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One very troublesome aspect of human psychology is normalcy bias, our hesitance to believe that the way things are right now is how they’ll always be, and how they always were. In many ways, that’s how it is with gun control. It’s easy to think that just because something has been a certain way your whole life that it can’t possibly change. Whether we live in denial or not, sometimes the world changes anyway.

After the NYSRPA v Bruen decision, anti-gun politicians and commentators accused the Supreme Court of things like “repealing the 20th century.” But, the truth is that even most of the 20th century wasn’t a gun control paradise. In this article, I’m going to give several examples of things that are “unthinkable” today that show gun control is both relatively new and entirely worthless.

Let’s start with this ad from 100 years ago:

Not only was concealed carry and gun ownership common in those days, but one could simply send in a postcard requesting one. When the gun arrived, you’d pay the postman for the gun and then have it. There was no waiting period, background check, or any other hoop to jump through. The gun would go straight to your door.

But, if you wanted to go to a store and get one. Hardware stores sold firearms, suppressors, and many other highly-regulated things right on the shelf like a BB gun today. But, this guy thinks such a thing is crazy, despite it being normal only decades ago.

Yes, we freely admit it!

If you ask around in your family, you can probably find similar tales of completely uncontrolled guns. In my family, my grandfather (who graduated high school in 1953, just 50 years before I did) says that he would just take guns to school. The teacher would have kids put their rifles in the back of the room or put them in their lockers during class so they could go to the school’s shooting range or go hunting after school.

Nobody got hurt. Nobody shot the place up.

My dad, who was in high school a couple decades later, tells similar stories. They didn’t want guns in the building, but it was completely normal for a gun or two to sit on a rifle rack in the back window of the cab of a pickup. Once again, despite students having guns on school grounds, nobody got them out and shot the place up. Shootings of any kind were far more rare than they are today (and they’re still pretty rare today).

People taught their kids to be responsible with guns. They taught them to be good people for the most part. Schools weren’t like prisons and kids got a healthy dose of personal freedom to grow as they became adults. The country has always had atheists, anarchists, socialists, and queer people (even if we had to hide in the closet), so those social changes don’t explain it, either. After all, the 1960s were a wild time, and we didn’t see anyone shooting people on campuses except the government (and Charles Whitman), right?

Something else changed, but it sure wasn’t the guns. If anything, removing guns and personal freedom from childhood contributed to this problem or caused it entirely.

We Shouldn’t Let People Treat Gun Control Like It’s Normal

When we see gun control activists acting like we’re crazy for not accepting their laws as normal, we need to remind them that what they’ve done to society isn’t normal. We should be able to take a gun just about anywhere we want without having to grovel for permission and pay money. We should be able to order guns online and have them shipped to our door, or go get one from a vending machine if someone wants to offer them and we want to buy one.

Kids should be taught not only gun safety, but marksmanship and an appreciation for human rights and freedom for all in schools. It should be normal for an older kid or teenager who has proven to their parents that they’re responsible to be able to go shooting after school and not have to swing by the house first.

They may have won against us decades ago, but that doesn’t mean we have to pretend that it’s acceptable or normal today.

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77 COMMENTS

    • To whom it may concern…To prevail against Gun Control especially in these days where Historical Analogies are a Second Amendment Lifeline one has to be 110% against discrimination by race, gender, religion, etc. In other words leave your dumbfuk bigotry on the doorsteps of the democRat Party where History Confirms It Belongs.

    • Everyone please remember the CADET CORP that came about after the MILITIA Act of 1862
      where state citizen Militia might be called up as needed.
      This is when secondary/ high schools started the boys with guns and uniform to help fight the democrat slave owners.
      Only in 1960 did the CADET CORP disappear after nearly 100 years.
      There are photos of thousands of ARMED CADETS in Boston Common as they waited to be reviewed by the Governor and Boston Mayor and to receive awards.
      They marched to the Common under arms and left under arms and were cheered by tens of thousands of grateful Citizens……………and no one got killed.
      All over Boston and the USA people would see boys with their guns on busses, trolleys, subways, bicycles, horseback and even walking to go shooting.
      No one got killed.

