Back in October, after the Mandalay Bay spree killing, Ohio resident Aaron Lawrence “had an epiphany.” He realized he could stop spree killings by destroying his AR-15. Or something like that. Anyway, it worked! PR-wise. WCET gave Mr. Lawrence’s meaningless protest all the attention it didn’t deserve. As wkrg.com reports, there’s been a copycat AR annihilation . . .
A gun enthusiast from southern California says he is taking a step to help destroy gun violence.
One of Chad Vachter’s prized possessions was a thousand-dollar AR-15 assault rifle. After seeing the growing number of mass shootings in the country, Vachter said he was fed up and decided to take a hammer to his gun, destroying it.
“I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t have something in my house that so easily could become a part of another situation like that, and I’m not going to be desensitized to it. I refuse to.”
Click here for wkrg.com‘s report. And before you dismiss Mr. Vachter as a misguided fool, know this: he supports the Second Amendment!
“The other night, when I read the thing about the school in northern California, I cried and I haven’t felt good since,” he said. “And although I’m still sad for all those victims and all the people affected, I feel like I’ve done the only thing that I can do in this equation. Even if it’s just a small thing, I did my part to make things better.”
Vachter says he wants to be clear that he still supports the second amendment and will be keeping his shotgun and pistol. But he’s challenging other gun owners to destroy their assault weapons.
Yeah somehow I don’t think that whole chop-up your AR thing’s gonna catch on. Then again, virtue signaling gets you mad props in some quarters. Not ones that you and I frequent, but there it is: more ammunition for #blackgunsmatter.
The hammer he used to destroy that rifle kills more people than ARs do.
I posted one of these a while ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiKonOx7Hng
Back here in fact…
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2017/11/foghorn/breaking-democrats-introduce-assault-weapons-ban-bill-congress/
Anybody have any hands on experience with the Model 37 clone from Stevens? 350 I think it’s called. totally forgot about them until now.
Virtue signalling. A bastard form of self loathing. The man needs help.
And a good gunsmith.
*searches through pockets, desk drawer, backpack, and the center console of the car*
Nope.
Sorry, haven’t a single fvck to give.
Found some spare ammo, though…
????
Maybe it’s just me but I’m starting to notice a trend of people who seem, and maybe it’s just the pictures, to be carry all brand new stuff.
Just seems that way to me.
Yeah, I’m not seeing much “EDC wear” like you would typically see on something carried daily.
Didn’t you submit your EDC awhile back?
I don’t even think the Stevens 350 is even made any more. A few places might have some in inventory still but I am fairly sure it has been phased out and replaced by the 320.
I watched a quad .50 tear up a steel box car about 500 yds down range at Ft Carson some years ago (Camp Red Devil)….it left nothing but steel chunks about 6 inches wide at most…including the wheel trucks….color me awestruck
My personal budget defense gun was (and still is) an old Ithaca pump action 16 guage I got at a gun show for a little over $100 bucks. The bluing was practically gone, it was peppered with some light rust, and the stock was beat to hell, but a little solvent for the rust, sand paper and OD green spray paint for the stock, a hack saw and file for the now 18.5″ barrel and it’s now a solid defense gun. Combine that with a friend with a shotgun loader to make some custom buck shot shells, and I think I’m pretty well covered for a defense gun.
“Another AR15 Owner Destroys His Gun For Media Glory”
And another douchebag is created…
This is probably a good thing. Anyone that’s this stupid and not in control of their emotions probably shouldn’t be around guns, power tools, cleaning chemicals, voting booths, or children. Anyone who participates in this crazed behavior should be “Baker Act’ed”. For the children. Their guns can be donated to the responsible folks at the NRA for a gun raffle.
It goes like this, AR guy looks at firearm, ” What a plastic p.o.s., I wouldn’t sell this to my worst enema!” Hammer, grind, saw, chop. Buys AK, ” oh I feel much better now” Why? Because AK’s are indestuctable
THE WISE, THE PRUDENT ALWAYS ARE ARMED, THE SIDEARM ALWAYS WORN ON THE PERSON, NEVER KEPT IN A DRAWER AND ALWAYS KEPT UNDER THE PILLOW WHEN IN BED. OTHERWISE, THE PERSON IS SIMPLY ONE WHO HAS OBVIOUSLY CHOSEN HE OPTION OF ‘THE ASSUMPTION OF THE RISK” AND THE POTENTIAL END RESULTS IS EITHER INJURY OR DEATH; THIS SIMPLY A PROVEN FACT OF LIFE and exactly like the decision to either accept or reject Our Triune God’s offer of Grace; Unmerited Favor and the rejection assures eternal regret.
slow clap
“They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.”
when whatever is going to happen in this country eventually happens this guy isnt going to side with those who would be a part of the solution like us
he is going to side with those who would be a part of the problem
everything else being equal its better that he not be armed with an ar-15
Now this is the real gun violence.
He should castrate himself to prevent rape.
Slow clap…
Why do the fixed blades have tiny Spyderholes in them?
Oh, I thought it was a picture of a CA-compliant AR-15.
On the bright side, all three guns are “approved” for citizen ownership by the benevolent state of CT, provided you have a Pistol Permit, or Eligibility Certificate for handgun and long gun.
I’m surprised we aren’t seeing move love for the Mk 19. As far as shooting experience goes, I much preferred the Mk 19 to Ma Deuce. I’m sure the thunderous sound of the old bird keeps heads down though.
His property. However, what an idiot. I hope he doesn’t vote.
What a girlboy…I’m trying to pay off an AR and this weenie beats “his” to death????
This is what happens in a “Disarmed population”. Trigger-happy paramilitarizied police! Something that is incompatible with our US Constitutional-Bill of Rights ,(especially the 2nd amendment. Should this clown be enforcing some anti 2nd amendment directives.), and that of the public safety…(Lots of errant shots in a thickly settled neighborhood.)
