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Old 12-17-2013, 09:26 PM
  #46
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I'll be honest, I wasn't aware that the United States had "ultra socialists" of any impact.

But that just goes to show what I know, I suppose.

Unless, of course, it's just the latest Boogeyman created entirely by the extreme right to justify its... existence, I guess.
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Old 12-31-2013, 05:17 PM
  #47
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US gun owners shoot themselves in the foot

On December 31, a century-old Missouri smelter will shut its doors. The occasion will further propel a bizarre conspiracy theory in which an "anti-gun" Obama administration is buying up and eradicating bullet supplies.


Paula Cartwright is a "lifelong gun owner" and part-time employee at Triggers, a gun shop in the US state of Wyoming. Gun ownership in Wyoming is among the highest in the US. As such, the 41-year-old clerk has been on the front lines, so to speak, as ammunition prices have simultaneously spiked in price and disappeared from her shelves.

"Everybody is stocking up on ammo," she told DW. "We don't have any .380 ammo, and we can't keep .22 long rifles on the shelf. Right now we have four little boxes of [.22 long rifle ammunition], and that's highly unusual." Typically, her shelves would be piled with them.

For gun owners, bullets can still be found and purchased - but at prices that have led some to speculate of a "bullet bubble." At the online platform of the popular American magazine Guns and Ammo, a forum thread in December entitled "The last person to post in this thread wins a brick of .22 ammo" quickly prompted a reply that no one would win, since, "At the present prices, nobody can afford to put up a brick of .22 as the prize."

A number of factors influence the high price of bullets, but in 2013 it stemmed largely from a single theory proposed on a fringe conspiracy website that gained an astonishing amount of traction. Over the course of this year, the theory prompted a Congressional investigation, a legislative proposal known as the AMMO Act of 2013, and it forced the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to publicly deny that it was "stockpiling" ammunition.

Info Wars

The conspiracy began with a rhetorical article on the Info Wars website run by Alex Jones, a 39-year-old radio journalist, author, documentarian and conspiracy theorist. Through his work or in public interviews, he often claims active US government involvement - whether in the 9/11 attacks or the Boston Marathon bombings - where Congressional and journalistic investigations have concluded the opposite.

The article asked why the DHS was issuing a procurement request for 450 million hollow point bullets. It was posted quietly in March 2012. Even as the number grew to 1.6 billion bullets of all varieties over the following months, few outside conspiracy theory networks and fact-checking websites paid attention. In late 2012, the NRA issued a written statement politely debunking the theory and explaining the rationale behind the purchases by the government agency. Other experts reiterated that the DHS' procurement request was not an order but rather a query to see which manufacturers could theoretically meet such an order.

So too did gun manufacturers deny the rumors, says gun rights lawyer Steve Halbrook. The second amendment expert told DW that current ammunition scarcity is both a self-fulfilling prophecy and part of a regular cycle.

"We've had ammo shortages since the Iraq and Afghanistan wars," he said.

Media on board

In spite of the numerous denials, the influential Drudge Report news aggregator website began linking to some of the Info Wars articles in early 2013. In March, a Forbes article requested a "national conversation" on the massive DHS "purchases." Fox news personality Lou Dobbs further fanned the flames when he asked where, exactly, those "two billion" bullets had gone.

One month later, Republican legislators introduced the Ammunition Management for More Obtainability Act of 2013 (AMMO), seeking to restrict the DHS' ability to source such quantities of ammunition.

Though the bill died, it continued receiving vocal support in the following months and lent an air of credibility to far-fetched claims that the Obama administration was stockpiling ammunition to reduce public access to it.

"When Obama was in the Illinois legislature - and then later a senator from Illinois to the US Congress - he did support very strong restrictions on firearms," Halbrook told DW. As president, however, no such restrictions have been enacted even though the president has voiced support for them. Ammunition shortages, the lawyer added, are simply not the result of administration policy.

A legal loophole?

Though the ammunition conspiracy theory appears to be well off the mark, it raises an interesting legal prospect: With rights to bear firearms firmly entrenched in the second amendment to the US Constitution, could an anti-gun administration theoretically evade that legal protection through an anti-bullet policy instead?

Halbrook says no. "Bullets, like guns, are protected under the second amendment to the US constitution," he says. As evidence he cites the "District of Columbia v. Heller" case, one he personally and successfully argued before the US Supreme Court, which overturned a Washington, D.C. law requiring guns to remain unloaded, disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.

Nor are there any real "loopholes" for an anti-gun administration to pursue. Previous bills aimed at restricting access to ammunition by levying taxes of up to 500 percent have received no support at the federal or state level. More recently, a California law prohibiting the use of lead in hunting ammunition received widespread condemnation by gun rights activists - but affects shotgun pellets almost exclusively and is rooted in the detrimental effects lead has on the environment.

Lead is where the conspiracy theory will live on into 2014. Rather than adhere to more restrictive air standards put in place by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Doe Run lead bullion smelter, the last of its kind in the US, will close on December 31. Since lead is used in some forms of ammunition, conspiracy theorists view it as yet another attempt to clamp down on ammunition supplies.

Halbrook, however, is having none of it. "Three percent of US lead is used to make bullets and shotgun shells, and its not obtained from the Doe Run center," he said. "[Ammunition manufacturers] use harder lead mixed with tin and other metals."

Whether Halbrook's statements - or any other statements for that matter - can quell conspiracy theories and ultimately drop the price of ammunition seems unlikely.