  2. To Mr. Franklin‘s post on X, yes I should be able to walk into Ace Hardware and purchase an RPG with no questions asked.

    • Bought my first rifle in 1973 at Western Auto. It was a Marlin 336 30-30 and I wasn’t even old enough to get a drivers license.

      • That’s the way it should be. It’s immoral for strangers to stop children, a discipline and moral 16 year old, trying to stop them from buying and possessing guns.

        • Gun control “is normal”. It is also very wrong. And it is against the American Constitution. But those of us that have studied 2A history. We Know that gun existed, BEFORE, the United States was founded.

          There were anti-civil rights laws on the books for decades and decades. Banning the sale of guns to indians and free blacks.

          This is why the fight against gun control has always existed. And it will continue to always exist. Because there will always be people who want to make sure, the people they don’t like are disarmed.

          The battle for civil rights will never ever stop. And anyone who thinks the gun grabbers are going to give up? You are just a fool.

  3. Yeah my dad would walk to school with his rifle. In Kankakee,Illinois during the 1920’s. He was on the Rifle team. Now his youngest son(me) carries a gat with no permit(legally!) in quite nearby Indiana. While ILLANNOY goes all totalitarian. Makes you wonder🙄☹️

    • We had our loaded rifles and shotguns hanging in the window of our trucks or laying in the backseat, in the school parking lot. That includes teachers and admin staff. It wasn’t uncommon to show off a new firearm before/after school and occasionally between classes or on lunch break. Not 1 school shooting or act of aggression involving a firearm. Even though disagreements and fights did occur on occasion.

  4. Agreed! Circa 1962 I sold Christmas cards door-2-door in a rural area to earn enough “points” to get a .22 bolt action rifle. The gun was delivered the door of my home and the only requirement was that an adult had to sign for it. That is how it should be. The things I learned with that gun and others down the road have served me well in life.

  5. My neighbor, a PhD and Dean of the College, believes the only reason polar bears exist today is because of efforts to fight global warming. Brainwashed.

    My brother believes Trump hotels renting rooms to foreigners while Trump was President and while he is a candidate, is treason. Brainwashed.

    A colleague at work believes the Covid lockdowns and restrictions were justified and the millions would have died, otherwise. Brainwashed.

    Another neighbor believes Putin has set out to eventually conquer all of Europe and revise the defunct Soviet Union. Brainwashed.

    Another relative believes guns make people dangerous. Brainwashed.

    The old addage that knowledge is power has a correlary: ignorance is tyranny.

    • Another neighbor believes Putin has set out to eventually conquer all of Europe and revise the defunct Soviet Union. Brainwashed.

      Not so sure that one doesn’t have a touch of truth to it? Russia, China, N Korea and Iran would like nothing better than to rule the world…

      • MADDMAXX,

        China? Yes.

        Russia? I am sure there are hard-liners in the Russian military who are expansionist. Putin, however, has been playing defense against NATO for decades, even prior to the Minsk Accords (which NATO and Ukraine have consistently and egregiously violated).

        • You should check Putin’s speech he released fall of last year where he specifically stated that the reason for his invasion of Ukraine was completely driven by his desire to bring back all of the former USSR countries and make Russia an empire again. There was no mention of defense against NATO. That’s a convenient excuse.
          NATO did not expand, NATO accepted countries that asked to be part of NATO because they saw that Russia was a threat to them and that was confirmed by their unjustified invasion of Ukraine. In any case, it doesn’t matter what spin you put on it, no matter what the threat posture of a country it does not justify another country invading it and killing innocent civilians and attempting to annex the country and commit mass genocide.

        • Pretty much, China may have to start some shit to hide an economic collapse sooner than later but Russia could not realistically invade and take over any neighbors with a functioning military (mostly NATO anyway) without escalating force used (think actually levelling cities not the misc shelling that is largely intercepted by air defense) to levels that would probably make regime change a sensible idea for the ruling forces in that oligarchy.

