Assault Rifles Need to Go
I’m rarely one to post anything like this on my author page, but I have kids. I have a teenager in high school. And MY READERS are teens and parents. And yes, I fully believe in the right to bear REASONABLE arms, but not assault rifles. And I know what it’s like to see the police, with dogs and riot gear, swarming the area of my daughter’s school because there was a kid hiding nearby with a gun.
So, don’t tell me I don’t know. I KNOW – we were just lucky on that day several years ago that the rifle turned out to be a pellet gun. Because of the way this country’s gun laws are set-up, it could’ve easily been an AR-15. After all, in the good ol’ USA, you can shoot before you can drink.
This blog post is from a Army Veteran and I think it’s the best op-ed to date I’ve seen regarding the AR-15s. God bless those who lost their lives in Parkland this week. Let their murders not go in vain.
F*CK YOU, I LIKE GUNS by Anna
America, can we talk? Let’s just cut the shit for once and actually talk about what’s going on without blustering and pretending we’re actually doing a good job at adulting as a country right now. We’re not. We’re really screwing this whole society thing up, and we have to do better. We don’t have a choice. People are dying. At this rate, it’s not if your kids, or mine, are involved in a school shooting, it’s when. One of these happens every 60 hours on average in the US. If you think it can’t affect you, you’re wrong. Dead wrong. So let’s talk.
I’ll start. I’m an Army veteran. I like M-4’s, which are, for all practical purposes, an AR-15, just with a few extra features that people almost never use anyway. I’d say at least 70% of my formal weapons training is on that exact rifle, with the other 30% being split between various and sundry machineguns and grenade launchers. My experience is pretty representative of soldiers of my era. Most of us are really good with an M-4, and most of us like it at least reasonably well, because it is an objectively good rifle. I was good with an M-4, really good. I earned the Expert badge every time I went to the range, starting in Basic Training. This isn’t uncommon. I can name dozens of other soldiers/veterans I know personally who can say the exact same thing. This rifle is surprisingly easy to use, completely idiot-proof really, has next to no recoil, comes apart and cleans up like a dream, and is light to carry around. I’m probably more accurate with it than I would be with pretty much any other weapon in existence. I like this rifle a lot. I like marksmanship as a sport. When I was in the military, I enjoyed combining these two things as often as they’d let me . . . READ MORE via “Fuck you, I like guns.”
Cape Cod Scribe 