CDZ I do not understand the fascination with and demand for semi-automatic rifles

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usmbguest5318 said:
EDIT:
Several readers have responded remarking specifically about the AR-15 genre of rifles. I don't know if they didn't read the whole OP, but this post/thread is about semi-automatic rifles in general, and the AR-15 is but one form of them, albeit, apparently, the most popular one. I've not in the main post below singled out the AR-15 genre of semi-automatic rifles.​
Edit end.


I'm not a hunter or target shooter, though I have on occasion fired a rifle at a stationary target. That said, it seems to me that the only legitimate civilian uses of rifles are for sport -- hunting and target shooting. Perhaps, however, that's an errant predicate, but barring a handful of exceptional circumstances, it doesn't seem to me seem so; thus I'm baffled at the existential fascination gun enthusiasts have with semi-automatic rifles.

Over the past few days and in an effort to challenge my own perception that there is no sound/cogent basis for demanding a semi-automatic rifle for target shooting or game hunting, I've plumbed the Internet seeking input on whether there be any hunting or target shooting sports for which an automatic rifle is necessary or even militated for. So far, I have yet to find one.

What have I found? Well, this:

So what did the inquiry above lead me to think? [1] Well, pretty much what I thought before I undertook it: what the hell is the fascination with semis? It seems very clear to me that for hunting and target shooting a semi isn't at all necessary, though it's also clear that semis facilitate follow-up shots if such is needed. All the same, assuming one is is a fair marksman and has in one's sights a single target, a "manual" rifle of some sort will get the job done very effectively for any medium to large game.

Why was I interested in trying to make some sense of just what gives rise to the fascination with semis? Quite simply, it's because in my recollection, all the unlawful rifle users of recent times have used a semi. [2][3] That suggests to me that if there is to be ban, it needs to be a ban of semis, not so-called assault rifles. It also seems to me that if the tactical styling of "next gen" rifles is what drives sales to some consumers, fine. I'm sure that look can be implemented without semi-automatic functionality.

At the end of the day several things strike me as legitimate concerns:
  • People do have a right to own guns.
  • While the gun doesn't leap off a shelf or rack and go out shooting people, it's clear that people who use rifles to shoot others -- be they shooting single targets as the D.C. Sniper did or shooting indiscriminately at people -- preponderantly choose to do so using semis.
  • For most of those rifle gunmen, it's very clear that the rate of fire has had a material impact on the quantity of people whom the shooters killed and/or injured.
  • Hunting is a legitimate sporting pursuit and nobody should be denied the ability to enjoy it.
  • Target shooting is a legitimate sporting pursuit and nobody should be denied the ability to enjoy it.
  • Given the body of available germane information about all sorts of things -- soundly performed psychological research findings, soundly performed sociological research findings, extant limitations on future findings in either discipline, consumer behavior, guns themselves and their various capabilities, fitness for a purpose, extant laws, the nature and extent of law enforcement, the nature and extent of policy solution actions that can be taken, etc. -- it seems to me that rifle enthusiasts are going to have to make or face some sort of concessions on the nature of rifle availability. Access to semis may be among them, too it may not.
  • Given the body of available germane information about all sorts of things -- [same list as above] -- it seems to me that gun control advocates are going to have to make or face some sort of concessions on the nature of rifle restrictions. Simply banning all rifles is not an option.
  • Mass shooters don't much seem to use handguns. (This discussion does not include handguns and it does not construe "semis" as handguns.)
In light of those concerns, it seems to me that declaring semis to have the same status as fully automatic rifles may be one of the viable means and modes of established a basis by which we can reduce deaths an injuries caused by unlawful users of rifles.


Note to Members who are in the "no, no, no" camp as go access and/or gun reporting:
You need not post in this thread because I am well aware of your stance and I know you exist. We all are and do. This thread is not about how many responses it may generate and I'm not canvassing to see what views are most popular here.​


Note:
  1. Though I did encounter some coverage given to shotguns, I didn't see much. I inferred from that that either bird hunting isn't especially popular in the U.S. or just about shotgun, roughly speaking, will do as goes bird hunting, the key being the size of the shot one uses more so than the shotgun. I don't really know or care, right now, which of those, if either, be so. It was just a ancillary thought that crossed my mind.
  2. I'm thinking back as far as the D.C. sniper days. I have not checked to see if shooters prior to that used semis or didn't use them. I also have relied only on my memory as goes what weapons rifle-murderers used/fired to kill folks.
  3. This is flat-out bizarre. -- Based on FBI Uniform Crime Report data, in any given year between 2006 to 2011 (inclusive), rifles and shotguns outstrip handguns in terms of having been used to commit murder; however, over the period as a whole, handguns overwhelming outstrip rifles.