        • Ben, the key is Putin’s past. He is a former KGB officer who was also the KGB liaison to the GDR Stasi (East Germany’s secret police). Russia, China, and some other countries would like to return to the 1920s when big countries could take over smaller ones if they wanted.

          But many of the USSR’s former vassal states do not want to return to the former situation where their economies were looted and pillaged to support the USSR. The GDR had to go back to using steam trains powered by brown coal when the USSR would not supply enough non-military-use diesel fuel for trains.

          Poland has made it very clear they will fight, especially as the Russian Army (now made up mostly of central asian conscripts) is now longer the second most powerful army in the world but the second most powerful army in Ukraine.

          Former neutral states Sweden and Finland have applied to join NATO. Putin has seriously miscalculated as the situation as changed against him. After his army’s performance in Ukraine, he had better watch eastern Siberia as China are already claiming the area as theirs because of an “ancient map”. (Fishing, water, and energy reserves not withstanding)

        • He don’t need no stinking army… Crazy bastard still has the largest nuke arsenal on the planet and if he feels backed into a corner with nothing else to lose, I believe he WILL pull the trigger.

        • @MADDMAXX, nuclear weapons, especially boosted fission and fusion devices, need a lot of maintenance. Tritium and deuterium decays and needs to be topped up or replaced. Without them you get seriously decayed performance and even a “fizzle”.

          I am wondering how much maintenance has been performed on these devices since the end of the USSR. Considering how maintenance is skipped in the regular army with troops filling out the paperwork to say they’ve completed tasks but not actually doing anything you would have to wonder how far the rot has penetrated the Strategic Rocket Forces. Not to mention quartermaster staff selling anything that isn’t nailed, bolted, and welded down.

          The missiles fired into Ukraine have had a high rate of fails to fire, return to sender, or just dropping well short of the intended target, it makes you wonder how many of the strategic missiles would launch, reach the target, and detonate on arrival. There have been estimates of a 40-60% failure rate minimum.

          While Putin is threatening nukes, he probably has a good idea how many will fail on launch, in-flight, or on-arrival.

        • 1500 “deployed” ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads plus two new Subs equipped with 16 Bulava ICBMs each and another 11 older SSBNs carrying ballistic missiles… Pretty sure that stuff is all functional… If only half of them work we’re looking at a return to the Stone Age event… And that doesn’t take into account China’s arsenal, and N Koreas junk… Oh yeah, Nato countries WOULD retaliate before their own demise… Welcome to 2 million BC complete with 10-foot irradiated rats and four-foot cockroaches… If you survive.

    • Yes, but Putin really does want to revive the old USSR and reassert its “proper” place as the dominant political force in eastern Europe. Once KGB, always KGB. Otherwise I agree with what you have said.

      • No argument for that here and thankfully logistics, technology, and demographics make that a wish in one hand and shit in the other and see what fills up first scenario……..now if China starts filling out the ranks of the Russian army like they did with North Korea there may be different things to consider.

      • Shame the Ukrainians remember the Holodomor.

        Probably why they don’t want to be a part of a new USSR.

        Poland remembers the 1980s when USSR was actively interfering with Poland’s internal affairs. Former Czechoslovakia and other countries had direct Soviet “interventions”. Only Yugoslavia, Albania, and Romania had limited degrees of autonomy. Yugoslavia while communist was non-Warsaw Pact. Albania thought Khrushchev was too soft and picked China as their patron. Romania performed a careful balancing act until the revolution that ousted the Ceaușescus.

        The only reason why Bellorussia wants to be with the USSR is because Lukashenko was promised control of a Russia/Bellorussia union at one point. I wonder if a he realizes if the deal is still valid or not.

  6. The ever encroaching totalitarian state. It’s not just gun control anymore. And the more control they get, the less they can do to address the things that ARE the responsibility of government.

