Because I don’t make people cranky enough, I thought I’d take a quick few minutes and get myself in trouble about guns.
There are three newsworthy topic in the gun world this week: the expiration of the ‘Assault Weapons’ ban, the recent lawsuit settlement by Bushmaster, the manufacturer of the rifle used by the DC snipers, and Bulls-Eye Shooting Supply, the store from which it was stolen (or sold without documentation), and The Governator’s signing of the ban on .50 caliber rifles here in California.
Let’s start with the first one and upset both sides in the assault weapon contremps.First, for those indignant because the ban wasn’t renewed (the LA Time Editorial was entitled ‘Blood on the NRA’s Hands’, so I’d say indignant is a mild term), the reality is that there are far more serious health problems facing children than guns (go look at this old post of mine), and note that within the universe of violence using guns, there are far more pressing issues with far more consequences than banning certain semiautomatic weapons – while allowing virtually identical ones to be freely sold.
Next, for those who are feeling kinda smug because the ban was really about ‘ugly guns’ – could you explain to me why it is that assault teams don’t all use Winchester Model 94’s? I mean if there really are no characteristics of a MP-5 or an AR-15 that make it better suited to combat than a deer rifle…
There are two basic problems with the ban.
One is that it is, on a basic level, irrelevant. Hardly any crimes are committed with assault weapons – or even were when they were easily available. In terms of firepower, the claim is usually made that they are especially designed to pierce police body armor. This is stupid and false.
The bigger issue is that it’s virtually impossible to define an ‘assault weapon’ with any exactitude, which meant that guns that have the exact same functional characteristics, but were different in several accessories or cosmetic features could be freely sold, and were.
Let’s talk gun stuff.
There are two characteristics of any weapon – one is the caliber (technically, the diameter of the barrel, but in general use the kind of cartridge it feeds), and the other is the mechanical system built around that caliber.
As an example, let’s take a gun that I own – a Savage 10FCM Scout. It’s a bolt-action rifle, designed as a knockoff of Col. Jeff Cooper’s pet (and pricey) Steyr Scout. (For those who criticize me for being cheap, note that at the final exam/shootoff in my General Rifle class at API,the top three finishers were: Savage Scout (not me), Savage Scout (me), M1 Garand – with eight Steyrs and an M-14 who finished behind us. It’s not about the weapon…)
It came in three calibers when I bought mine; .223, .308, and 7mm.
Note that .223 is the 5.56 NATO standard, and .308 is the 7.62 NATO standard – the same ammunition, literally, as is used in a M-4 automatic rifle or a M-60 military machine gun. Ballistically, with minor exceptions, barrel length and powder load will determine the effects of the bullet that goes downrange, meaning that a gun like mine will have the virtually the same effect as a similar caliber military weapon.
These guns are semi-automatic (not automatic, which means they fire more than one bullet each time the trigger is pulled), which means they can shoot relatively rapidly.
But on assault courses, competent shooters wielding old-fashioned cowboy guns like Winchester Model 94’s can compete with the scores (time + accuracy) of people using CAR and MP-5 semi-automatics. So do we ban guns like these too? Because in truth, they are just as dangerous.
Now let’s talk law stuff.
The federal definition looks like this:
DEFINITION OF SEMIAUTOMATIC ASSAULT WEAPON-
Section 921(a) of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the
following new paragraph:
(30) The term semiautomatic assault weapon’ means–
(A) any of the firearms, or copies or duplicates of the
firearms in any caliber, known as–
(i) Norinco, Mitchell, and Poly Technologies Avtomat
Kalashnikovs (all models);
(ii) Action Arms Israeli Military Industries UZI and
Galil;
(iii) Beretta Ar70 (SC-70);
(iv) Colt AR-15;
(v) Fabrique National FN/FAL, FN/LAR, and FNC;
(vi) SWD M-10, M-11, M-11/9, and M-12;
(vii) Steyr AUG;
(viii) INTRATEC TEC-9, TEC-DC9 and TEC-22; and
(ix) revolving cylinder shotguns, such as (or similar
to) the Street Sweeper and Striker 12;
(B) a semiautomatic rifle that has an ability to accept a
detachable magazine and has at least 2 of–
(i) a folding or telescoping stock;
(ii) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath
the action of the weapon;
(iii) a bayonet mount;
(iv) a flash suppressor or threaded barrel designed to
accommodate a flash suppressor; and
(v) a grenade launcher;
(C) a semiautomatic pistol that has an ability to accept a
detachable magazine and has at least 2 of–
(i) an ammunition magazine that attaches to the pistol
outside of the pistol grip;
(ii) a threaded barrel capable of accepting a barrel
extender, flash suppressor, forward handgrip, or silencer;
(iii) a shroud that is attached to, or partially or
completely encircles, the barrel and that permits the
shooter to hold the firearm with the nontrigger hand
without being burned;
(iv) a manufactured weight of 50 ounces or more when the
pistol is unloaded; and
(v) a semiautomatic version of an automatic firearm; and
(D) a semiautomatic shotgun that has at least 2 of–
(i) a folding or telescoping stock;
(ii) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath
the action of the weapon;
(iii) a fixed magazine capacity in excess of 5 rounds; and
(iv) an ability to accept a detachable magazine.
Which means that the definition doesn’t effect the meaningful elements of the weapon’s design – i.e. I could have a semiautomatic rifle with a detachable magazine and a pistol grip, and it would be legal, but add a bayonet mount or flash suppressor and suddenly it’s illegal. The term of art for those is ‘pre-ban’ and post-ban’. Go to a gun sales site like Guns America and do a search for those terms. That’s why they had to include the typical models in the exhaustive list in the beginning of the definition.