    I'm sure there must be an explanation for that strange happenstance, but I don't at this juncture know what it is. It could be that the site that compiled and graphically reported the data goofed somewhere. A "goof" certainly seems plausible given that the FBI's data about victims of rifle and handgun shootings from 2010 to 2014 presents a very different picture.

    Be that as it may, it's all too damn many people being unlawfully shot and killed, regardless of the weapon, as far as I'm concerned. That said, this post/thread is about rifles.
Click to expand...


Another point.……for all of your focus on semi-auto rifles in murder……each and every year knives actually kill far more people…….bare hands kill far more people and except for 2020, clubs kill more people than semi-auto rifles.

So your fixation on rifles is flawed.

There are over 20 million AR-15 rifles in private hands in the U.S……….millions more of the other types of semi-auto rifles…..and yet they are used in mass public shootings in fewer than 4 mass public shootings even in really bad years……….

3-4 rifles used illegally and you think that justifies banning all of them.

Using that logic….rifles of all kinds were used to murder around 435 people in 2020………..well over 20 million rifles in private hands.

cars killed over 39,000…..

This, according to you, would justify banning private ownership of cars.

Your logic makes absolutely no sense…..
 
usmbguest5318 said:
EDIT:
Several readers have responded remarking specifically about the AR-15 genre of rifles. I don't know if they didn't read the whole OP, but this post/thread is about semi-automatic rifles in general, and the AR-15 is but one form of them, albeit, apparently, the most popular one. I've not in the main post below singled out the AR-15 genre of semi-automatic rifles.​
Edit end.


I'm not a hunter or target shooter, though I have on occasion fired a rifle at a stationary target. That said, it seems to me that the only legitimate civilian uses of rifles are for sport -- hunting and target shooting. Perhaps, however, that's an errant predicate, but barring a handful of exceptional circumstances, it doesn't seem to me seem so; thus I'm baffled at the existential fascination gun enthusiasts have with semi-automatic rifles.

Over the past few days and in an effort to challenge my own perception that there is no sound/cogent basis for demanding a semi-automatic rifle for target shooting or game hunting, I've plumbed the Internet seeking input on whether there be any hunting or target shooting sports for which an automatic rifle is necessary or even militated for. So far, I have yet to find one.

What have I found? Well, this:

So what did the inquiry above lead me to think? [1] Well, pretty much what I thought before I undertook it: what the hell is the fascination with semis? It seems very clear to me that for hunting and target shooting a semi isn't at all necessary, though it's also clear that semis facilitate follow-up shots if such is needed. All the same, assuming one is is a fair marksman and has in one's sights a single target, a "manual" rifle of some sort will get the job done very effectively for any medium to large game.

Why was I interested in trying to make some sense of just what gives rise to the fascination with semis? Quite simply, it's because in my recollection, all the unlawful rifle users of recent times have used a semi. [2][3] That suggests to me that if there is to be ban, it needs to be a ban of semis, not so-called assault rifles. It also seems to me that if the tactical styling of "next gen" rifles is what drives sales to some consumers, fine. I'm sure that look can be implemented without semi-automatic functionality.

At the end of the day several things strike me as legitimate concerns:
  • People do have a right to own guns.
  • While the gun doesn't leap off a shelf or rack and go out shooting people, it's clear that people who use rifles to shoot others -- be they shooting single targets as the D.C. Sniper did or shooting indiscriminately at people -- preponderantly choose to do so using semis.
  • For most of those rifle gunmen, it's very clear that the rate of fire has had a material impact on the quantity of people whom the shooters killed and/or injured.
  • Hunting is a legitimate sporting pursuit and nobody should be denied the ability to enjoy it.
  • Target shooting is a legitimate sporting pursuit and nobody should be denied the ability to enjoy it.
  • Given the body of available germane information about all sorts of things -- soundly performed psychological research findings, soundly performed sociological research findings, extant limitations on future findings in either discipline, consumer behavior, guns themselves and their various capabilities, fitness for a purpose, extant laws, the nature and extent of law enforcement, the nature and extent of policy solution actions that can be taken, etc. -- it seems to me that rifle enthusiasts are going to have to make or face some sort of concessions on the nature of rifle availability. Access to semis may be among them, too it may not.
  • Given the body of available germane information about all sorts of things -- [same list as above] -- it seems to me that gun control advocates are going to have to make or face some sort of concessions on the nature of rifle restrictions. Simply banning all rifles is not an option.
  • Mass shooters don't much seem to use handguns. (This discussion does not include handguns and it does not construe "semis" as handguns.)
In light of those concerns, it seems to me that declaring semis to have the same status as fully automatic rifles may be one of the viable means and modes of established a basis by which we can reduce deaths an injuries caused by unlawful users of rifles.