        • Every Constitutional Right being delayed or denied at this point. Is occurring because, the citizenry has and is allowing it to occur. Whether that be due to political ideology, faith in a system that is failing them or plain fear. Either way each must choose, what they are willing to live without in terms of their Rights and Freedoms. As well as what they are willing to do to keep them.
          “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery” is a translation of a Latin phrase that Thomas Jefferson used: “Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem.” It has also been translated as, “I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude.” The servitude being forced upon citizens by many states and the federal governments in regards to Constitutional Rights. Was foretold by the Founding Patriots. Along with the responsibility to ensure that it did happen. And yet it is.

  7. simply send in a postcard requesting one. When the gun arrived, you’d pay the postman

    OR you could simply drive, bike or walk to the local hardware store pick up a gun, some ammo and a cleaning kit all in one trip in about 15 minutes…

  8. MADDMAXX January 6, 2024 At 11:23
    Your comment is awaiting moderation
    MADDMAXX January 6, 2024 At 11:19
    Your comment is awaiting moderation
    The country has always had atheists, anarchists, soshulists, and qu**r people (even if we had to hide in the closet), so those social changes don’t explain it, either.

    The proliferation and “mainstreaming” of the communist ideology on college campuses and the increased availability of pot in the 50s led to the rise of the “Hippy” (aka the Counterculture) movement of the 60s/70s, the rest is history as THEY became the politicians, teachers and college professors of the ensuing decades piling on ever more oppressive laws and regulations while brainwashing the youth of the day into accepting those laws and regulations as the “New Normal”…

    Well at least the moderation Nazi is still on the job… What is it? Must be “queer” (copied and pasted from the article… Hmmmmmmmmmmmm… After some creative editing turns out it was TWO words from the original article (soshulist AND qu**r)…

  9. This is akin to Biden’s claim that today’s SCOTUS isn’t normal.

    The left found out how easy it is to control the American population with the shutting down of the country over Covid. They went completely insane over all things Trump. State legislatures all over this nation relinquished their constitutional duties and willingly submitted to what ever the Democrat left wanted.

    Gun control is but a single facet of the issue and it isn’t that it’s so much abnormal now. It’s been amplified just like all the other things the left does in the effort to destroy our country. Democrats have a better opportunity right now and they know it just simply because half the country thinks Jan6 was an insurrection because Pelosi said so and our biggest threat is extreme MAGA Republicans because Biden said so.

    Newsom and Hochul outright blatantly defy SCOTUS like never before NOT because gun control is abnormal. They do this because they are over the edge nuts drunk with power communists with the authority to do so. This is not going to stop until the Supreme Court itself brings the hammer down. Until then, It’s no different from the cops and business owners in California just standing there and allowing the criminals to take over.

    • “This is not going to stop until the Supreme Court itself brings the hammer down.”

      What hammer is that?? Power ultimately issues from force. How many guns does the Supreme Court have? Will a Democrat DOJ enforce Bruen? If Trump wins in 2024, the Democrat states will just ignore it. Likely, so will the majority of the executive branch. They’ll say the election was illegitimate. Then what? Will Thomas and Alito go out on their own to arrest Newsom and Hochul?? The FBI is thoroughly corrupt; will they support Trump if he wins?? What about the new “woke” armed forces; who will they support>>

      We are on a knife’s edge, folks. As soon as people lose confidence in and ignore the rule of law, it’s over. Naked force is the only determinant of the social and political order.

      • Millions, IF they make the right decision AND Braindead tries to override them… Guarantee if Trump moves back into the Whitehouse one of the first things to go will be Ray along with an overhaul of the FBI AND the DOJ put Matt Whitaker in the AG seat, he WILL clean house…

  10. “and queer people (even if we had to hide in the closet),”
    “WE” is the author lumping POTG in that category?
    Or should WE have been THEY?

    • Most people know this. But there are some people who don’t know it. It’s queer folks and atheists who are out of the closet, huge supporters of gun control.

      And they have been voting for queer and atheist anti-civil rights candidates in California, Nebraska, Colorado, and elsewhere.

