User Panel
Posted: 2/28/2006 4:16:10 AM EDT
Well? Yes, or no?
I say no. Either we get FOPA with the MG ban or we get no protections and restorations and the MG ban happens anyway. Poll coming. Let's get a show of hands to settle this once and for...aw, who am I kidding. |
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Hell yes! He sold us out! He did NOTHING for us! Hes a traitor! Hes a theif! Hes a backstabber! Hes a Communist who bankrupt our country! Hes a Socialist who wears red! Hes a liberal!
Now that thats out of the way....... I have no fucking clue. I was too young to understand the implications one way or the other when he signed it, and now its a done deal I havent bothered to look into it because aint shit we can do to change it. |
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Your subject line and the poll question are opposite, thats going to skew the results (since not everyone reads the poll question itself and just vote right away). I suggest you edit one of the two so they match.
Kharn |
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BIIIIIIG mistake. HE didn't have to throw anyone a bone like the MG ban. Revolutionary piece of legislation. Shoudl have been forced through clean.
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OF COURSE you poll is garbage in how it is worded. They call it "push polling."
No, it was a bad idea. NO WAY you piss away rights to the very guns intended by the Second Amendment. Some things CANNOT be compromised. And its a fallacy that it HAD to be this way. Its a false dilemma to say he HAD to give away rights to MG's to gain certain other things. Reagan caved, and its a black mark on his record. Sorry. |
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Yes he should have vetoed it but the question remains why did the NRA support the bill with the ban in the first place and tell him to sign it? Were they realy that obtuse in their thinking that the ban wouldn't stick?
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It was all about the political game, even for the NRA. SOMETIMES its a good idea to take what you can get - give a little and get a little. But NOT with the very guns protected by the Second Amendment. The NRA, like many here, made a judgment call. It was the wrong one. |
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I think the NRA misread how important MGs were to the community and then they passed that to Regan.
They were almost right because it took ten years for MG prices to start up. If it really was such a big deal back then, people would have started hoarding instantly. |
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I think you meant to say "Yes" it was a good idea. |
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Upward price pressures due to supply and demand simply took a little time to kick in. |
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rarely will I ever give garandman a .................... +1 Agree 100% dude. |
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Ten years is not a little time. No one cared. |
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I'm not saying there wasn't some apathy, but supply and demand forced prices up. People made a calculated decision - take what I can get right now, without thought of the big picture. Ironically, while defending their property rights, they gutted the Second Amendment, which is about the implements suited to militias, i.e. MG's and their accoutrements. |
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Regan WAS wrong... but then so was the NRA.... one of the reasons I'm STILL a bit ticked off at:/]them.... I'm STILL a member... (thet seem to be getting better...)
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Yeah, the poll and the thread title were screwed up. It dawned on me while I was on my way to work.
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[Red Foreman]Dumbass![/Red Foreman] |
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The 1986 MG ban which was ameneded to the 1986 FOPA was an atrocity. However, there were worse atrocities being committed against gun owners and the 1986 FOPA stopped those attrocities.
If the US Constitution had any value at all then the 1986 FOPA would have been unnecessary and the 1986 MG ban would be invalid. The sad reality is that the second amendment died in 1934 and it was burried in 1968. In 1986 we got some protections in exchange for a privelage that relatively few people had chosen to excercise. |
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While I must agree that you must give/take a little on some issues, the 2nd is not one of them for me. I agree with garandman. |
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Do you have any idea what it's like to have three young children (one of whom is a baby) who won't sleep at night because the youngest wakes up screaming bloody murder...because he has to burb or something? When baby has a rough night, we all have a rough night. Daddy has to go to work in the mornin' though. |
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See, my take is that no one involved even realized that MGs made any difference to people. It really didnt and it showed after it was passed. There was no outcry, not a peep. Twenty years later when M16s are 14,000 bucks people care but they didnt then. Hindsight is 20/20. |
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Well, I'd expect the NRA and Ronaldus Maximus to have a better understanding of "essential liberties" like 2A, something moreso than your average sheeple. 20 years later I'm STILL having to explain it to people , even WITH hindsight. |
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Hell yes. It was the best we could expect and the FIRST time in modern US history that gun control laws had been rolled back on a federal level.