Note to Members who are in the "no, no, no" camp as go access and/or gun reporting:
You need not post in this thread because I am well aware of your stance and I know you exist. We all are and do. This thread is not about how many responses it may generate and I'm not canvassing to see what views are most popular here.​


Note:
  1. Though I did encounter some coverage given to shotguns, I didn't see much. I inferred from that that either bird hunting isn't especially popular in the U.S. or just about shotgun, roughly speaking, will do as goes bird hunting, the key being the size of the shot one uses more so than the shotgun. I don't really know or care, right now, which of those, if either, be so. It was just a ancillary thought that crossed my mind.
  2. I'm thinking back as far as the D.C. sniper days. I have not checked to see if shooters prior to that used semis or didn't use them. I also have relied only on my memory as goes what weapons rifle-murderers used/fired to kill folks.
  3. This is flat-out bizarre. -- Based on FBI Uniform Crime Report data, in any given year between 2006 to 2011 (inclusive), rifles and shotguns outstrip handguns in terms of having been used to commit murder; however, over the period as a whole, handguns overwhelming outstrip rifles.

    I'm sure there must be an explanation for that strange happenstance, but I don't at this juncture know what it is. It could be that the site that compiled and graphically reported the data goofed somewhere. A "goof" certainly seems plausible given that the FBI's data about victims of rifle and handgun shootings from 2010 to 2014 presents a very different picture.

    Be that as it may, it's all too damn many people being unlawfully shot and killed, regardless of the weapon, as far as I'm concerned. That said, this post/thread is about rifles.
Click to expand...

So you don't think self defense is a legitimate use for rifles?

Semiautomatic rifles have been available to the civilian population for over 100 years.

Did you know that more people are killed annually by fists and feet than with rifles of any kind?

The fact is that rifles, semiautomatic or not are not a significant factor in murder and crime rates
 
Just write a law placing "assault style weapons" under the NFA.

Define "assault style weapons" as a style of weapon used by a military at some point, modified for civilian use, that can attach a magazine of greater than 5 rounds, etc.

That would cover the Mini-14 which is based on the M14.

You could still own these weapons, you'd just have to comply with the NFA.

Obviously, a law can be written to cover the Mini-14.
 
Otis Mayfield said:
Just write a law placing "assault style weapons" under the NFA.

Define "assault style weapons" as a style of weapon used by a military at some point, modified for civilian use, that can attach a magazine of greater than 5 rounds, etc.

That would cover the Mini-14 which is based on the M14.

You could still own these weapons, you'd just have to comply with the NFA.

Obviously, a law can be written to cover the Mini-14.
Click to expand...
Tell what firearm isn't based on a military weapon of some sort?

And what does it matter?
 
Otis Mayfield said:
Just write a law placing "assault style weapons" under the NFA.

Define "assault style weapons" as a style of weapon used by a military at some point, modified for civilian use, that can attach a magazine of greater than 5 rounds, etc.

That would cover the Mini-14 which is based on the M14.

You could still own these weapons, you'd just have to comply with the NFA.

Obviously, a law can be written to cover the Mini-14.
Click to expand...


No. The NFA is dumb.....and putting semi-autos in there is as good as banning them.......so no thanks.
 
2aguy said:
No it isnt, but you keep showing your ignorance on all issues related to guns and self defense. It isnt the rifle its the bullet………
Click to expand...
In Michael Moore's, Bowling for Columbine it was the bullets that were the major characters.
 
Donald H said:
In Michael Moore's, Bowling for Columbine it was the bullets that were the major characters.
Click to expand...