      President Eisenhower, in his final address to the nation, said the enemies of the United States “are atheistic in nature”. The Second Amendment is for everyone. But it’s atheist and queer folks who have been saying for decades. That owning a gun is a “heterosexual act.”

      Spoken like a true s0ci@ list pr0 gressive.

  11. Guns, ammo, and accessories should be available in vending machines like cigarettes used to be back in the day. You got the cash, you can buy it.

    • Be careful what you wish for. In today’s cloud connected world, those vending machines would be equipped with facial recognition and finger print scanners to be followed by retina scans.

  12. It wasn’t all that long ago when queer people were involuntarily put into institutions, arrested, fired from their jobs, blackmailed and their businesses and clubs torched or busted by the cops and everyone inside beat and/or arrested.

    Gay people pioneered the “grey man” persona.

    • You’re right Nikita. Now, today, we have more and more kweers shooting up schools. Aren’t you proud?

    • Gay people pioneered the “grey man” persona.

      You’ve obviously never been around Orlando/Disney during “Gay Days”…

    • In 19 30s, Germany, it was gay people who are smashing Jewish businesses, beating up Jewish men, women, and children, in the streets of Germany. Those gay people were call the “Brown Shirts”. They were part of the SA. Their leader was Ernst Rome, an openly gay man.

      And he was one of @dolf H#tlers top lieutenants. @dolf was quite comfortable with Rome and other gay people.
      As long as they agreed with him politically.

        • Yes, that was when they fell out of favor. They found two nazis men laying in bed together. Most likely they had been recruited from one of the many gay bars. That existed in Berlin in the 1920s.

          Nobody wants to talk about just how sexually liberated, permissive and degenerate, Germany had become in the 1920s.

  13. I have to admit to this ‘normalcy bias’. The best, and prime, example? Silencers. Or, more properly, suppressors. The thinking part of my brain readily admits that all the hype against suppressors is BS. But, they’ve been illegal since I was a kid. The reasoning seemed alright, if not entirely sound. Criminals covering up their criminal deeds isn’t a good thing, after all. So, the parts of my mind that don’t think so very critically just accept the status quo – only bad guys need silencers. Force myself to think about it – and it all falls apart.

    Why can’t I just put a silencer on my guns? There is no good reason, and the taxes and permits are all just BS.

  14. Times change, when I went to school there were gunms in vehicles, there were also hierarchy fights, win or lose no one ran out and got their gunm.
    There are negatives to the way things are done now. Sometimes over protection builds false privileges.
    Life will throw you bullies and curve balls, school is a place of learning and not only academics.
    .
    Ban the gunms, ban free elections.
    That’s the way it works.

    • I can remember downunder in my state before firearm licenses (although I was very young). Licenses were introduced to stop crime and restrict access to firearms.

      I also remember buying ammunition in Kmart in the 1980s. Buying and using semi-auto rifles into the mid-1990s.

  15. Many things today are not normal. Societal changes since the 1960s that are very different from the preceding thousands of years have radically transformed the country and Western civilization. Notice how these societal changes have gone hand in hand with gun control. The people who orchestrate and benefit from these societal changes are the same that want and support gun control, and vice-versa. While not a perfect alignment, it is pretty close.

    You can’t fight against gun control and support the societal changes since the 1960s. Why?? Because gun control is the method the elites, the progressives, the social libertines, use to impose those societal changes, changes that most of the population does not want. With gun control, they can impose their vision of Utopia on the rest of us without fear of defiance or reprisal. Without gun control, their realization of Utopia with ultimately fail.

  16. Yep, bowing to the state and asking “mother may I” is not the normal way Americans have dealt with guns throughout our history. My high school had a skeet team and I remember them posing for their picture in the annual by the sign out front.

  17. I’m too lazy to do it. Somebody go back to 1955 and count up all legitimate school shootings and how many were committed by queer folks and let paul know before he starts building rail spurs and ovens.