When told of the unfounded rumors that, in closing Doe Run, the US government was targeting ammunition supplies, Paula Cartwright at Triggers gun shop said, "I don't think they're rumors."
I hadn't heard this particular conspiracy theory before. I was rather shocked and amused to discover it exists, till I learned that the normal media is taking it seriously.

This is Alex Jones we're talking about.

I'm no clinical psychiatrist, but that man's as close to certifiable as I have ever seen.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great idea. But it's simply not true.

And now the freaking government is taking this crap seriously?

This is insane.
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Old 01-07-2014, 07:14 PM
  #48
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Chicago gun sales ban ruled unconstitutional by US judge

A US judge has struck down Chicago's ban on sales and transfers of firearms, finding the city went too far in its effort to prevent legal sales of guns.

Judge Edmond Chang ruled the ban was unconstitutional, but allowed it to stand while the city appealed.

The judge also said in his ruling that there was little evidence the ban was effective in reducing gun violence.

Chicago has been plagued by gang violence, and has some of the strictest gun laws in the US.

City officials say the effectiveness of the ban on gun sales has been diminished by lax gun laws in the state of Illinois and in surrounding states.

'Really careful'

Roderick Drew, a spokesman for Chicago's law department, said Mayor Rahm Emanuel disagreed with the ruling.

Mr Emanuel has told the city's lawyer to consider other options to regulate firearms sales strictly, he added.

"Every year Chicago police recover more illegal guns than officers in any city in the country, a factor of lax federal laws as well as lax laws in Illinois and surrounding states," Mr Drew said told the Associated Press.

"We need stronger gun safety laws, not increased access to firearms within the city."

Gun rights advocates hailed the ruling.

The judge's decision "shows how out of step and outrageous Chicago's ordinances really are", said Todd Vandermyde of the National Rifle Association, a powerful gun lobby group.

A lawsuit against the ban was originally filed by the Illinois Association of Firearms Retailers and three Chicago residents.

One of those residents, antique gun collector Kenneth Pacholski, said the ban was unreasonable.

"All the people I know who own guns legally are really careful," said Mr Pacholski, whose wife also sued.

"I'm a collector. My guns are not going anywhere unless I know where they're going because I don't want to be responsible for someone's death."

Last year, a US appeals court struck down the state of Illinois's blanket ban on carrying concealed firearms, the last in the US. And in 2010, the US Supreme Court struck down the city's ban on owning firearms.

Chicago has struggled to turn the tide of gun violence for several years, ending 2013 with more than 400 homicides. Shootings are common in the city's South and West Sides and children as young as six-months-old have been caught in the crossfire.
It seems the problem is more systemic than one ban can successfully address.

Shame, really.
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Old 01-08-2014, 12:34 AM
  #49
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People who collect guns baffle me.
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Old 01-08-2014, 02:27 PM
  #50
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"All the people I know who own guns legally are really careful," said Mr Pacholski, whose wife also sued.
And that's exactly why so many accidents do happen... Yeah. Not a narrow-minded view on the issue at all.

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Old 01-08-2014, 06:35 PM
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Yeah, the gunman at Newtown?

His entire arsenal had been bought legally by his mother.

Of course, however careful she may have been with her stockpile didn't wind up mattering very much in the end.
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Old 01-09-2014, 04:06 AM
  #52
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You can't be careful with a gun. How can you gingerly fire a bullet? lol. The fact is that when you make the decision to buy a gun (unless you're a collector) you are making the decision that if you have to, you will kill someone. I could never bring myself to that mental level and I don't know how so many people can.
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Old 01-09-2014, 08:25 PM
  #53
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Well, I've known a lot of gun owners and, honestly, the laws in Canada are such that being careful was indeed part of the deal.

Of course, the laws here used to be quite stringent in that regard.

Point is, I could never relax around firearms, but I can't judge people who do.

It is just my opinion that no civilian household needs a weapon that isn't used for hunting animals, by which I mean a shotgun or the like.

Automatic riffles have no place in a civilian household. Anything that makes it easier to shoot has no place in a civilian household.

That's just my opinion, of course.
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Old 01-10-2014, 04:06 AM
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No one needs an assault rifle cept for military. You can't use it while hunting unless you want instant puree. I'm uncomfortable around guns, too. Advertising you have a gun is, in my head, saying "i'm capable of murder if need be".
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Old 01-10-2014, 03:46 PM
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I wouldn't feel comfortable at all with a gun in my home either. Especially when there are kids around, too...
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Old 01-11-2014, 11:05 AM
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Weapons are inherently dangerous.

The only way to be careful with gun ownership is to go out of your way to create safety.

I don't believe the U.S. laws are quite there, to be honest.

And, again, I say that with all due respect to U.S. gun owners who go the extra step to be safe.

But, at the end of the day, it's kinda like sex, isn't it?

The only way to 100% prevent pregnancy and STIs is abstinence.

The only way to prevent gun accidents is to have no guns.
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Old 01-11-2014, 07:33 PM
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I wouldn't feel comfortable at all with a gun in my home either. Especially when there are kids around, too...
Absolutely agree! Kids are mischievous, get into stuff and everything you say no to, they will find a way to make it yes. Too many stories of them playing with guns and going wrong.
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Old 01-12-2014, 02:26 PM
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And, of course, too many stories of kids using their parents' guns to commit horrendous acts of violence.
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Old 01-12-2014, 03:19 PM
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These are just not the kind of items supposed to be kept around our youngest in my view
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Old 01-12-2014, 07:40 PM
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I'm not sure how anyone could disagree with that statement.
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