Sporting Equipment or Assault Weapons?

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crstrode

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Sporting Equipment or Assault Weapons?

http://badgerlakeobserver.blogspot.com/2014/10/sporting-equipment-or-assault-weapons.html

Derek Jeter recently hit his last home run. The baseball bat he used will become a piece of famous sports history. People will travel from everywhere to see it and take pictures of their children standing next to it. Now, how about that same sporting equipment used in Joe Pesci’s last scene in Casino? Or by Robert DeNiro in The Untouchables?

(go ahead - Google "Joe Pesci Beatdown - Casino" even for me it is a bit too gruesome to post here.)

Doesn’t quite have the same feel, does it? Baseball bats are used quite often to bludgeon a victim to death, but we would look foolish if we called them “weapons” when we them on display at Walmart. Why? Because more bats are swung at baseballs than people, despite their origin as one of mankind’s first weapons, the club.


Similarly, the first use of a self-powered vehicle was to move artillery. In light of the tens of thousands of deaths by automobile, are they weapons or vehicles?

Firearms were originally designed as a battle implement. Their first purpose was to inflict human casualties; there is no argument to that fact. Today that is simply not the case - the vast majority of ammunition is produced and fired peacefully at paper targets. It is almost always incorrect to call pistols, rifles, and shotgun “weapons.”

So, why do some people insist on calling all firearms “weapons” in any situation? The answer is simple: Brainwashing.

Fear sells newspapers and keeps attention. This comes from our primal need to survive. On the 6 o’clock news, we all keep track of the Ebola virus. We want to know if it’s close to us. Some might tune out for sports and weather, but we will all have a universal interest in staying alive. Media knows that, so they provoke that emotional reaction the most natural and effective way possible–by implementing fear.

Original article is here: http://badgerlakeobserver.blogspot.com/2014/10/sporting-equipment-or-assault-weapons.html
 
So, why do some people insist on calling all firearms “weapons” in any situation?
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I do exactly that. Why? Because people who treat them as anything but weapons are going to get careless.

Firearms are weapons. That's what they were designed for. If we should use them for "sporting" purposes, great. That's not the point.

In the public debate, I can hue and cry all I like that I've only ever used the AR-15 for sporting purposes. If I do that, my opponents will show footage of military engagements and point out the rather un-sporting role in which it's been used in public shootings.

We have to acknowledge the intent of the firearm as a weapon.
 
I work at a big box store where I sell firearms and I am forbidden to call them weapons. We don't sell weapons, we sell firearms. Even when I am showing a gentleman shotguns and pistol caliber carbines to defend his family from home invasions, they're still not supposed to be weapons. Well, my store may not sell weapons, but most firearms I certainly call weapons, and they are among the greatest personal defense weapons ever created. A .22 rifle may be in the same category of a baseball bat, a sporting implement capable of being a weapon in the right hands, but the AR 15 is a weapon that has had sports built around it. It is an incredibly effective weapon -- or else we would not see need to fight for it under our second amendment rights to bear arms - arms meaning weapons
 
I disagree. "Firearm" is accurate, despite the diction of the USMC. When used to attack something they become a weapon by virtue of use.
 
This has been discussed into the ground. It is now seen as a defense against gun grabbers to claim that certain guns (AR/AK) are really modern sporting rifles. This is to convince gun grabbers to leave them alone.

This is stupid. You surrender the purpose of the RKBA to defend yourself and prevent tyranny by denying their use as weapons and the right to have efficacious weapons for such purposes.

The government can easily control dangerous bowling balls, airbags, tractors, and other tools. Guns are protected for being weapons.

If you buy into that horsepoop that they are not weapons, you are on your knees in front of the gun grabbers.

There are also a myriad to technical reasons in object categorization and concept formation theory to suggest that the modern sporting rifle folks are fooling themselves thinking they can influence public opinion with their blather.

Also, surveys by the NSSF indicate that most of the recent purchases of ARs were for self-defense and NOT sport! Shooting paper is practice for that.

The sporting uses for guns are derivatives of their lethal purpose against other people or animals.

Bah - :mad:
 
I work at a big box store where I sell firearms and I am forbidden to call them weapons. We don't sell weapons, we sell firearms.
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This even extends to some of the NRA training stuff. You're not supposed to call them weapons in First Steps or Basic Pistol.

Yeah, well...they are weapons. One might keep grandpa's Civil War saber on the mantle as decoration. Now it's a conversation piece, but it was built and intended to be a weapon. My AR-15 might just be for punching paper in my hands, and some of my revolvers are strictly target builds, but both were designed as weapons.

One of the common arguments we make is that cars kill more people than guns. The most common retort is, "well, cars aren't designed to kill people." If I haven't thought the argument through, I'm going to look pretty silly.
 
That is what I was suggesting in concept formation.

If one looks at the core concept of firearms - it is for their use as a weapon of lethal force.

That is not a core concept for an auto. Accidents in cars are from their misuse and not their primary purpose.

The primary purpose of a firearms is to fire a projectile that harms. Sporting games are practice for such.

It is a tragic but acceptable risk and side effect than doctors and cars kill people but not a consequence of their purpose.

This is not true for guns. Harm is their core instrumental purpose. The misuse comes from people who misuse them but not because they were not designed primarily as weapons.

There has to be a countervailing good for the utility as weapons to allow their presence in society. Those are found in the modern discussions of the RKBA - SD and defense against tyranny. Defense against invasion probably is not seen as core anymore.

