Campus administrations all over the country have been claiming that allowing adults who have concealed carry permits on their campus will chill free speech and academic freedom. They have no such concerns about having “assualt weapons” on campus — magically transformed into “semi-automatic rifles” — as long as the weapons are in the hands of the people they command. From abcnews.go.com . . .
Once a rarity on campuses, semi-automatic rifles are becoming a standard part of the arsenal for college police forces — firepower they say could make a difference the next time a gunman goes on a rampage.
The weapons are rarely seen in public and often stashed away in cruisers or at department headquarters, and many schools won’t talk about them. But federal data and Associated Press interviews and requests for records reveal that over the past decade, at least 100 U.S. college police agencies, and probably many more, have introduced rifles or acquired more of them.
Every “assault weapon” bill and statute that I’ve read has included the AR 15 and variants as one of the listed “assault weapons.” Over and over again, politicians and gun control advocates have stated,that the only purpose of such firearms is to kill many people very quickly. That is false, as demonstrated by the reasons given for the police adoption of these common and popular rifles.
“A bad shot with a rifle is better than a good shot with a handgun,” said Skip Frost, who until February was deputy chief of police at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which offers a semi-automatic rifle to every officer.
It is easy to find police who extol the virtues of the AR-15 rifle. From bluesheepdog.com:
That same philosophy can be applied to the selection of rifles, and the reason a rifle can be more advantageous than a shotgun in some situations. Probably the most commonly used patrol rifle in American law enforcement is the AR-15. This weapon allows the officer to field up to 30 rounds of .223 rifle ammunition at the start of an engagement. Should the need arise, extra magazines are relatively easy to carry and quickly add to the officer’s ability to engage armed criminals, multiple adversaries, and even those who themselves are armed with rifles and maybe ballistic armor.
As citizens who are not police officers face exactly the same threats that police do, it’s obvious that the same advantages of the AR-15 apply to them.
AR-15 rifles make excellent home defense firearms. They’re easily recognized shape and features give them an edge in deterrence. The magazine capacity is outstanding, allowing the engagement of multiple targets, quickly. The ease of use gives the rifle better practical accuracy. The right ammunition selection can prevent over-penetration.
There are a great many reasons why universities and colleges would welcome these effective defensive tools. If only they would apply that same logic to everyone.
©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch
Makes sense. Modern rifles (like the AR and AK) are very effective defensive firearms. The police (and we peasants) should be allowed to bear them when necessary.
Nah man, you need to fall in line. Pay attention to the newspeak and doublethink and you will understand that as a peasant it is not necessary for you to be armed as the state is. You need only call on the state and they will protect you; if they happen to be a few minutes late, it is OK b/c since you are not wealthy, a celebrity or politician, you are really no great loss if the criminals get you. Besides, you cannot possibly be as responsible as state-sanctioned citizens to be trusted with such a powerful weapon.
No need for end sarc right?
I hope that the officers who spoke are not of the “guns for me but not for thee” sort and are legitimately stating the virtues of having a rifle as a defensive weapon not only for themselves but for the masses as well.
The individual LEO’s and even the chiefs may be on our side, but dollars to doughnuts the administration that authorizes their university PD’s to purchase AR’s are most certainly “guns for me but not for thee”. When I was in college (ECU) our whole campus went on lockdown one day because of a guy with a suspicious-looking umbrella seen close to campus. I saw plenty of ECU PD officers with AR’s that day. By the way, the umbrella was suspicious because it had a samurai sword handle instead of the regular crook.
I have several friends who have umbrellas like that. No one ever questioned them. Best part was that I actually kept 8 samurai swords, a couple combat knives, and some airsoft and .177 BB guns in my dorm back in the day.
Yea it was pretty funny. It sucked being locked down for 2 hours! I kept a few items of “contraband” in my dorm too.
“As citizens who are not police officers face exactly the same threats that police do, it’s obvious that the same advantages of the AR-15 apply to them.”
