Blind groper wrote:Incidentally, Seth, you are using the word 'hoplophobe' incorrectly. While it includes a fear of firearms, the meaning is much broader than that. Hoplophobia is a fear of technology, but especially of weapons. A hoplophobe is afraid of many things, and so it is not an appropriate use of the word to use it to describe people who want gun control to be tightened.
"Hoplophobe" is a word coined by the late Col. Jeff Cooper in 1962 to describe "mental aberration consisting of an unreasoning terror of gadgetry, specifically, weapons."
I coined the term "hoplophobia" in 1962 in response to a perceived need for a word to describe a mental
aberration consisting of an unreasoning terror of gadgetry, specifically, weapons. The most common
manifestation of hoplophobia is the idea that instruments possess a will of their own, apart from that of their
user. This is not a reasoned position, but when you point this out to a hoplophobe he is not impressed because
his is an unreasonable position. To convince a man that he is not making sense is not to change his viewpoint
but rather to make an enemy. Thus hoplophobia is a useful word, but as with all words, it should be used
correctly. Source: Cooper, Jeff. Vol. 5 No. 7 Jeff Cooper's Commentaries. June 1997, pg. 39. (link to document available at Wikipedia in the footnotes section of "hoplophobe."
It's used today as a generic term for "gun banners" and others of that ilk who make the asinine suggestion that "assault weapons" are somehow capable of independent action and that because these lumps of inanimate steel and aluminum are so "dangerous" they must be banned. The term refers to the mental defect of blaming the inanimate object rather than the human being operating it as an argument in the gun-ban agenda.
It speaks to an unreasoning fear of the aesthetics of a particular design style of long rifles; the semi-automatic rifle which resembles in many or indeed most respects the design and appearance of the military fully-automatic assault rifle like the M-16/M4.
Hoplophobes deliberately try to conflate the aesthetics of semi-automatic "military style" rifles with the appearance and operation of actual military firearms. Those in the MSM who write on the subject usually (and often deliberately, knowingly and mendaciously) call them "machine guns" when they are not. It's all a part of the leftist agenda to demonize gun ownership and place the useful idiots of the proletarian dependent class in equally unreasoning fear of the aesthetics of a rifle. The fact is that the aesthetics have nothing whatever to do with the actual design and operation of the weapon, which like all semi-automatic firearms, fires one round with one trigger pull.
The purpose of this hyperbole and mendacious fear mongering is ultimately to ban ALL semi-automatic firearms of ANY description, including handguns, on the bogus theory that they must be banned because they "shoot too many bullets too quickly."
Indeed, in California, an "assault weapon" (AR-15 variant) must have a special magazine release button that cannot be operated with the fingers, but instead has a small hole that requires the operator to use the tip of a live round of ammunition to free the magazine. The idiotic theory here is to "slow down" the operator's ability to change magazines. For what purpose is not entirely clear, nor is it at all clear that the system has any significant effect on magazine change times.
I encountered just such a rife at the Fort Benning International Sniper Competition a few weeks ago, and the expedient used by the owner was a ring on his second finger fitted with a point that would trip the release. His mag changes were not perceptibly longer than those of standard ARs.
Obviously such a system would have been of no use in Connecticut, even if magazine capacity were limited to 10 rounds as Diane Feinstein is insisting on. Of course she knows she can't ban retroactively the possession of large-capacity magazines, so she's playing political games with her bill because there are
tens of millions of U.S. GI issue 30 round M-16 magazines currently in circulation, not to mention millions of commercial variants that hold up to 100 rounds each.
The notion that a magazine ban would make the slightest difference in the next 200 years is simply laughable.
I myself procured more than 100 30 round magazines in anticipation of just such a ban, including a 100 round drum magazine.
And I'll procure some more. Thus, I'll have a lifetime supply of magazines, and any I can spare will become increasingly valuable on the black market, which will flourish regardless because there is absolutely no way to track magazine sales.
As I've said so many times, the problem is not "assault weapons" or even handguns, the problem is that, as in this case, nobody in the building but the bad guy had a gun.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said on Fox News Sunday,
“Once we have this actually open dialogue about the situation you find out…every mass killing of more than three people in recent history has been in a place where guns were prohibited, except for one. They choose this place. They know no one will be armed. You know, having been a judge, having reviewed photographs of these horrific scenes and knowing that children have these defensive wounds, gun shots through their arms and hands as they try to protect themselves and hearing the heroic stories of the principal lunging trying to protect…Chris, I wish to God she had had an M4 in her office locked up so when she heard gun fire she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands, but she takes him out, takes his head off before he could kill those precious kids.” ...
http://times247.com/articles/rep-gohmer ... z2FGwq7b6M
I agree. And I wish the school district had taken security seriously and installed armored, bulletproof doors on the foyer, among other simple and cost-effective security measures that could have stopped this assault before it began.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S
"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke
"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth
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