You do realize that he lied throughout that movie.....he spliced Charleton Heston's speech, editing it, to make it sound bad....and he lied about several other key things in that movie....

The first mockumentary “fact” is the title itself. The Columbine murderers were enrolled in a high-school bowling class. After the NRA introduction, the film begins on the morning of April 20, 1999, the day of the Columbine murders. Narrator Moore announces that on that day, “Two boys went bowling at six in the morning.” This serves as a setup for a later segment looking at the causes of Columbine, and arguing that blaming violent video games (which the killers played obsessively) or Marilyn Manson music (which the killers enjoyed) makes no more sense than blaming bowling.

In fact, the two killers ditched bowling class on the day of the murders. The police investigation found that none of the students in the bowling class that morning had seen the killers that day. The police report was completed long before the release of Bowling for Columbine, so the title itself is a deliberate falsehood. (I don’t use the word “lie” because the mockumentary genre allows for the use of invented facts.)

After the April 20 lead-in, Bowling begins an examination of middle-American gun culture, and indulges the bicoastal elite’s snobbery toward American gun owners.

We are taken to the North County Bank in Michigan, which — like several other banks in the United States — allows people who buy a Certificate of Deposit to receive their interest in the form of a rifle or shotgun. (The depositor thereby receives the full value of the interest immediately, rather than over a term of years.)

Moore goes through the process of buying the CD and answering questions for the federal Form 4473 registration sheet. Although a bank employee makes a brief reference to a “background check,” the audience never sees the process whereby the bank requires Moore to produce photo identification, then contacts the FBI for a criminal records check on Moore, before he is allowed to take possession of the rifle.

Moore asks: “Do you think it’s a little bit dangerous handing out guns at a bank?” The banker’s answer isn’t shown.

So the audience is left with a smug sense of the pro-gun bank’s folly. Yet just a moment’s reflection shows that there is not the slightest danger. To take possession of the gun, the depositor must give the bank thousands of dollars (an unlikely way to start a robbery). He must then produce photo identification (thus making it all but certain that the robber would be identified and caught), spend at least a half hour at the bank (thereby allowing many people to see and identify him), and undergo an FBI background check (which would reveal criminal convictions disqualifying most of the people inclined to bank robbery). A would-be robber could far more easily buy a handgun for a few hundred dollars on the black market, with no identification required.

The genius of Bowling for Columbine is that the movie does not explicitly make these obvious points about the safety of the North County Bank’s program. Rather, the audience is simply encouraged to laugh along with Moore’s apparent mockery of the bank, without realizing that the joke is on them for seeing danger where none exists. This theme is developed throughout the film.

From the Michigan bank, Moore moves on to an examination of the rest of Michigan’s culture — or, more precisely, to eccentric and unrepresentative segments of that culture, thereby playing to the audience’s feelings of superiority over American gun owners.

For example, hunting is a challenging sport, requiring outdoor skills, wildlife knowledge, patience, and good marksmanship. Most members of the urban audiences cheering Bowling for Columbine are no more capable of participating in a successful hunt than they are of conducting a three-day, backcountry cross-country ski trek, or playing rookie-league baseball. The vast majority of hunters are also very safety-conscious. In 2000, for example, there were 91 fatal hunting accidents in all of North America, within a population of over 16 million hunters.

Yet Moore ignores all of this. Instead, he comically reports an incident in which some reckless hunters tied a gun to their dog to take a funny picture, and one of the hunters was shot. According to the police reports, the foolish hunters had only a still camera, but Bowling presents a fabricated video clip which purports to have been filmed by the hunter’s friend. Because the clip appears to be a home movie, Bowling makes hunters seem viciously callous: The “hunter” holding the camera continues recording after his fellow hunter has been wounded, rather than immediately stopping to help the friend.

Similarly, the ideology of gun ownership and civil liberty is not presented by reference to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, or to legal scholars such as liberal Democrats Sanford Levinson or Larry Tribe. Instead, Moore goes to the Michigan Militia.

While Moore allows the militia members to present their case, he makes the group (which has no record of illegal violence or any other illegal activity) appear extremely dangerous by informing viewers that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols attended militia meetings. Moore conveniently neglects to mention that the two were eventually kicked out, for talking about violence.

James Nichols, the brother of a convicted mass murderer, is offered as a spokesman for the right of free people to resist tyrannical government.

