbars and the thousands of other household objects as weapons? These criminals would prey on the small and weak. I also find it ironic that some of the big “important” people like politicians and celebrities, like Bill Brady, Hillary Clinton, New York mayor Michel Bloomberg and Ted Kennedy, think that no common person should have a firearm, yet they surround themselves with well armed bodyguards and sometimes even military troops. Have I got you thinking yet? Or what about the people who say that just having a firearm around makes you more likely to get shot, by your own weapon. I admit there is no cure for stupidity or ignorance but a little common sense and safety goes a long way. In fact a few years past the Clinton Justice Department (an anti-gun group) “produced” a study stating that---“guns are three out of ten times more likely to kill you than help you” If that were true then three out of ten people I know would have been killed or injured by a firearm. But, yet we still remain unscathed. Sounds like their numbers were flawed a bit don’t you think?
The mere presence of a firearm means a solid and dependable source of security and defense. Sure a home security system or more cops out on the street can make you safer but a good firearm by your nightstand makes for a very comforting feeling. Besides, when the electricity goes out or the phone lines are down the security system also fails, and you can call the police, if you’re prepared you may also have a cell phone. Even if you manage to call the police it takes minutes for the authorities to respond to a call. What are you going to do with a criminal inside your house with the police still minutes away? According to the National Safety Council, firearms are used approximately 2.5 million times a year by law-abiding citizens for self-defense. And in most of those cases a citizen simply brandishing a firearm is enough to scare off a would-be robber, mugger, rapist or killer. It sickens me to live in a country that allows some of its elected officials to erode away our right keep firearms in our homes. The “ice pick effect” I have developed, is a theory that the anti-gun crowd will not try to take away all firearms at once. It can’t be done. Instead that will chip away at our freedoms. For example, they will first ban those .50 caliber rifles because they are “too big” then handguns “because they can not be used for hunting most types of game” then high capacity magazines “because you don’t need more than a few shots” then semi-automatic firearms “because they don’t serve a practical purpose” then firearms that are larger than a certain caliber “because they are too powerful” This is akin to chipping away at a block of ice with an ice-pick. Before you know it all guns are banned “because of some ridiculous reason” It also pains me to see how many people that own firearms are misinformed. For example an “assault rifle” is classified by the ATF as a fully automatic military weapon, and like all other fully automatic weapons can only be legally purchased through a licensed dealer, even then you need to pass a back-ground check and you must obtain a special license. The ATF also has restrictions for suppressors (or silencers, as sometimes they are incorrectly called), rifles with barrels shorter than 16’’ and shotguns with barrels shorter than 18’’. To avoid confusing people, a fully-automatic and a semi-automatic weapon are two completely different things and are not to be confused with each other. A full-auto weapon fires as long as the trigger is held in, a semi-auto fires one shot with each pull of the trigger and requires the trigger to be released in order to fire again. Simi auto firearms are widely used for hunting, target shooting and competition. They serve a practical purpose and they must not be put down or banned because of how they operate. Nor should a firearm be banned due to its physical and cosmetic appearance. This is the case when dealing with sporter type rifles such as AR-15 style rifle that simply look like military weapons. They are not “machine guns” and they are strictly semi automatic in operation and its design is purely cosmetic in appearance..
The sporter rifle case can be strengthened by looking at the case involving the shootout in North Hollywood California on February 28 1997. As two armed bank robbers try to escape they are literally spraying police with illegally obtained fully automatic weapons. To make matters worse, the body armor they have, also illegally obtained stops the return police fire from relatively low powered handguns. As the battle rages on two police officers race to a local, civilian owned gun shop and acquire two AR-15 .223 caliber rifles and ammunition, given to them by the store owner. Armed with rifles now capable of defeating the armor worn by the robbers, the police and SWAT teams wound one suspect which later dies, while the other shoots himself. Thankfully no officers or bystanders are killed. It is very possible that if the AR-15 rifles used by the police had been banned, or the store itself had not been there because of “gun bans” the shootout could have been much worse
As I stated above the mere presence of a firearm is a deterrent to crime. A wise man once said that history repeats itself. Just think if the 6 million Jews that Hitler and the Nazi party slaughtered during the holocaust in WW2 had been armed. 6 million armed people fighting for their lives against a fanatical military dictatorship is indeed a force to be reckoned with. Or the 800,000 people massacred in Rwanda. They weren’t killed with firearms, but with knives, machetes, gardening tools and other common objects. If those souls that were lost in the holocaust and the genocide had been armed they might have lived. Or think if the pilots on the aircraft involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon has been armed. Thousands of innocent lives would have been saved and a war would have been prevented. Training pilots on the use of firearms for defense and arming them would certainly help prevent future hijack attempts by terrorists. True that some criminals use firearms, but do we need more laws restricting firearms that will only hurt the law-abiding citizen but will go completely ignored by that criminal? No. That’s why they are criminals; they do not obey the law. Do you think the criminals in Britain handed in their firearms when they were banned, No they didn’t. We need to be tougher on the psychos and nut-cases that commit these heinous crimes. And even then the firearms used by these thugs are procured by illegal street buys or from theft. We need to make it impossible for criminals to get their hands on weapons. An autocratic iron-fisted dictatorship style of a government that tries to oppress and control its people fears nothing more than an armed public. It’s like a black freed slave one said in the novel Freedom Road. His name was Howard Fast. At a dinner table talking with some of the other guests they get into the topic of slavery. At one point Howard Fast says “Take a man who got a gun, you want to enslave him, you got to take that gun away.” That phrase can’t put things any clearer. The people of countries such as North Korea where the government controls their daily lives are denied firearms. Do you see a trend here?
Sure there are a few accidents and sadly people do get accidentally hurt with firearms. I can only stress how important safety and responsibility is when handling a firearm. But that number is small compared to other deaths. According to the National Safety Council, Injury Facts: 2003 Edition, Deaths from heart disease for 2003 was 710,760 people, 553,091 deaths from cancer, over 250,000 from stroke and respiratory arrest and over 43,000 people died in vehicle accidents. A total of 776 people died as the direct result of firearm accidents. Please note that I didn’t add in the number of people that died as a result of crime and homicide. This statistic is purely based on accidental deaths. It would be nice if no one died as a result of firearm accidents, it would also be good if no one died in car crashes or cancer either. As I said, safety, responsibility and common sense are paramount when shooting, hunting or participating in any other activity involving firearms.
So, now it is the time to make a decision, stand up for our 2nd amendment rights or face the wraith of anti-gun politicians who want us to be defenseless and weak against criminals and those who want to slowly pick away at our freedoms, a tiny bit at a time, until nothing is left. Firearm can’t be banned simply because of cosmetic reasons, or it looks like an military weapon, or because it is “too powerful” or simply because it can hold a certain number or rounds in its magazine. We don’t need more gun laws; we need more common sense and an end to the brainwashing by the anti-gun media. Seemingly harmless groups such as Violence Policy Center, the AHSA, PETA, the Hand Gun Free America Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, and even the Million Mom March are groups with antigun agendas. Also many news channels and media producers such as CNN are also anti-gun. Funny what’s in a name isn’t it? I hope you found this article very enlightening on a subject many people fill with lies and distorted facts. Here’s to the right of the individual to keep and bear arms. For the sake of the future, prosperity and the satiability of our country and our Democratic government I hope my “ice-pick” theory turns out to be wrong. God bless America.
---
