September 23, 2004

I still recall how furious I was to learn Congress had passed the 1994 Clinton Assault Weapons Ban. I still remember the treachery of Republican Texas Representative Jack Brooks, who promised he’d never let that bill out of his committee, but then he did after receiving a $10,000.00 grant to his alma mater. The bastard rightly lost re-election for it.

It wasn’t until later I realized what a total sham the AWB was. I went right out and bought a Daewoo, .223 semi-auto Korean weapon that takes 30-round clips of AR-15/M-16 weapons with ease and reliability.

What did the 1994 AWB deprive me of? Well, for starters, my Daewoo lacked a bayonet lug. Damn, you just don’t know how much I missed that bayonet! Then there was the flash hider. My life was never the same without that flash hider on the front of that barrel.

For those of you don’t know, a flash hider doesn’t hide the flash from whomever you might be shooting at. All it does is keep the muzzle flash from blinding the shooter when fired in the dark. See, the flash from the barrel of a .223 is pretty bright, so when a shooter fires it in the dark, the flash keeps him from staying on target for a moment until his eyes adjust. Daewoo simply put a cone on their barrel, which wasn’t technically a flash hider, but it did the same thing.

Then there was that evil folding stock. If you fold the stock on such a rifle, I challenge anyone to stick the gun in your pants and keep anybody from seeing it before you hold up that liquor store.

They named 19 specific weapons in the AWB, so the manufacturers just changed the name of their weapons. The whole thing was a joke except one: Limiting magazines to just 10 rounds.

That irritated me, since my Glock 32 holds 13 rounds in the pre-ban magazine and one in the pipe. Now I was limited to just 11 rounds instead of 14, but I always carry two extra magazines on me, so that limited me to 31 rounds instead of the usual 40, but if you can’t get it done with the first three shots in a handgun fight, you probably won’t get the chance to get it done anyway.

Besides that, Glock could still sell the body of the pre-ban magazines, so you bought the body, fitted it with nice new Wolff springs and the follower from the 10 round magazine that came with the gun, and you had a legal pre-ban, 13 round magazine that worked perfectly.

In the meantime, since AR-15 type magazines don’t have serial numbers, you could buy “pre-ban” 30 and 40 round magazines from any number of sources all over the USA, and there was no sign of the supply drying up.

In short, the Clinton Assault Weapons Ban was a joke.

However, the need for semi-automatic rifles with 30 or 40 round clips is a perfectly legitimate one. The Framers didn’t protect American’s right to keep and bear arms for personal self-defense or for hunting. No, they wanted Americans to be able to fight off any future tyrannical government with the same weapons our armed forces and police carry. They certainly didn’t want Americans to be armed with anything less, short of artillery and shoulder-fired surface to air missiles.

That was the whole reason for protecting Americans’ rights to keep and bear arms. The Framers knew that it would be a standing army or even the police, who would impose illegal laws and sanctions of an unconstitutional government on the people, so they wanted to make sure the people had an efficient way of dealing with such atrocities if the unthinkable were to happen.

I realize the foregoing is not politically correct now, but the Framers had a whole history of human nature to back up their concerns, to the extent that they amended the Constitution to assure just that.

Which brings me to the subject of gun control and a certain governor by the name of Schwarzenegger. In case you didn’t know, California Governor Arnold just signed a California law banning .50 caliber BMG target rifles. Now, since a .50 caliber BMG target rifle generally weighs about 30-35 pounds with a scope and bipod, and is about 3.5 feet or more long, it hasn’t been used in any crime I’m aware of, except perhaps by some nimrod who has taken an elk out of season at 2,500 yards. Outside of that, those rifles are about as useless for committing a crime as a broken leg. Nevertheless, the good governor banned them. Why?

There is only one reason for that ban: A .50 caliber BMG can use armor piercing bullets which can penetrate most armor on limousines, but how many Americans ride around in such armored limos? That’s right, only heads of state like presidents, governors and other such privileged souls like corporate executives. The rest of us don’t count.

The way I look at it, every American outside of California, who can afford one, should go right out and buy a .50 BMG rifle at your very earliest opportunity. They’re not cheap. The least expensive I’ve see are around $1,500.00 before you add the $1,100.00 scope. But just the fact that thousands of Americans have such guns in their arsenal should give just a bit of pause to legislators who pass unconstitutional laws like the Patriot Act. I also recommend buying up as many armor-piercing bullets for reloading as you can manage.

Just the thought of that warms the cockles of my heart. How about you?

Anyway, a couple of months ago, I was fixing fences on my property up Butte Falls Highway here in Oregon. The elk keep doing belly flops on my barbed wire fences trying to get into my pasture at night. They rip the big staples right out of the posts and drag the fencing with them.

So there I am on my trusty ATV, when I saw this dog digging up some ground squirrel holes on the side hill. I got off my ATV with my trusty Daewoo and 30 round magazine to see who he belonged to. As I approached, he started growling at me in the most menacing way, and then I realized he wasn’t alone. It was a whole pack of feral dogs laid up on that hill, and they all stood up and started coming at me.

People keep abandoning dogs in the countryside around here, thinking it’s better than taking the dog to the pound. What happens is that these dogs get together and pack up just like wolves, chasing down deer and elk just like their basic instincts tell them to do. What makes these dogs so dangerous is that they are not afraid of man, and unlike wolves and coyotes, they don’t often run away. That was the case this time.

I flicked the safety off the Daewoo. I have a Busnell Holosight mounted on the Daewoo. It has a sight like the targeting sight of a fighter aircraft, with a circle and dot in the middle that seems to float, but wherever I place that dot, a bullet hits squarely there at up to the fifty yards I have the sight set for.

I picked out the most likely suspect as the alpha approaching me and dropped the big German Shepard mix with a .52 grain hollowpoint. My next shot dropped the sheep dog next to him. Incredibly, the rest of the pack, although surprised, didn’t begin to run. I shot four more of those dogs dead before the remaining three decided to take off, and I missed with my next two shots as they hightailed it into the buck brush and disappeared over the ridge.

Once the danger was passed I began to shake uncontrollably. I’m somewhat blessed with the ability to keep steady when it’s important, but the adrenalin finally took its toll and I stood watching that side hill for I don’t know how long, shaking and shaking and shaking until it finally began to subside. I kept a very careful eye out the rest of the day while checking my fences, and I haven’t seen the remains of that pack since then. If all of them had rushed me full force, they’d have gotten to me, no doubt about it.

Now, I’ve heard gun owners say sportsmen don’t need military-style semi-automatic weapons with 30 round magazines, but I’ve got this story to tell them, and I fired 8 rounds, which is at least 3 more than most “hunting-style” semi-automatic rifles hold. I also hold my Bushnell holosight very dear in this case, because I would have been in real trouble trying to use a standard hunting riflescope to do what I had to in this case. A handgun would have served me well once the dogs got to me, but fortunately I didn’t have to resort to my Glock with my “illegal” AWB 13 round magazine.

Too many of you so-called sportsmen like to make nice and say hunters don’t need military-style assault weapons to hunt with. Well, in most cases, we only need one shot when hunting, but the Second Amendment doesn’t have anything to do with what you might need for hunting. It doesn’t have anything to do with personal defense. The Second Amendment was written so you will have a way of taking this government back by force if necessary, and if you don’t like the sound of that, take it up with the Framers of the Constitution.

They wouldn’t agree with you.

Carl F. Worden

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