Ever the Optimist

Ever the optimist, lets suppose ‘our’ side wins Heller, and wins by a decent margin. We'll celebrate that evening by drinking heavily and shooting our AK’s into the air as we always do, naturally, but what NEXT? We’ll have positive momentum on rolling back oppressive gun restrictions, but it’d be a good idea to concentrate our effort on the achievable and focus on one thing. One onerous law to rollback at the federal level.

Some want the big bite of the apple and want to roll back the machine gun bans, and others beside me have chimed on how the ‘straights’ aren’t ready for this big a step. AND, people forget, there are machine gun collectors that don’t want restrictions on machine guns lifted. A lot of them treat their collection as a monetary investment, if you repeal the 1986 Hughes Amendment, even, then machine guns made after 1986 would be available for sale, and the prices on the pre-restriction guns would plummet, destroying their investment.

There is a much better chance that the restriction on suppressors could be lifted. Ahh, the evil silencer! Criminals LOVE them, right? Oh, come ON. What criminal, already willing to commit murder and risk being caught for that, is dissuaded by the fact someone may HEAR him? The plethora of sneaky assassins plying their trade with 9mm pistol that sounds like a mouse sneeze is a Hollywood illusion. What isn’t an illusion is hearing loss. If you take the negative, and illusory, connotation away from suppressors maybe we can protect law enforcement and save the taxpayer some money by not having to prematurely medically retire police officers because of hearing loss. I’d love to plink a .22 at my buddy’s farm without disturbing the neighbors, and without having to wear clunky mickey-mouse cans to protect my hearing.

That’d be nice, but what I’d prefer, personally, is lifting restrictions on surplus ammo sales. The word is "That dang Clinton and the UN passed rules that make the US military destroy all surplus ammo.” But that’s just 'the word'. 'The word' says black helicopters are coming to round up everybody aligned politically right of Ted Kennedy and take them to concentration camps in South Dakota, so I don’t know how good that Word is.

What I DO know is you can’t get US Military surplus ammo. Here’s a halfway decent word from Uncle on a single instance of surplus destruction, but it is anecdotal rather than comprehensive. More anecdotal evidence is from former soldiers like Chuckles and Corky being given the chore of burning through ammo, just to get rid of it. I’m still looking for links to an actual government policy regarding domestic military ammo. What ISN’T anecdotal is the dearth of domestic surplus ammo supply. Why? There is plenty to go around. The military won’t keep ammo after a certain age, but that doesn’t mean that ammo is bad. Ammo keeps a long time. Why is the Military destroying ammo that we paid for, instead of trying to defray costs by selling it to the civilian market? Someone made a rule that it was a bad idea to sell surplus ammo to civilians, and I bet their reasoning is as flawed and hoplophobic as any other anti-gun ordnance. And as ineffective as any other anti-gun rule at achieving it’s stated purpose.

Anyway, THAT’s what I’d like to concentrate on next, if I had my druthers. I think reasonable Americans would be on our side on it. It could be a vector to help out the CMP and get THEM more funding, and that would be good for the shooting sports for the increase in target shooting interest. And THAT would hopefully lead to more rifle ranges to compete at and practice at and expend all this ammo at. And to leave preposition at the end of sentences at.

I don't know if my druthers will match up to future reality as much as I'd like. But an optimist can hope.