While people discard the defense against tyranny argument, I would turn them to the recent spate of books on the role of arms in the success of the Civil Rights Movement. There are quite a few new books on it that clearly suggest that African-Americans clearly used arms to protect the Civil Rights movement in their fight against the governmental tyranny of segregation and the terror of government supported night riders.

It is hard to come up with a tool or sporting instrument that would do that.
 
Baseball bats and automobiles- and hammers, pocketknives, axes, chainsaws, screwdrivers, and jet airliners- have obvious beneficial utility value to society at large, despite their ability to cause death and destruction if misused.

The fundamental moral and ethical underpinning of the gun rights debate is that a gun's value to society is not so clear-cut, as its inherent purpose is to kill things by punching holes in them from a great distance. Its utility for other purposes is very limited. Furthermore, most shooting sports were originally devised to train gun users how to kill things more efficiently, even if the sport may have veered substantially away from that goal over many years of competition. (The same goes for swords and fencing.)

Firearms are weapons. To feign otherwise is a contrived and easily defeated sham, and people who argue this viewpoint are generally naive, dishonest, or somewhere in between.

Instead of playing silly games with semantics, I would rather argue the importance of my right to collective and individual self-defense.
 
Your topic has made me realize something interesting that I never considered. All but one of my firearms I am sure I have refered to as weapons. That's chiefly because when every I have purchased a gun (so far) I have considered it's role in home defense as atleast part of it's intended use. Even if 99% of my intention for it is plinking or target shooting. In my mind they are weapons first, and sporting equipment 2nd.

I can honestly say the one exception I have is the hunting rifle I inherited from an uncle. I don't think I've ever refered to it or considered it a weapon, only a "rifle".

The lesson I take away from this tid bit of self discovery is that people are going to label things like this according to their perceived intent. To a critic that only imagines a gun being turned on the public, it's a weapon. To a 3-gun champ, it's a sporting rifle. To a collecter it's an artifact. To a politician, it's a prop.

Here's the kicker, NONE of them are wrong.
 
But which purpose makes a case for constitutional protection?

Not an artifact, prop or sporting rifle. Most of the three gun folk have guns for weapons use, I would think.

Here's a problem with sports. Let's say that Mayor Bloomberg suggest that he loves three-gun. However, to protect the public - your three-guns must be stored under lock and key at the gun club. You can check them out to practice but can't have them at home.

Thus, we have gun sports and nothing else. I think some European countries have such a system. In England, sporting guns must be locked at home, IIRC, except in extraordinary circumstances.
 
This has been discussed into the ground. It is now seen as a defense against gun grabbers to claim that certain guns (AR/AK) are really modern sporting rifles. This is to convince gun grabbers to leave them alone.
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Not in my case we always called them firearms while realizing when used as such they were indeed Weapons.
 
Australia and New Zealand apparently allow you to have 3 gun and IPSC suitable guns. Under license, locked at your local range and only after you've been enrolled at a club for a year and regularly shot during that time. Many states could end up that way if not for the second amendment, which protects weapons
 
Similarly, the first use of a self-powered vehicle was to move artillery.
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I think that one is open to debate. The first military use of a self powered vehicle, you might be right...

and just FYI, the Germans used armored selfpropelled artillery and called them "Assault guns" (Sturmgeschutze)

A sword is a weapon, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of swords today are decorations.

The real cause of the issue, "weapons" or not, is the nature of our language. Words have multiple meanings, and context MATTERS.

We describe objects two basic ways, mostly by what it is (which includes its designed purpose), but sometimes, we describe things by how they are actually used. ANYTHING can be USED as a WEAPON!

The baseball bat isn't intended to be one, but if used as one, it is a weapon.
Not using a weapon as a weapon doesn't change the fact that it is a weapon.

A woman was recently convicted of killing a man with a high heel shoe. Was it a shoe? or a weapon? In her case, it was both.
 
Yes, it was in Houston, and the newsmedia created a certain amount of confusion by calling it a stiletto, as in stiletto heel. First time I read the story I thought it was a knife.
 
ANYTHING can be USED as a WEAPON!
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True, no argument.
I have 2 swords, both are strictly decorative as I have no interest in learning swordplay, & apparently no skill with it either. Years back I went to a fencing class & I have zero sense of point (knowing or feeling where the tip of the blade is without staring at it!)

However one is a Japanese "Wakizashi" short sword, the other a double handed Claymore sword.
The wakizashi is considered a "weapon" because it has a sharp functional edge. The Much bigger, heavier double handed isn't because its "legally blunted". Let me assure you if I took a full blooded, double handed swipe at you with the edge of a 12 pound 5' long steel bar it'll act every bit like a weapon! ;)
 
Lots of firearms are not intended to be weapons, duck guns and deer rifles, for example. Can they be used as weapons? Sure. But referring to them as "weapons" implies their purpose is something that it is not.
 
Can olympic competition guns be honestly called weapons? Only if they are used as such and that applies to standard firearms as well. To remain as neutral as possible I call them firearms, especially when sending an item to Letters to the Editor at newspapers.
 
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Let's be honest and say that there is a huge difference between a High Standard Olympic .22 Short and, say, M1A scout rifle designed for military purposes. Or even a Mossberg 500 kept for home defensive use as a weapon. It's certainly not a sporting implement when you keep it in your home specifically for the purposes of disabling somebody if they attack you. For all we know, an Olympic .22 short isn't even protected under the 2nd amendment, being that it has no militia purpose.
 
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