ON TO LITTLETON, LOCKHEED, AND 9/11

Bowling then departs Michigan and heads for Littleton, Colo., to develop the thesis that American militarism created the mass-murder atmosphere that resulted in Columbine.

Aerospace contractor Lockheed Martin has a factory in Littleton, so Moore asks a company spokesman if “our kids say to themselves, ‘Well, gee, Dad goes off to the factory every day, and he builds missiles, he builds weapons of mass destruction. What’s the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?’” The camera then takes a shot of a workplace safety slogan — “It has to be foreign-object free” — to imply that Lockheed Martin employees revel in the killing of dehumanized foreigners.

Of course the connection is nonsense. While one killer’s father once served in the Air Force, neither family worked in the defense industry. The other killer’s parents were gun-control advocates — so much so that they forbade him to play with toy guns — unlike the many children who are shown with toy guns elsewhere in the film. One of the killers’ gun suppliers was the son of a Colorado anti-gun activist. Thus, Moore might just as well have asked a spokesman for a gun-prohibition group if “our kids say to themselves, ‘Well, gee, mom and day say that guns are just for killing innocent people. So if I have a gun, I guess I should use it for killing innocent people.’”

Moore returns to the bowling theme a few scenes later, to present the argument — which the audience of course supports — that neither bowling nor Marilyn Manson was responsible for the Columbine crimes. The audience is encouraged to feel intellectually superior to the politicians, who are pictured blaming Marilyn Manson.

Yet the connection the movie draws between Lockheed and the Columbine mass murder is even more tenuous than the connection with Manson. The Columbine killers had no connection to Lockheed, but they did listen to Marilyn Manson. And Brian Warner’s choice of the stage name of “Manson” shows that mass killers can enjoy enduring pop-culture fame — precisely what the Columbine killers hoped to achieve. (I avoid mentioning their names so as not to assist their vicious quest.)

After blaming Lockheed for 13 deaths at Columbine, the film moves on to blaming the United States government for 3,000 deaths on September 11. It does this by arguing that we got what we deserved, because our nation revels in the killing of civilians by air.

A montage of U.S. foreign-policy atrocities (to the tune of “What a Wonderful World”) concludes with the statement that the U.S. gave $245 million to the Taliban in 2000-01. The next shot is of the World Trade Center in flames.

In fact, that money was not given to the Taliban government, but rather to U.S. and international agencies that distributed humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan. In other words, the fact that the United States gave money to Food For Peace and for girls’ schools for Afghan refugees is supposed to prove that the America deserved to be attacked by al Qaeda.

Right after the footage of the airplanes hitting the Twin Towers, Bowling shows a B-52 memorial at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Moore intones: “The plaque underneath it proudly proclaims that this plane killed Vietnamese people on Christmas Eve 1972.” The point is obvious: that the United States government and al Qaeda both perpetrate murder by airplane.

In fact, the plaque on the B-52 at the AFA is not as Moore describes it. The plaque says “B-52D Stratofortress. ‘Diamond Lil.’ Dedicated to the men and women of the Strategic Air Command who flew and maintained the B-52D throughout its 26-year history in the command. Aircraft 55-083, with over 15,000 flying hours, is one of two B-52Ds credited with a confirmed MIG kill during the Vietnam Conflict Flying out of U-Tapao Royal Thai Naval Airfield in southern Thailand, the crew of ‘Diamond Lil’ shot down a MIG northeast of Hanoi during ‘Linebacker II’ action on Christmas Eve, 1972.”

Moore thus confirms the absurdity of the blame-America-first position popular among the Hollywood Left, by showing that such views require the ignoring of obvious facts — such as the difference between financial aid to a dictatorship and humanitarian aid to refugees, or between fighting enemy pilots and perpetrating war crimes against civilians.

BLAME IT ON THE NRA

A long mockumentary segment reports on the NRA convention in Denver in May 1999. The segment begins with NRA president Charlton Heston holding an antique rifle above his head and delivering the signature line: “From my cold dead hands.” Actually, Heston never displayed a rifle or uttered that line at the Denver convention.

Moore bashes the NRA for being insensitive by holding its convention in Denver two weeks after the Columbine murders. That insensitivity is heightened by the implication that Heston did the “cold dead hands” rifle display there. Viewers are not informed that the NRA convention had been scheduled many years in advance, that Mayor Webb (who at the last minute told the NRA to cancel the convention) had eagerly solicited the NRA convention for Denver, or that the NRA drastically reduced its four-day convention, holding only its annual members’ meeting, in an afternoon session legally required by its non-profit charter from the state of New York.