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+1000 No offense, but fuck MG's. I just got several cases of 7.62X54R delivered to my front door. No signature/ID and no gunstore ammo prices. Just one of many rights 'we' (I was a teenager living in Canada at the time) got back. I talked with a former NRA president (patient) from around that time and he was able to put things in perspective. Yes, we 'lost' MG's, but 'gained' a whole lot more in return. Reagan is a hero for what he did. |
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MGs weren't that popular before the '86 ban because the NFA was doing what it was intended to, tax them out of existence.
Now that $200 isn't that much money, the popularity of all NFA stuff has increased. Also, the internet has made it more visible and more available than ever. From Reagan's viewpoint in 1986, signing FOPA as is was the right thing to do. The rights we got back were worth it. Looking back on it, he should have waited for a clean bill. Hindsight is 20/20 though. |
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Roger that. But I'm personally glad he didn't decide to go for double or nothing, which is the chance he would have taken. |
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I'm way too young to really know about all the crossing states bs. Hell I'm already in TX why should I ever leave anyway?
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FOPA restricting machine guns is no different than a law restricting speech intended to influence politicians.
Both are anathema to the Bill of Rights, gutting the first and second amendments from their intent. FOPA benefitted gun colelctors and FFL dealers, NEITHER OF WHICH are the focus of the Second Amendment. FOPA sold out the militia, which IS the intent of 2A. Rationalize however you want, everything I've said here is true. |
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Sure, but you are discounting what the alternative was for the 2nd Amendment before FOPA ever reached Reagan's desk. What good is MG ownership if the ammunition to feed them (and every other firearm, btw) is strictly regulated? What good is MG ownership if you can't travel into the next state with so much as a .22 pistol without getting arrested? What good is MG ownership if every time you sold a firearm the JBTs showed up at your house to haul you away for operating a gunshop without an FFL? This was reality before FOPA. If your analogy about restricting speech intended to influence politicians is a valid comparison with FOPA, then the reverse is true as well. Without your hypothetical law (FOPA), we still may have had the "right" to influence politicians, but pens, pencils, ink, and paper would be severely restricted, and anyone caught outside of his home state with a typewriter or printer could be arrested. Don't bother selling a computer, either, because you could get arrested for that, too. What good is the right of free speech to influence politicians if every aspect of implementing that right is strictly regulated or restricted with the penalties being felonies with major jail time? Same with FOPA. Sure, we lost NEW MGs, but FOPA gave us back most of the tools we lost under '68 GCA. And with '68 GCA, we effectively had little or no 2nd Amendment rights anyway, even with legal ownership of new MGs. |
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SteyrAug listed for me what was regained by FOPA. From what he said, you are over demonizing GCA 68. My parents were both gun owners / collectors and heavily politically active pre-86. GCA 68 was NOWHERE on their radar screen. Its just NOT true that America was a gun owners gulag pre 86. In my estimation, none of what FOPA restores was the intent of the Second Amendment. Selling guns at a profit, mail order ammo, Mausers Enfields are all nice rights, but not the primary focus of the Second Amendment. The primary focus of the Second Amendment is the militia FOPA sold out the militia for gun collectors and FFL dealers. I'm happy to have those rights back, but at a HORRIBLE price. That's all I'm saying. |
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Do you remember the signs on I-395 at the border between CT and MA? You know, the ones that said ANYONE entering Massachusetts with a firearm faced a one year mandatory jail sentence? Those signs have been gone for almost twenty years now. Wonder why? |
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Ever tried to travel across state lines with a semi auto SBR? Did you get your Federal permission slip? FEDERAL permission slip? Yeah, things were wrong back then. Still are. I'll concede this much - About the ONLY part of FOPA that was true to 2A was this provision. But again, to gain teh right to bear arms you give away the very arms 2A intends to protect? I still like my analogy - FOPA is like still having a key to a car that was stolen. |
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And the flip side of your analogy is just as valid. What's life like without FOPA (or your hypothetical law)? |
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I'd view life without FOPA as some inconveneinces, and just a different set of bogus rules. But we wouldn't have as much precedent of the precise arms intended to be protected by 2A being Federally regulated being "check with me" guns. Either way would suck. But we would still have the main intent of 2A more in tact than it is now. |
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Machine guns ceased to be viable "militia" weapons in 1934. At the time, a car cost $600 or so. The $200 NFA tax was outrageous, and it was intentionally outrageous. Congress didn't have the support to ban them outright so they banned them through taxation. Even in the 1950s the $200 tax was four times the price of a transferable MP44 for example. Think of it in today's dollars...how many of the "militia" would buy a transferable M16 for $5,000? It would be the same people who have MGs now...the well-to-do. Not the average gun owner. Not to mention the whole registration requirement, paperwork to move the thing around, etc. MGs are a curiosity and a collectible, nothing more, and they have been that way for 70+ years. |
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Machine guns ceased to be viable "militia" weapons in 1934. MGs are a curiosity and a collectible, nothing more, and they have been that way for 70+ years. Whcih is why the military has reverted to single shot bolt actions, and the fields of fire doctrine has been abandoned by the military. Riiighhhtt....OK.....<slowly backing away> |
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I thought the Dick Act pretty much killed the notion of a militia back in the 1910's?