Why do I know what conclusions they’ll draw are before they’ve even published them?
IT MUST BE BECAUSE I’M PSYCHIC!!11!!!
If you’ll excuse me, I’m investing 10 grand on lotto tonight…my prescience cannot last forever fellers!
Cool video, not to be a safety hog but 0:25 into the action finds our good ole boy driving an open-top Jeep with a young girl standing up sans seat belt. Our hero is holding a Michelob Ultra in a coozie and carbine in his lap. My wife almost loses her shit if our toddler’s not strapped in backing out of the driveway. Wish I had my own estate to roll that dirty, wouldn’t intentionally film the scene. YMMV :/
I guess his wife is cooler than yours.
So, what the guy was actually saying is that he didn’t trust himself to control his impulse to go on a killing spree??
I have an 80% AR lower that is clearly a weapon of mass destruction. In the spirit of stopping mass shootings I’m going to destroy it by using a router, milling bit and jig to selectively carve away the evilest parts of it! I might also drill a few holes, too. Just to be on the safe side.
“…In 2016, more than 237,000 guns were reported stolen in the US, a more than 68% increase from 2005, an investigation from NBC and The Trace found.”
Hmmm….. the number of firearms owned by American Citizen’s is also increasing. I wonder if the ownership rate of firearms is increasing at a similar percentage rate as this reported theft rate?
Don’t like your sig trigger? Go buy a ppq for half the moneyl
I’m thankful for stupid people because they make me giggle! 🙂
I must be bored.
With regards to The Trace thing…
I can’t find all the data on this because, well quite frankly, I’m not getting paid to write this.
So far as I can tell from the data I’ve dredged up on this topic the best compiled data on firearm theft in correlation to burglary goes back to 1994 and runs through 2010. The trend is a drastic decline according to the US DOJ. ( https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fshbopc0510.pdf ). In fact it would seem that The Trace cherry picked the third lowest year on record (2005) as their starting point.
Further, if we actually look at raw numbers: In 2016 the FBI says there were 1,515,096 reported burglaries ( https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/tables/table-1). Further, the FBI says that on average from 2005 to 2010 there were, as far as the FBI guesses, 232,400 firearms stolen annually (https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?iid=4534&ty=pbdetail). That means that if we charitably (from The Trace’s perspective) assume that multiple guns were never stolen then we can say that 15.34% of burglaries result in a stolen firearm.
Now, if we trust WaPo, gun ownership is at it’s lowest point in about 40 years with 36% ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/29/american-gun-ownership-is-now-at-a-30-year-low/?utm_term=.e2ee8e3e8093 ).
So, 36% of the country owns a gun but only 15.34% of burglaries yield a stolen firearm. I’m not going to actually properly crunch the numbers here and there are a lot of unknowns but if we assume my very charitable numbers to be correct and we assume that everyone, gun owner or not, is at the same risk for burglary then we can say that more than half of all gun owners who are burglarized have taken enough precautions that they don’t lose a gun. Others will have been hit by pros and in those cases you really can’t take enough precautions.
Long story short: 15.34% of burglaries yield a gun. Really, that’s not very many.
Also all the trends are not friends of The Trace. If you examine that table I cited burglary overall has dropped significantly since 1997 (as far back as the table goes) and the DOJ also says that gun theft dropped drastically from 1996 to 2010. Considering that burglary overall has dropped from 2,168,459 (701/100K) in 2010 to 1,515,096 (468.9/100K) in 2016 and that gun theft trends tend to follow overall burglary numbers (shocker!) we can actually make a pretty good guesstimate about this. Gun theft tends to follow burglary numbers. Burglary is down ~30% from 2010 and much more than that from 2005. So, 232,400 firearms went missing in 2010 then in 2016 we’d expect to see something on the order of 162,680 stolen firearms, 69,720 less than 2010.
History & my own experience reply with an affirmative to the interrogatory; but with caveats.
~ My back, joints & left ear try convincing me that the M2 sucks every day. She’s a loud & heavy bitch, but keeping her fed makes everyone happy (except the hapless who piss her off).
~ I get twitchy at the thought of headspace/timing gauges, and occasionally have nightmares about not being able to find one. So when I lose my keys and start panicking, it’s not because of the keys; it’s because they’re attached to my own personal goddam headspace gauge.
~ The new M2s have quick-change barrels & don’t need no stinking gauges, which also means a lot of gunners and gofers are gonna go soft on PT scores and regular reinforcement of attention-to-detail.
Also…. it figures the Army would finally fix headspacing and add QC barrels, only a few years after turning mine in for the last time.
If you buy an H&R pump protector like I did, make sure you give it a very thorough looking over first. In particular, check that barrel to be sure it is straight, and not curved. Unfortunately, this is the one thing I didn’t look at carefully when I bought mine.
A friend in high school witnessed a similar event. He grabbed his shotgun, casually strolled up to all three fighting bucks, and proceeded to shoot at least two of them.
I cannot begin to convey how jealous I was!
If there’s something new in the firearms world, it should be fair game to report on. Even if its just highlighting an announcement.
How many people complain about mainstream media bias? Some of that bias is not in misrepresenting the facts, or lying, but simply not reporting because of bias against the topic / subject. TTAG should not follow such an example.
Not liking what SA did and refusing to buy their products in the future is understandable, expecting a gun blog to not report about SA’s products is not understandable.
Should this standard also mean that TTAG shouldn’t report on Russian or Chinese firearms too? Those countries have done far worse than SA.
So the consensus is we hate video’s. Irrelevant as I exceeded my highspeed phone GB for the month. Barely works when I get 4G…thanks for the list Chris.