citadel

Muslims hate overalls and cowboy hats!

I held back at first because of longliveusa's nails on a chalkboard posts. I kinda sorta agree with him on a few basic Constitutional ideals, but...ugh, I don't want to be associated with that. The deep end isn't deep enough for his tastes.

Fair enough.

For whatever it's worth, I don't think most Americans were stockpiling arms in the sense we're discussing. I know a few people who bought dozens of EBR's ("Evil Black Rifles," guns that have been demonized by the media but that are less powerful than the common hunting rifle) because they anticipated a ban coming, and with the lessons learned during the ban in effect from 1994-2004 they knew that they could sell them for a lot more than they paid for them if a ban passed, and because they knew that if there was a chance they wanted something now, they should get it while they still could. When the government and everyone else is talking about a ban, internet rumor and panic hit.

My friends and I bought a whole bunch of ammo at the time because we shoot. The shelves everywhere were empty, stores were setting limits on the number of boxes they'd sell to a customer in a given day, every website was backordered, sold out, or not taking orders. One friend of mine flirted it up with the ammo clerk at a local WalMart and she'd call him to tell him when a shipment was coming in; we'd show up with a bunch of people and buy everything we could. It probably sounds extreme to an outsider, "What do you need all that ammo for!?!" But a typical day at the range for me is firing 200-300 rounds of ammo. If every store is sold out, and when they have stock they're refusing to sell you more than 2-6 boxes of 50 at a time, you have to get creative. Everyone was bartering, I didn't even own a .380 at the time but I bought every box of it that I could because I knew I could trade it for whatever caliber I wanted. .32 and .25 were hard to find as well but not as desirable, I think it's because the market had just been flooded with the Ruger LCP, Diamondback, and the well known KelTec P3AT, which are all pocket sized .380's popular with the concealed carry crowd.

I had to take fewer trips to the range because even if you had ammo, there was a very real concern that you wouldn't be able to get more, whether because of a ban or because everyone else was panic buying. Ammo companies began tripling their output, running 24x7x365 and they still couldn't keep up with the demand. Quality control suffered because of it, they were putting out bad product, and people still bought every single box they made.

Police departments couldn't qualify their officers because they couldn't find ammo, other departments were buying huge numbers of it. Competition shooters who easily shoot 10,000 rounds a month were getting what they could to keep from losing their competitive edge. The wars in the Middle East were obviously creating some ammo demand, plus ammo components like brass and copper were through the roof pricewise (remember all the news stories about copper thefts at the time?). It created a perfect storm in the market, that was compounded by many thousands deciding that they just wanted to get into the sport before they lost their chance.

What's also interesting is that most places saw record numbers of people applying for concealed carry permits, there was a backlog everywhere. If people are looking to start a revolution, turning in firearms related paperwork with your name, address, picture and fingerprints probably isn't the best way to prepare. Unemployment was shooting up, big banks were on the brink, and police departments were laying off cops. There was a greater percieved danger by many of crime or of a loss of their gun rights.

A few loose screws were talking about revolution, but almost everyone I knew and talked to in that timeframe was basically realizing that if they didn't have it in their hands imediately, there was no guarantee that they would be able to have it in the future.

While I agree that America has a problem with violent crime, a lot of what's reported is spin, the result of skewed statistics, especially when it comes to the # of firearms deaths. That's veering off topic, but I think it's worth mentioning.

I didn't vote for Obama, but I don't think for a second McCain-Palin would have been anything more than a few degrees better for the nation's overall well being. I can honestly say his skin color, race, religious beliefs or whatever else are irrelevant to me as a voter; the only thing I want to see is the government abiding by the rules laid out for it in the Constitution (yes, the whole thing, not cherry picked things I like), and nowadays, stopping the snowballing national debt before we collapse financially.

But the American media, which is left wing/centrist to me, did a great job of incorrectly reporting the run on guns and ammo. By the time they got around to reporting it, it was old news. They also mocked most gun owners for thinking that some kind of a ban was coming, because in their 6-8 month delay to report on the situation, the info about it was taken down off of the White House site. They reported some of the NICS numbers (the background check system used when you buy a gun from a store in the US), but they really didn't get the whole picture. They missed other important details, like how long term storage food supply sellers were also sold out, especially after stories hit about the food crisis in Detroit.

I think most of the people were afraid of civil unrest, of the loss of a stable society. People were preparing for the worst while hoping for the best. I traded hard to find ammo with Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, die hard Obama/McCain/Paul fans, and a few grumpy "I don't care about politics" type folks. I bought AR-15 parts from cops and soldiers, stood in line to buy handguns behind bleeding heart liberal college students and overweight housewives. I found it somewhat funny to see so many cars parked in gun store parking lots and at gunshows with bumper stickers for longtime anti-gun politicians. Some of the loudmouths were rightwingnuts, and the news tried hard to paint it as one sided, but it was old news by the time the Wall Street Journal squeaked out a story full of blatant lies and mistruths.

Fear and Greed Have Sales of Guns and Ammo Shooting Up - WSJ.com

The militia movement had it's peak in the early mid 1990's with common law courts and the various standoffs with FBI & ATF. The guys who are a part of them are robbers, rapists, thieves, and murderers, they're not much different from any other violent gang out there. But while I have met a tiny number of racist, anti government gun owners in my time submerged in the gun community (who I veer away from, I might add), I haven't heard anything other than rumors about the kind of militias we'd hear about 15-20 years ago. I think most of the talk is from people on the left trying to villify people on the right as violent extremists who use guns to fight the government, in the same way that folks on the right villify people on the left as socialist/communist extremists who use the governments guns to take their money to run indoctrinating social programs.

I still disagree with you on the part about inciting a response. There is nothing violent about burning a book. It displays ignorance and is a throwback to Guy Montag or that rally with Hitler I saw in an Indiana Jones movie, but there's nothing physically dangerous or threatening about it. No rational human is going to be spurred to violence because of a moron with a lighter, no matter which side of the equation they're on. If I burn a book it says pretty loudly that I'm an asshole, and probably full of some strong bias, prejudice or hate. But it shouldn't say that people who read whichever sacred text is being burned should turn their deep offense into a riot or attack of somekind.

Religious freedom isn't limited to reasoned criticism. Many athiests probably think that monothiests or even polythiests aren't capable of reason when it comes to religious disagreement, and vice versa. From an emotionally detached religious freedom point of view, I see no difference between the WBC anti-homosexual protests, pro-gay marriage rallies, Muslim extremists burning the US flag, or Christian extremists burning the Quran. They are people expressing their religious views (to some extent, I realize there are a few hairs worth splitting here depending on your own religious views) of one kind or another, that other people may find extremely offensive, who would be disturbed to their very core by the behavior. Still, a big part of religious freedom means allowing other people to do things in the name of their whacky religion that might piss you off.

All that changes when there is an immediate, direct threat of some kind, but I don't see that in book burning by itself.

I agree 100%.

Doesn't that just make them the most powerful leader in...Canada?