The litany of scapegoating (Lockheed Martin, the United States, the NRA) then abruptly shifts into the anti-scapegoating segments concerning bowling and Marilyn Manson.

In keeping with the mockumentary format, Moore tells the audience that bowling was “apparently the last thing they did before the massacre.” Even if the killers hadn’t skipped class, this statement would be untrue. Bowling class was at 6 A.M.; the killings began around 11 A.M.

The “scapegoat Lockheed and the NRA” segments serve as a perfect counterpoint to the “don’t scapegoat bowling or Manson” segment. By leading the audience into fatuous scapegoating of Lockheed and the NRA, the film demonstrates the pervasiveness of scapegoating — even by people who denounce it.

A cartoon history of the United States comes next, on the theme that American gun owners are racist. The Second Amendment is said to have been written “so every white man could keep his gun.” Actually, at the time of the Second Amendment, every state allowed free people of color to own guns. Moreover, anti-slavery activist Lysander Spooner would later use the Second Amendment as part of his argument to show that slavery was unconstitutional. Gun prohibition, he argued, is a condition of slavery; the Second Amendment guarantees the right of all people to own guns; hence slavery, and its attendant gun prohibition, are unconstitutional.

The audience is now informed that the National Rifle Association was founded in 1871, “the same year the Klan became an illegal terrorist organization.” The voice-over says that this was just a coincidence, but the cartoon shows gun owners helping Klansmen to murder blacks.

The phrasing of the Klan line leaves some viewers with the impression that the Klan was created in 1871, even though the group was founded in 1866 in Tennessee. What happened in 1871 was congressional passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act, which allowed the president to suppress the Klan by denying Klansmen the writ of habeas corpus. (The Klan was, of course, composed of men who fought on the losing, pro-slavery side of the Civil War.)

President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 into law, and worked for the rapid extermination of that terrorist organization. Grant dispatched federal troops into South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida to destroy the Klan and to protect black voting rights. In an April 1872 report to Congress, Grant pointed out the continuing problem in some southern counties of the Ku Klux Klan attempting “to deprive colored citizens of their right to bear arms and the right of a free ballot.”

President Grant also signed the Enforcement Act of 1870, which made it a federal crime for the Ku Klux Klan or similar conspiracies to interfere with the civil rights of freedmen — including their Second Amendment right to arms.

Frederick Douglass justly called Grant “the benefactor of an enslaved and despised race, a race who will ever cherish a grateful remembrance of his name, fame and great services.”

The 1871 founders of the National Rifle Association were thus diametrically opposed to the Confederates who founded the KKK. The NRA founders were Union officers who had fought on the winning, anti-slavery side of the Civil War. Dismayed by the poor quality of Union marksmanship during the war, the NRA’s founders aimed to improve the shooting skills of the American public at large. The first NRA president was Ambrose E. Burnside, who had served as commander of the Army of the Potomac.

Ulysses Grant left the presidency in 1877, but continued his long career of public service in retirement. In 1883, he was elected president of the National Rifle Association. From 1871 until the end of the century, nine of the NRA’s ten presidents had fought against slavery during the Civil War. These included Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, a hero of Gettysburg, and Gen. Phillip Sheridan, the famous Union cavalry commander. During Reconstruction, Gen. Sheridan served as military governor of Louisiana and Texas, and removed hundreds of local officials (including the governors of both states, and the chief justice of the Texas supreme court) from office for failing to respect the rights of freedmen and for failing to enforce laws for their protection.

In Bowling, Michael Moore brags that he is an NRA “Lifetime member.” So it might be expected that Moore would inform viewers about the NRA’s noble anti-slavery history. But Moore’s connection to the NRA is bizarre; he told Tim Russert that he joined the group so that he could be elected its president and make it support gun control. This is aggrandized self-delusion, rather like Barbra Streisand announcing that she was becoming Catholic so that she could be elected Pope and make the Church support polygamy.