  18. I can remember when I was kid in rural California back in the mid ’60s, going into Western Auto where they sold Thompson Sub-Machineguns, etc. The Army/Navy surplus store up the street sold surplus M-16s, M1 Garands, M-14s and even had a few B.A.R.s for sale. (Wish I’d had my Dad buy me a few!) Down the street from there was beer and wine bar that sold hunting rifles, shotguns, handguns tobacco products and fishing supplies (it’s still there as it was then, owned by two brothers that were High School classmates of mine [the liquor license and FFL have been grandfathered in from back to when this was the norm and therefore legal]). I used to take my shotgun and hunting vest to grammar school and leave it in the vice principal’s office, where after school, I’d walk home over the hill and get in some quail or dove hunting. The street in front of my High School was lined with 4×4 pick-up trucks with rifles and/or shotguns in the back windows depending on what hunting season it was. Times have sure changed and I sure do miss the old days!

    • Used to be able to go to the local barber get a haircut and pick up a set of high-performance small block Chevy heads and a cam at the same time…

  20. Anybody own, know someone who owns, or had an opportunity to shoot a Tisas 1911-A1 .45?… Saw them on sale for $399… 5″ barrel, 8 round mag, three dot sights, 2 tone Cerakote… Pretty piece if it’s worth a damn…

      • Thanks… 100% of the reviews (55) gave it a five out of five (that NEVER happens), guess I’ll go for it it’s only $400 bucks, make a cool looking paperweight if it doesn’t perform, just not familiar with the brand understand it’s a Turkish company that specializes in the 1911 since 1987…

  21. Times change. It was once considered “normal” to own slaves, ban women from voting, consider wife beating normal, consider rape just a problem of a young man temporarily losing control of himself, and child abuse the right of parents, and normal to get drunk and kill people in auto accidents.

    And I forgot to mention killing people in the workplace by smoking cigarettes was once considered normal and even a depraved right by the Far Right.

    During that era of the 1950’s I read a Readers Digest article entitled “How Johnny Gets His Gun”. The article told about incidents where children bought guns by mail and ended up shooting themselves or other children. Their parents had no idea they even had a weapon.

    On kid bought a British Enfield pistol through the mail and hid it in the basement until one day when playing with it he accidentally shot and killed his brother when they had a fight over who was going to get to play with it. This was just one of the articles horror stories and the Far Right seem to think this was “the good old days” of getting guns through the mail with no paperwork, it was pure insanity.

    In reality the population of the world has exploded during the 20th Century and shows no sign of slowing down in the 21st Century. With more people comes more problems and more mental illness due to a variety of factors such as loss of jobs that pay a livable wage, and a breakdown of family life when women were forced into the workplace to help pay the bills.

    Studies show that when mental illness increases it increases at a far greater rate than the corresponding population increase which compounds the problem of mass murders being committed and societal and economic pressures increasing drug addiction and its crime, and of course husbands killing wives brought on by money problems.

    Lack of money for mental health care makes such care unaffordable for the people who need it most and easy access to guns results in the suicide rate increasing to 34 times higher if there’s a gun in the home and homicides in the home 4 times more likely. In other words guns do not make you more safe, it’s just the exact opposite.

    Increase in gun control has been a trend since the early 1900’s. It was once easy to get deadly weapons in Europe and Asia but all that has changed over the years and when easy access to guns ended so did the homicide rate especially with husbands killing wives. Mass murder rates went down as well in Europe and Asia.

    All these gun laws were necessary in Europe and Asia because they too had a breakdown in family life which happened there too, not just in America, when women were forced into the workplace and children were forced to raise themselves and became known as “latch key” children.

    European Social Programs provided money for the care of children whose parents work but not so in the uncivilized hell hole of the U.S. There are millions of latch key children in the U.S. who have access to guns, drugs, and sex because the house is empty of adults for many hours of the day.

    The lack of sane gun control in the U.S. has turned it into one of the most violent countries in the world and there is no comparison to the more civilized industrialized countries of both Europe and Asia.