Indeed, and what is more, it should be understood that it is more important for the non-police citizens to be so armed, as there is one rule when it comes to crimes, victims and police response;
The police will almost certainly *not* be at the scene of a crime, as someone has to call them and ask them to come; the victim however is 100% certain to be the first responder, if an AR is a good thing for the crime victim to have, then it is more important to have the non-police have them than it is for the police who largely are only there to take pictures and collect notes.
The state should be requiring citizens to arm themselves in the interest of public safety; they should provide AR-15’s to all non prohibited persons who don’t already have them, training and 200 rounds of ammo per month.
Obviously this is completely constitutional, it falls under the general welfare clause.
2000 rounds per month, for each caliber of weapon one owns.
That’s also what the militia clause in the Second Amendment is for.
If the gov’t wanted to require all citizens to keep a serviceable rifle at home (with exceptions for conscientious objectors, of course), they could do it. They probably should.
An Obamacare-style tax penalty for the militia-eligible who don’t muster out once a year with a working rifle of military utility and 1,000 rounds of ammunition, and a tax credit for everyone who buys a militia-worthy weapon. (And any other personal weapons you choose to own would be your own business; the feds only manage the militia-related ones.) Heck, that could even include full-auto. They’d be registered as personally owned militia equipment, after all.
How ’bout it?
Yea pretty much, why not? Few things, you would have people with medical issues and those that don’t want to use guns – fine, who cares, there can be office jobs or other ways to contribute to this, I like tax credit instead of penalty (when we get rid of the IRS we can make changes to this plan, for now we are stuck with it so whatever, tax credit), remove the word ‘could’ re: full auto, and no registration of firearms at all. You get credit for participating in the training, need a compatible gun to do so.
Otherwise, who could argue against the citizens participating in defense of our nation?
Remember, general welfare clause, general welfare clause, general welfare clause. Totally constitutional. *And*, it’s a tax.
So when agents of the state and the established power structure have AR-15s, the guns are defensive semi-automatic rifles designed to protect us.
But when private parties unconnected to the power elite have AR-15s, the same guns are baby-killing assault weapons with no purpose but killing as many people as possible in as little time as possible.
“’When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’”
We have all gone through the looking glass.
If the G and its psychotic enablers want us to believe that load of crap, they should at the very least feed us some mushrooms first.
“So when agents of the state and the established power structure have AR-15s, the guns are defensive semi-automatic rifles designed to protect us.
But when private parties unconnected to the power elite have AR-15s, the same guns are baby-killing assault weapons with no purpose but killing as many people as possible in as little time as possible.”
Beat me to it. Double standard and hypocrisy, all summed up in one article.
Yup.
The same progressive logic that gave us “When a government institution prints money, it’s ‘Stimulating the economy.’ When private citizens do the same, they’re committing a Federal felony.”
The police acquire semi-automatic AR-pattern rifles and the press calls them “semi-automatic rifles”. A citizen acquire the same exact rifle and the press loses control of it’s bowels and calls it an “assault rifle”.
They have no such concerns about having “assualt weapons” on campus — magically transformed into “semi-automatic rifles” — as long as the weapons are in the hands of the people they command.
So did Nazi and Soviet government officials. What else is new?
Tacted up police at skools is a good idea. Similar to Isreal. By the way I wouldnt shoot a baby with a machine gun, what a waste of ammo, I mean its like they cant fight back or nuthin.
Per the media, police gun purchase = “long guns” or “semi-automatic rifles”
Civilian gun purchase = “assault weapon”
http://bearingarms.com/meme-day-media-guideline-identical-gun-purchases/
Dean repeats the dubious claim that the AR-15 is a good home defense weapon. This is simply not true unless you live in a rural area. As the video below shows that even a frangible .223 round will pierce one layer of 14 gauge steel pass through an air gap and then penetrate the second layer of 14 gauge steel. Most calibers will penetrate multiple layers of drywall but any rifle round is going to tear through your house like a hot knife through butter.
http://bearingarms.com/shipping-containers-bulletproof/
Oh, and this video also falsifies the claim that a 9mm could pierce a US steel helmet at 125 yards. The 14 gauge steel is thinner than a US WWII helmet and a 9mm round fired from a pistol failed to penetrate both layers, which is about as think as an M-1 Helmet.. Perhaps the post war test was conducted using an MP-40 with its 9.5″ barrel and not from a pistol.