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2A trumps any such thing. |
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MGs = mountain out of a molehill.
Reagan did the right thing. The real travesty was how the MG ban was added. |
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+1. |
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That's just wrong on so many levels. So the ability of the Fed gov't to make certain guns "check with me" access controlled by the Fed gov't is a "molehill?" Then so was the 94 import ban be, and the AWB. And NFA 34 and GCA 68. All "molehills." Don't you get it? Is it not obvious to you? ANY law that makes gun a priviledge is a BAD law. And the simple fact remains - IF FOPA was passed by Clinton or a Democrat, you'd be agaisnt it on Constituional grounds. Your inability to criticize compromising Republicans is teh ONLY reason you can't admit the obvious. And if the EXACT same law was passed doing the EXACT same thing to the first amendment, you'd be against it (I hope - not so sure anymore) |
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I'm gonna leave this thread for your continued discussion.
Its just silly of me to continue trying to convince people their hair is on fire. Carry on..... |
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i'm kinda on the fence on the FOPA. [obviously] without the MG ban i'd be all for it. i think Regan should have really made it a point to somehow have the ban re-examined, or removed after FOPA was passed. too many people ASSUMED it wouldn't stand up in court. nobody realized the courts would just not bother to take MG cases. |
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Bud, you are acting like we think it's "OK" to lose new MGs. It's not. We just think the trade-off was worth it. You don't. In the end, we all believe it sucks, so why grab your balls and go home? |
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Its gone past the point of productive discussion (your apparent crass euphemism not withstanding) . We disagree. That's fine. I don't want to crap in your thread. There's lots of other opinions out there, and its time I let them be heard. |
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Whoops. |
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In 1985 I remember $1,000 + stamp HK MP5s.
Host Gun HK94 $650 Reg. Sear $150 Gunsmithing $200 And I remember people saying "$1,000!?! Who the hell would pay $1,000 for something like that?!?" But here is the IMPORTANT THING to remember. SURE you could buy a MP5 for $1,000 in 1985. But IF you did, you went on "the list.' And this was the preFOPA list. Owning NFA stuff pre 1986 was about as safe as being a Branch Davidian. To this day, people are scared to own NFA stuff for fear of being "on the list" and that is a holdover from the pre FOPA days. |
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Sorry, that is the 1934 NFA. Has nothing to do with 68 GCA or FOPA. What WG was pointing out was that travelling with ANY firearm back then was similar to NFA travel today. |
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I don't need a cystal ball to know that without FOPA the domestic MG ban would have happened ANYWAY. We ALREADY HAD the MG ban on imported ones. Without FOPA the 68 GCA would be in FULL EFFECT TODAY and we'd have still lost MGs (domestic as well as foreign). You WOULDN'T be happy. 10,000 members of a forum dedicated to collectible (and long banned in their orignal version) rifles would be demonizing Reagan for NOT saving us back in 1986. |
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In editing my post, you missed my point.
And there's that fatalistic, white flag clairvoyance again. Like I said, past the point of prductive discussion. Have a nice day. |
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Arguably...and depending on one's point of view or perspective. "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." |
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