The supposedly racist nature of white gun owners is reinforced by Bowling’s statement that an 1871 law made it illegal for blacks to own guns. No such law existed, although it is true that many gun laws from the late 19th century — such as licensing and registration laws, or bans on inexpensive guns — were selectively enforced in the South so as to deprive blacks of firearms. These are the same kinds of laws that Moore promotes today. Indeed, he turned the Bowling for Columbine premier into a fundraiser for the Brady Campaign, which works hard to outlaw inexpensive guns used by poor people for protection.



www.nationalreview.com

Bowling Truths | National Review

In the field of mockumentary filmmaking, there are two giants. Rob Reiner created the genre with his film This is Spinal Tap. Michael Moore has taken the genre to an entirely different level, with …
www.nationalreview.com www.nationalreview.com
 
Plow Boy said:
The AR 15 was designed to kill an human attacker, not deer or anything else. The design is to kill an enemy who is trying to kill you.

The M 16/ M 4 are simply full auto versions of it.
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Yes, and also the value of wounding an enemy in battle that can be said to cause the enemy more hardship than the dead. The Nato cartridge was designed with that in mind.
 
Donald H said:
Yes, and also the value of wounding an enemy in battle that can be said to cause the enemy more hardship than the dead. The Nato cartridge was designed with that in mind.
Click to expand...

No...it was designed to be light weight so troops could carry more of them...
 
2aguy said:
You do realize that he lied throughout that movie.....he spliced Charleton Heston's speech, editing it, to make it sound bad....and he lied about several other key things in that movie....
Click to expand...
Heston's speech was very bad and cruel on purpose to the families of the children that were slaughtered.
 
Donald H said:
Heston's speech was very bad and cruel on purpose to the families of the children that were slaughtered.
Click to expand...


What part of Heston's speech being spliced together by Moore do you not understand? He changed the speech in the movie..........he lied.....
 
Donald H said:
Heston's speech was very bad and cruel on purpose to the families of the children that were slaughtered.
Click to expand...


You don't know what you are talking about...

The portrayal is one of Heston and NRA arrogantly holding a protest rally in response to the deaths -- or, as one reviewer put it, "it seemed that Charlton Heston and others rushed to Littleton to hold rallies and demonstrations directly after the tragedy." [italics added]. Moore successfully causes viewers to reach this conclusion. It is in fact false.
Fact: The Denver event was not a demonstration relating to Columbine, but an annual meeting, whose place and date had been fixed years in advance.
Fact: At Denver, the NRA canceled all events (normally several days of committee meetings, sporting events, dinners, and rallies) save the annual members' meeting; that could not be cancelled because corporate law required that it be held.


Fact: Heston's "cold dead hands" speech, which leads off Moore's depiction of the Denver meeting, was not given at Denver after Columbine. It was given a year later in Charlotte, North Carolina, and was a response to his being given the musket, a collector's piece, at that annual meeting. Bowling leads off with this speech, and then splices in footage which was taken in Denver and refers to Denver, to create the impression that the entire clip was taken at the Denver event.


Fact: When Bowling continues on to the speech which Heston did give in Denver, it carefully edits it to change its theme.


Moore's fabrication here cannot be described by any polite term. It is a lie, a fraud, and quite a few other things. Carrying it out required a LOT of editing to mislead the viewer, as I will show below. I transcribed Heston's speech as Moore has it, and compared it to a news agency's transcript, color coding the passages. CLICK HERE for the comparison.


Moore has actually taken audio of seven sentences, from five different parts of the speech, and a section given in a different speech entirely, and spliced them together, to create a speech that was never given. Each edit is cleverly covered by inserting a still or video footage for a few seconds.


