Gun Thread (4-7-2013)

The Giffords-Kelly Lie Machine Strikes Again

Not content to let her husband have all the action, Gabrielle Giffords falsely implies that her assailant was not subjected to a background check.

Right now, we have one system where responsible gun owners take a background check — my husband, Mark, took one just last month, and it took 5 minutes and 36 seconds. I remember waiting a lot longer than that for the subway to take me to my office when I lived in New York City! And then we have a second system for those who don’t want to take a background check. Those people — criminals, or people suffering from mental illness, like the young man who shot me — can buy as many guns as they want on the Internet or at a gun show, no questions asked.

There are several lies here, in fact. Let's dispense with the main one: Jared Loughner passed a background check, so STFU.

Now for the rest of her bullshit. First off, I was at a gun store last weekend and watched a guy wait a hell of a lot longer than 5 minutes for his "instant" background check to come back. It got flagged for further review, and he said this happens to him every time he buys a gun. There must be something in the database that's not perfectly clean, unlike ... say ... the record of an astronaut and husband of a congressman, that keeps tripping it. He still didn't have his gun when I left the store, but the owner and other customers got a good chuckle when I joked that adding every private transaction nationwide would obviously make this process more efficient.

And, for the millionth time, gun purchases "on the Internet" or "at a gun show" are subject to all federal and state laws governing the buyer and seller. Why aren't they screaming about the "classified ad loophole"? It's the same thing.

So, once again, we have people agitating for new laws on a false premise and without examining why the existing ones don't work. See also, Democrats.

Gun Of The Week

What's this beauty?

(answer below)

Marksmanship Award

Gun Of The Week - Answer

That's the Colt M1877 "Lightning" double-action revolver in .38 Long Colt, with its distinctive bird's-head grip. The store I was in last weekend had a nice one that I would have picked up in ordinary times. Now my budget is devoted to ammo over museum pieces.

Shock! Horror! Conservative Posts Infographic At BuzzFeed

@collegepolitico posted a nice infographic over at BuzzFeed this week.

Good on him for thinking to go beyond just preaching to the choir. We need to be doing more of this kind of thing.

Interesting Site

One of our erstwhile readers tipped me to thedonovan.com, which has a nice collection of gun pr0n you morons might want to check out.

Tips

If there are topics you're interested in seeing in the gun thread, please send them to AoSHQGunThread at gmail. You can also send them to me on Twitter at @AndyM1911.

posted by Andy at 12:55 PM

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