Most homes are not made of 14 gauge steel, and nearly all rounds will penetrate a wall or two of a house that is made of typical wall board and 2×4 construction. Frangible bullets that are made for defensive purposes are designed to upset quickly to reduce penetration. Even standard ball .223 tends to upset and tumble after hitting a 2×4. Prefragmented slugs in .223 or even varmint loads in .223 break up very quickly, and that makes them more likely to either be contained inside of a house or to lose energy quickly if they penetrate to the outside. Here is a test that shows what happened when several loads were fired at 3 standard wallboard walls. It includes .223, 7.62×39 .45, 9mm, .380 and buckshot. This one does not include the pre-fragmented rounds, but they tend to penetrate a little less than the varmint rounds.
http://how-i-did-it.org/drywall/ammunition.html
I hope that I did not confuse too many with the term “frangible” as there are some target rounds that bear that appellation for use in indoor ranges. Those are not the rounds that I meant.
I guess we should be making body armor out of drywall since it stops 223 so well. /sarc
Look, a frangible round penetrated two layers of steel separated by an air gap. It is lethal in the next room and probably the room after that. By claiming that an AR shoots a magic bullet that can be safely used in home defense you are setting gun owners up for failure.
Ever since The M-16 was introduced The round has been indued with magic properties. First it was going kill you with hydrostatic shock except the 308 produced higher levels of hydrostatic shock. Then it was said the that the round would tumble and go all over the inside of a body producing fatal wounds. When that was obviously false it was about wounding not killing. Now the round is simultaineously 5 times more powerful than a 9mm while at the same time has less penatration. As they say after replay in NFL we have indisputable visual evidence that later statement is BS. Ruling on the field is overturned do not use an AR or any rifle chambered in 223 in a built up area unless that’s all you got. A pistol round is dangerous enough.
It all depends on bullet construction. There is a lot of bad information available, and a lot of rumors. Some 9mm bullets penetrate more walls than some .223 bullets. Most rifles are easier to shoot with practical accuracy than most pistols.
Wall piercing aside, absent a silencer, short barrel 5.56 at inside home ranges, is just nuts.
The AR is so optimized, developed and well understood, that it has become the default choice for an incredible array of uses and users, caliber “optimality” be damned. But for civilian home defense inside one’s home’s walls, handgun caliber carbines and/or subguns/pistols, are just better mousetraps. Even if the Marine Corps may deride them as mouseguns.
Silenced BLK may be a good counterpoint, but those are still in their infancy as far as practical application goes.
And if you absolutely “need” the power of a long gun inside your house, a shotgun is still better suited than 5.56 at sub 30 feet.
Your posts made me think of a responsible populace. Ready and respond – able to protect the Land.
Wow!
Made me remember how my father, my uncles and their male friends went to Europe in the 1940s to bring it to an actual menace. My grandmother, mother, aunts and their female friends in full support. Wow, just Wow.
Here is my perspective on this. If it is truly an assault weapon or weapon of war, then police should not be allowed to field them, period. In my opinion, if they were really carrying a “weapon of war” or “assault weapon”, it makes them a standing army, and as such, they should be held to all the usual restriction around military forces performing law enforcement outside of a military installation or without a formal declaration of martial law.
There is nothing more apparently “chilling” to free speech than the standard American college professor.
“A bad shot with a rifle is better than a good shot with a handgun”
Isn’t it more like: a good shot with a rifle is better than a good shot with a handgun, and a bad shot with a rifle is worse than a bad shot with a handgun? I know they are trying to say that you have a greater margin of error in hit placement with a rifle than with a handgun, but that would still be a “good shot” since it would stop the threat. A “bad shot” to me is a miss or overpenetration that hits an innocent. in which case the terminal effect on your target is now on them.
A rifle is much easier to hit with than a handgun. Practical accuracy with a rifle is about 4X that of a pistol. By “bad shot” they are talking about skill level.
I wounder how their minds would process a Campus Police officer going on a rampage with one of their issued “assault weapons”.