    The U.S. gun culture happened because of the racist slave trade, and when the slave trade ended the U.S. had runaway xenophobia which resulted in hatred and bigotry for the large amounts of immigrants and refugees that were flooding into the U.S. in the very early 1900’s, which were a great asset to the U.S., until the White Racist’s in power put an end to large amounts of immigrants and refugees coming into the country in the mid 1920’s. All this contributed to the Far Right feeling a need to “arm up” against “the other” which included all racial minorities, all immigrants, refugees, and all other religions beside Protestant Christianity.

    The great “Red Scare” during the depraved “McCarthy” era also contributed to the Far Right feeling the need to “arm up” and repel a “commie take over” in the U.S. and this insanity is still a Far Right “core belief”.

    The most economical solution which costs the government the least money is of course to ban guns but the government then goes on to ignore the core problems of violence which is a lack of good paying jobs coupled with worthwhile social programs that include child care for working mothers, Universal Health Care, job retraining, and affordable college or technical school. All this takes a lot of tax money which the super rich will not part with because it is they who steal the workingman’s tax dollars for their own use through the use of Corporate Subsidies that are just “welfare for the super rich” who pay no taxes and fund their business expansion costs with stolen workingman’s tax dollars.

  22. My Granma bought my first gun (a Remington Nylon 66) using S&H Green Stamps… and this was in what is now the Soviet of Massachusetts.

  23. Gun control, censorship, lockdowns, travel restrictions, digital currency, various prohibitions on so many things, control of education and information. All in the name of public safety or public health. Done by and for those who think they are your betters. Done to micromanage everyday life to arrange the world in the image they desire to create their version of some fantasy utopia.
    The never ending quest for power, control and wealth.
    On gun control in particular the cry is to somehow prevent some tragedy or crime. Never do the fools comprehend there is no law, rule, license scheme, or ban that will prevent evil or criminal events from being perpetrated. What does work to a limited extent, very limited, are a combination of harsh, sure, and swift punishment for such actions/crimes, education including honest history, and the moral guidance of a traditional family and of some form of religious teachings. Kids being taught from an early age what is acceptable/moral behavior and consequences for what is not.
    Back in the stone age when I was a youngster, yes, a person could mail order firearms. Not handguns, but long guns could be shipped to your home. My father told me he had ordered a handgun through the mail before the NFA cut that off.
    And I do remember Dad buying dynamite at the local hardware store. Most of us rural kids received our first long gun between 10 and 12 years of age. Usually a 22 rifle or 410 shotgun. Most of the young males purchased their first deer rifle, or large bore shotgun between 14 and 16. Usually a second hand trade in from the local gun store or hardware store. When someone got a “new” firearm it usually went to school to be shown off. Firearms were a common sight in not just the students vehicles at the high school, but also in the pick ups or in the back seats or back window decks of vehicles parked in front of businesses in town. Few if any of those vehicles were locked. Many had the key in the ignition.
    Sure, the kids in school had the same issues kids have today. we had bullies, fought about who knows what anymore. People had the same basic issues in life we still have today. Damn few shootings happened outside the larger cities. Yes, a few , but they were rare.
    As today, most of the violence was confined to the criminal/gangs or deranged individuals who should have been confined but hadn’t been yet.
    And, back then, as today, there was a single common factor in all acts of violence. A human factor. Regardless of what is banned etc under the guise of keeping people safe, unless those committing the crimes are caught, convicted and jailed, not a single shooting will be stopped and not a single life will be saved by the idiotic premise of gun control.

