The Courage Campaign Is Now Getting Into The Fray...

Now that Gay Marriage has been settled here in WA, the Courage Campaign folks have found an outlet for their energies. Yup! You guessed it! An Assault Weapons and High Capacity Magazine Ban! Break out the e-mail address's and contact ALL of your legislators, senators and anyone else, it's on!

Uh, ya got a link or anything . . ?

Join our campaign to renew the ban on assault weapons.

I live in a small town, much like Newtown. When I heard the news on Friday, like parents all across our country, my first instinct was to run to school, pick up my 5 year old son Jack from kindergarten, and never let him out of my sight again. When I did pick him up at the end of the day, I held him close and fought back tears when I saw 26 candles already lit in rememberance outside his elementary school.

Enough is enough. No child, no parent, no country should ever have to live through a day like Friday again. Newtown should never have happened. Aurora should never have happened. Tuscon should never have happened. The time for change is now.

Will you join our campaign to pass a new assault weapons ban? Courage Campaign is prepared to devote major resources to this fight, but only if you, and others are on board.

It’s simple. Civilians do not need assault weapons. The only members of society who do are soldiers and our most finely trained law enforcement professionals. Otherwise, they have only one use: mass murder. In 1994, Congress passed and President Clinton signed an assault weapons ban, but it expired after 10 years because too many elected officials on both sides of the aisle fear the National Rifle Association (NRA).

We’re going to ban assault weapons. Again. And this time it will stick. Are you with us?

We know how to win. We've done it before, but we cannot do it unless we build a movement. That means YOU. Join us and take the first step.

Enough is enough.

Sarah Callahan, COO
Courage Campaign

So no link then? Where did this information come from?

WOD said:

Join our campaign to renew the ban on assault weapons.

[snip ranting]

We’re going to ban assault weapons. Again. And this time it will stick. Are you with us?

We know how to win. We've done it before, but we cannot do it unless we build a movement. That means YOU. Join us and take the first step.

Enough is enough.

Sarah Callahan, COO
Courage Campaign

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Did that uppity assault weapon go out on its own and kill again?
Bad assault weapon! No biscuit!

BTW, just what IS an "assault weapon"? I tried to look it up in my OED, but it wasn't listed there. However, I did find this on Wiki: "A common usage is to interchange the term with assault rifle, but unlike that term, "assault weapon" has no consistent or specific definition and so is subject to varying definitions for varying purposes, including definitions that include common non-military-style firearms."

Just what is it that Ms. Callahan wants to ban? Just about everything that can be used to "assault" someone? Baseball bats? Rocks? Squirt guns? Ice cubes? Mr. Bubble? I grow weary of knee-jerk opportunistic responses.

Ms. Callahan: Your job mandate is to run "a multi-issue progressive advocacy organization focused on achieving full equality for all Californians by solving California’s structural governance problems and restoring marriage equality to the state." What I fail to see is how banning "assault weapons" affects "California's structural governance problems."

Beat me to it SM!

They are a "progressive" group.

I am a libertarian, and I find nothing "progressive" about gun, or "accessory" bans in a free society. We tried that, it did nothing.

Its time to try it another way, starting with a culture shift toward firearms education and a REAL dialog about carry in every day life being the solution.

As I heard another person put it...

"I would rather have a shootout than a massacre."

So do you suppose she's IGNORANT of the fact that no "assault weapon" was used in the school massacre, and both handguns used were purchased & registered according to the already strict CT laws, with requisite low-cap CT-legal mags, or is she simply IGNORING it?

So do you suppose she's IGNORANT of the fact that no "assault weapon" was used in the school massacre, and both handguns used were purchased & registered according to the already strict CT laws, with requisite low-cap CT-legal mags, or is she simply IGNORING it?

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Actually it was an AR-15 clone that was the tool for most of the killing.

Yes Yes I know that technically the AR-15s are not assault weapons. You know what? Perception is reality, and the perception is that AR-15s are assault weapons. We need to stop debating the minutiae of the thousands of different types of guns. It makes us look like kooky idiots. They're all guns, and the can all kill people. Let the debate proceed from there.

WOD said:

It’s simple. Civilians do not need assault weapons. The only members of society who do are soldiers and our most finely trained law enforcement professionals. Otherwise, they have only one use: mass murder. In 1994, Congress passed and President Clinton signed an assault weapons ban, but it expired after 10 years because too many elected officials on both sides of the aisle fear the National Rifle Association (NRA).

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Great. The argument that the police (who have no duty to protect you) are the only ones who need the ability to engage in defense of anything. That the standing army that exists only through a constitutional loophole is useful but the group of people specifically in charge of national defense in the constitution don't need to have weapons. The claim that assault weapons exist in the first place. The claim that assault rifles are high powered. And then inevitably the claim that there are weapons out there MORE powerful than the dreaded "assault weapons" so we need to ban those too.