First, right after the weeping victims, Moore puts on Heston's "I have only five words for you . . . cold dead hands" statement, making it seem directed at them. As noted above, it's actually a thank-you speech given a year later to a meeting in North Carolina.
Moore then has an interlude -- a visual of a billboard and his narration. The interlude is vital. He can't cut directly to Heston's real Denver speech. If he did that, you might ask why Heston in mid-speech changed from a purple tie and lavender shirt to a white shirt and red tie. Or why the background draperies went from maroon to blue. Moore has to separate the two segments of this supposed speech to keep the viewer from noticing.
Moore then goes to show Heston speaking in Denver. His second edit (covered by splicing in a pan shot of the crowd at the meeting, while Heston's voice continues) deletes Heston's announcement that NRA has in fact cancelled most of its meeting:
"As you know, we've cancelled the festivities, the fellowship we normally enjoy at our annual gatherings. This decision has perplexed a few and inconvenienced thousands. As your president, I apologize for that."
Moore has to take that out -- it would blow his entire theme. Moore then cuts to Heston noting that Denver's mayor asked NRA not to come, and shows Heston replying "I said to the Mayor: Don't come here? We're already here!" as if in defiance.
Actually, Moore put an edit right in the middle of the first sentence! Heston was actually saying (with reference Heston's own WWII vet status) "I said to the mayor, well, my reply to the mayor is, I volunteered for the war they wanted me to attend when I was 18 years old. Since then, I've run small errands for my country, from Nigeria to Vietnam. I know many of you here in this room could say the same thing."
Moore cuts it after "I said to the Mayor" and attaches a sentence from the end of the next paragraph: "As Americans, we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land." It thus becomes an arrogant "I said to the Mayor: as American's we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land." He hides the deletion by cutting to footage of protestors and a still photo of the Mayor as Heston says "I said to the mayor," cutting back to Heston's face at "As Americans."
Moore has Heston then triumphantly announce "Don't come here? We're already here!" Actually, that sentence is clipped from a segment five paragraphs farther on in the speech. Again, Moore uses an editing trick to cover the doctoring. As Heston speaks, the video switches momentarily to a pan of the crowd, then back to Heston; the pan shot covers the doctoring.

Long and thorough list of lies in Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine"

http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.htmlBOWLING FOR COLUMBINE Documentary or Fiction? -David T. Hardy- The first misconception to correct about Michael Moore's The Big One is that it is a documentary. It's not. Moore doesn't make those. As was proven after the release of Moore's debut, Ro...
es.redskins.com es.redskins.com
 
2aguy said:
You don't know what you are talking about...
Click to expand...
I'm going to have to ration you to one reply from me an hour on account of reading your quoted replies being too time consuming. Here's something to think about for the next hour.

A critical and commercial success, the film brought Moore international attention as a rising filmmaker and won numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature, a special 55th Anniversary Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival,[3] and the César Award for Best Foreign Film.[4] The film is considered one of the greatest documentary films of all time. [5][6][7][8]
Click to expand...
 
Otis Mayfield said:
Just write a law placing "assault style weapons" under the NFA.

Define "assault style weapons" as a style of weapon used by a military at some point, modified for civilian use, that can attach a magazine of greater than 5 rounds, etc.

That would cover the Mini-14 which is based on the M14.

You could still own these weapons, you'd just have to comply with the NFA.

Obviously, a law can be written to cover the Mini-14.
Click to expand...
That's just foolish.

Why do you demand punishing innocent, law-abiding citizens instead of the criminals?
 
Otis Mayfield said:
Just write a law placing "assault style weapons" under the NFA.

Define "assault style weapons" as a style of weapon used by a military at some point, modified for civilian use, that can attach a magazine of greater than 5 rounds, etc.

That would cover the Mini-14 which is based on the M14.

You could still own these weapons, you'd just have to comply with the NFA.

Obviously, a law can be written to cover the Mini-14.
Click to expand...
A law saying what you suggest wouldn't last til the water got hot, because semi-automatic rifles aren't "military weapons, modified for civilian use".

The M-14 is based on the M-1 Garland. You want to outlaw Garlands, too? What's the next round of stupidity? Will bolt action rifles be called " high powered sniper rifles"?...lol
 
Donald H said:
The AR or AR type weapon is by far the most efficient weapon for the purpose of wounding or killing people.
Click to expand...
No it fucking isn't...lol. There are plenty of firearms that can do just as much damage, maybe more.

In regards to mass shootings, a shooter can score just as many kills with a lever action 30-30 as he can with an AR-15.
 
Wild Bill Kelsoe said:
A law saying what you suggest wouldn't last til the water got hot, because semi-automatic rifles aren't "military weapons, modified for civilian use".

The M-14 is based on the M-1 Garland. You want to outlaw Garlands, too? What's the next round of stupidity? Will bolt action rifles be called " high powered sniper rifles"?...lol
Click to expand...

If you put assault style weapons under the NFA, you're not banning them because people, who are willing to do the paperwork, can purchase and own such weapons as long as they comply with NFA rules.
 
Otis Mayfield said:
If you put assault style weapons under the NFA, you're not banning them because people, who are willing to do the paperwork, can purchase and own such weapons as long as they comply with NFA rules.
Click to expand...
By placing those firearms under the NFA, you will be placing a tax on them. The Supreme Court has ruled that a right can't be taxed.
 
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