  25. I’ve said this over and over yet no one seems to understand the gravity of what caused all this. As Much as I don’t like to think of someone, who I hold in high regard, as a creator of an issue of this magnitude it is the truth. The main bulk of the problems we have today are a direct result of a law Ronald Reagan signed when he was the governor of CA. He got on board with a movement of deinstitutionalization that began in California in the 1960s. The movement wanted to release all those people supposedly held “against their will” in mental asylums. Just like CA half asses everything today, they half assed this particular move and it has been haunting us ever since. Part 1 of the bill was to release the looney tunes. Part 2 was to build community centers and low income housing to deal with all the loonies they were letting out. And guess which part never happened? All those looney tunes were set upon the rest of us that had been locked away. They had nowhere to go because CA never built any community centers or housing for them. Hence the explosion of homelessness in the big cities. These were people who were not mentally ready or able to be around others. This has only been exacerbated as time marched on, and now we have a society full of looney tunes who run around demanding “Rights” which many state governments have been more than happy to oblige. Hence why you see horror stories about “squatters rights” and other asininity of that type. All those people were people who should have been disallowed firearm ownership. I don’t believe in taking firearms rights for much, but the looney tunes don’t need to be in possession of such things because they can’t process reality. It’s a horrible thing, mental illness. My brother-in-law has paranoid schizophrenia on top of having caught HIV from drug use. He goes off on rants that even a brilliant mind would have a hard time following. When he first went off the reservation he made daily threats to the president and white house. Secret Service were actively out hunting for him. He ended up in CA and they were more than happy to put him into a program for the homeless where they control distribution of medications and provide housing. While his mental state was somewhere between “light are on but nobody is home” and “stark raving mad.” He alienated everyone who ever knew him. His rants were so bad when he’d post on social media people would tell him to go kill himself……and not just some passing troll, many of these were formerly his friends. But he’d say the most awful things to people. He stole tens of thousands of dollars from his dad. His younger sister has completely disowned him. He’s now 36 years old and lives with his mother. He has no job. He has no money. He’ll probably live with his mother until she passes, because no one else will have anything to do with him. That type of person needs to be institutionalized. We instead put them on the streets and wonder why issues with vagrancy and theft and sanitation are so prevalent. Our Gov’t is way to big and has become a burden to itself. Until the majority of society realizes this, nothing will be fixed anytime soon.

  26. I’ve said this over and over yet no one seems to understand the gravity of what caused all this. As Much as I don’t like to think of someone, who I hold in high regard, as a creator of an issue of this magnitude it is the truth. The main bulk of the problems we have today are a direct result of a law Ronald Reagan signed when he was the governor of CA. He got on board with a movement of deinstitutionalization that began in California in the 1960s. The movement wanted to release all those people supposedly held “against their will” in mental asylums. Just like CA half arses everything today, they half arsed this particular move and it has been haunting us ever since. Part 1 of the bill was to release the looney tunes. Part 2 was to build community centers and low income housing to deal with all the loonies they were letting out. And guess which part never happened? All those looney tunes were set upon the rest of us that had been locked away. They had nowhere to go because CA never built any community centers or housing for them. Hence the explosion of homelessness in the big cities. These were people who were not mentally ready or able to be around others. This has only been exacerbated as time marched on, and now we have a society full of looney tunes who run around demanding “Rights” which many state governments have been more than happy to oblige. Hence why you see horror stories about “squatters rights” and other asininity of that type. All those people were people who should have been disallowed firearm ownership. I don’t believe in taking firearms rights for much, but the looney tunes don’t need to be in possession of such things because they can’t process reality. It’s a horrible thing, mental illness. My brother-in-law has paranoid schizophrenia on top of having caught HIV from drug use. He goes off on rants that even a brilliant mind would have a hard time following. When he first went off the reservation he made daily threats to the president and white house. Secret Service were actively out hunting for him. He ended up in CA and they were more than happy to put him into a program for the homeless where they control distribution of medications and provide housing. While his mental state was somewhere between “light are on but nobody is home” and “stark raving mad.” He alienated everyone who ever knew him. His rants were so bad when he’d post on social media people would tell him to go kill himself……and not just some passing troll, many of these were formerly his friends. But he’d say the most awful things to people. He stole tens of thousands of dollars from his dad. His younger sister has completely disowned him. He’s now 36 years old and lives with his mother. He has no job. He has no money. He’ll probably live with his mother until she passes, because no one else will have anything to do with him. That type of person needs to be institutionalized. We instead put them on the streets and wonder why issues with vagrancy and theft and sanitation are so prevalent. Our Gov’t is way to big and has become a burden to itself. Until the majority of society realizes this, nothing will be fixed anytime soon.

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