Their propaganda is so tired and old, do they even actually NEED to spew any of it?

rapgood said:

BTW, just what IS an "assault weapon"? I tried to look it up in my OED, but it wasn't listed there.

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Generally speaking, the definition of 'assault weapon' is "scary looking gun". Scary being semantically interchangeable with tacticool depending on who you're talking to. A less used definition I've run into is "gun I personally am scared of", which could theoretically extend to brightly-colored plastic squirt guns, depending on the person using that definition.

Minor correction.....

Metalhead47 said:

So do you suppose she's IGNORANT of the fact that no "assault weapon" was used in the school massacre, and both handguns used were purchased & registered according to the already strict CT laws, with requisite low-cap CT-legal mags, or is she simply IGNORING it?

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Just an FYI: There is no magazine capacity limit in CT. However, they do have an "assault weapons" ban that names many rifles by name or make, and restricts "assault weapon features" (pistol grip, removable magazines, adjustable stocks, flash hiders, etc) to a maximum of two. It ends up being similar to the "California Compliant" rule, just not quite as strict.

BUT! They DO allow class 3!!!

Screwed up state. I am glad to have left.

I honestly feel sorry for all the kids in this, people are just using their deaths to further their agendas. This is typical of the PRK, also this reminds me, since every school shooting ,or whatever hell people like to phrase it now days, hasn't there been a ban attempt for a specific feature of a gun. I am getting tired of having deja vu.

Boomboy007 said:

Just an FYI: There is no magazine capacity limit in CT. However, they do have an "assault weapons" ban that names many rifles by name or make, and restricts "assault weapon features" (pistol grip, removable magazines, adjustable stocks, flash hiders, etc) to a maximum of two. It ends up being similar to the "California Compliant" rule, just not quite as strict.

BUT! They DO allow class 3!!!

Screwed up state. I am glad to have left.

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deanf said:

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Actually it was an AR-15 clone that was the tool for most of the killing.

Yes Yes I know that technically the AR-15s are not assault weapons. You know what? Perception is reality, and the perception is that AR-15s are assault weapons. We need to stop debating the minutiae of the thousands of different types of guns. It makes us look like kooky idiots. They're all guns, and the can all kill people. Let the debate proceed from there.

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Cite please guys? The last thing I saw said that the rifle was left in the car -he never actually used it- and only handguns were used in the shooting. I always see CT lumped in with NY, CA, et al, in the "no hi-cap sales" disclaimers on website, I assumed they had a capacity ban too.

Metalhead47 said:

Cite please guys? The last thing I saw said that the rifle was left in the car -he never actually used it- and only handguns were used in the shooting.

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No cite, sorry, but the latest, apparently from the ME, is that the majority of the wounds were from rifle fire, the shooter killed his mother and himself with a pistol, and left a shotgun in the car.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/media...tomatic-firearms/article/2516156#.UNCTpG872Ew

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon

http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcassaul.html

What is an "assault weapon"? Well that depends. Ambiguety must be built in to ensure maximum confusion, so read well and read often.

To whomever may respond to this young lady:

CT already has an AWB and magazine size limitations. The weapons used were legally obtained by their owner, and illegally obtained by the shooter.

Now that wwe see the results of strict gun control laws (as in CT), maybe it is time to think about the adults that were killed and why they did not have the tools to defend themselves? Why did not the school staff have one weapon to defend these kids with? Oh yes, gun control laws.

People with evil intent do not abide by laws, law abiding citizens do. That is why all these adults (and children) died. No-one was able to use compairable force to defend themslves and the children. think about it.

Cite please guys?

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http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/national-international/NATL-As-Mourning-Continues-Focus-Turns-to-Gun-Control-183877701.html

Police have said that 20-year-old gunman Adam Lanza ambushed the elementary school with a Bushmaster AR 15 rifle—

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deanf said:

[/COLOR]http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/national-international/NATL-As-Mourning-Continues-Focus-Turns-to-Gun-Control-183877701.html

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An AR-15 rifle purchased legally by a woman who took up hobby shooting, and apparently without any concept of the responsibility or security of those firearms.

I will say it again, we need to change the culture, not the firearms.

FMCDH said:

An AR-15 rifle purchased legally by a woman who took up hobby shooting, and apparently without any concept of the responsibility or security of those firearms.

I will say it again, we need to change the culture, not the firearms.

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Unfortunately changing the fire arms is easier.

But in defense of the mother: Who would ever believe, in a million years, that their child would be capable of something like this? There is a world of difference between a troubled child and child that shoots up an elementary school. I'm sure that if the mother even suspected that the child's access to her guns would become an issue she would have secured them.

/shrug

I rec'd email from courage(sic) this morning. She said she had just watched the NRA and was disgusted. It seems all she got from the NRA announcement was that they want more guns not less.
The man speaks for thirty minutes and all she heard was one sentence.