So the law was both functionally worthless and legally flawed.
It’s an example of the kind of lawmaking I talk about like this:
bq.. “I’ve always believed that one of the key problems in our system of government is that we all confuse passing laws with making changes.
As anyone who’s ever managed people knows, there’s a world of difference between sending memos (or policy and procedures documents) and changing employee behavior.”
p. But pistol-packing antigun Senator Dianne Feinstein got some great photo ops out of it.
I’ve said in the past that we have a significant problem with violence using guns in this country, and that we ought to do something about it.
What to do is the problem.
We also have a Constitution that directly guarantees me and the rest of us the right to own guns and indirectly to do other things – like ride motorcycles, eat pizza, drink Cognac, or watch reality TV – which may or may not be good for us or for the body politic.
Halfwitted regulation that has no meaningful impact on the stated problem, and where resources and political capital are burned that could be used to solve real problems gain us nothing at all. In fact, they are a net loss, because they spend the legitimacy of our society and government far too freely to no end.
Couldn’t we pretty-please have had the case for letting the ban expire (a case, which, I add, is not unpersuasive) made in the mainstream media by someone other than serial liar John Lott? Isn’t there some embarrassment in having such a spokesman?
Andrew, let those without sins cast the first stone, as they say. Will I look at his commets with as much trust as I did before his sock puppet episode? No way.
But I don’t read the newspapers the same way either. Pretty much every argument I read has to stand on it’s own little feet these days.
A.L.
What to do is the problem.
There is nothing to do here. It is a boring issue. Some people have tried to spice it up with John Kerry(the UN loves me and so do most foreign countries) and the changes to electoral college(Colorado), and the fact that the UN will be our monitor(not that it is a soveriegnty issue-last I heard) when we vote(dems bribing the UN), and the GUNS HAVE FINALLY BEEN TAKEN AWAY FROM GOD Fear’n Americans as the UN closes its Satanic TV Viewing noose around our freedom loving necks as the real anti-terror laws squeeze the last bit of dem left in us(oops!).
People still find this issue BORING.
Umm, “MP-5’s are full auto”:http://world.guns.ru/smg/smg14-e.htm so to respond to _I mean if there really are no characteristics of a MP-5 or an AR-15 that make it better suited to combat than a deer rifle…_ one must suggest there are indeed such characteristics. unfortunately, MP-5’s are not ‘assault weapons’, not being semiautomatic. Now, SWAT teams _also_ use “Remington 700”:http://world.guns.ru/sniper/sn10-e.htm bolt-action rifles. They’re a little long and awkward indoors, as I suspect a Winchester 94 might be.
It’s always curious how weapons ‘designed to kiil as many people as possible’ are somehow OK for the police. That’s not what I want _my_ police doing.
The point I like to make is that Congress clearly was not serious – otherwise we would have had a law similar to Australia’s or Great Britain’s. As it was, *all existing ‘assault weapons’ were legal to buy, sell and use* (exclusive of more restrictive state laws). Just how dangerous did those turkeys really believe the weapons were?
The issue of the guns is boring, maybe. The issue of legislators passing no-effect laws, and portraying that fact as somehow a good thing is important; more important yet is why the voters allow it.
A.L. —
Some sidebars.
Dianne Feinstein is responding to her experience and her local constituencies, and that includes law enforcement, which in both SF and LA has had considerable problems with bad guys with AK or similar weapons. Partly it’s “police officer being taken down”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/09/13/BAGPI8O2V21.DTL by such weapons, partly it was the 1980’s massacres at a San Ysidro McDonald’s and a Stockton schoolyard, both of which involved children, and a TEC-9 rampage at the 101 California office building in SF.
Also, Dianne herself had her political career re-started in Nov. 1978 when a berserk gunman — though not using an assault weapon — took out Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. She was present in City Hall when it went down and she succeeded Moscone as Mayor — after vainly trying to resuscitate Sup. Milk. She later survived a recall election mounted by pro-gun _leftist_ activists. (She got some very condescending Senate debate about the “little lady” being overly concerned about gun control).
Finally, what weapons are we controlling? Chinese imports of SKS or AK type weapons — yeh, I’ve handled the thumb-hole type knockoffs. Cheesy pistol-ammo type weapons like the TEC-9 or the MP-5 — and 9mm or .45 SMGs aren’t effective beyond 50m, as I well remember from my own service days. The AR15? (My God, I’ve handled enough M16s as a property book officer to have a healthy dislike for such cranky, easy-to-foul weapons.)
Mind you, the Ruger Mini-14 does have a more robust operating system — the M1/M14 bolt and gas feedback design — but so many buffs seem averse to Buying American and go Norinco instead.
No, no. Let’s have a serious debate as to why we need these weapons instead of traditional hunting arms. And in any event, even if the US ban has expired, “California law still stands”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/09/14/MNGBO8OCFO1.DTL on these weapons. I agree that the Federal law described these weapons poorly but the simpler definition would be “any weapon utilizing (1) round rechambering by any means other than human operation or (2) a detachable magazine.” That still leaves revolvers and bolt-, pump- or lever-action.
We might also want to consider why law enforcement is so hostile to these weapons. Not a liberal bunch, one would think?
Bob,
Except law enforcement isn’t uniformly hostile to these weapons. It’s big-city police management, almost universally made up of political appointees rather than being elected as sheriffs are in many places, who are hostile.
The rank and file is much more mixed on the issue. Plenty of them taking a genuine old Sir Robert Peel type attitude to their profession–i.e. without any condescension toward “civilians” that the hostility to letting them be armed certainly implies.
John S –
Um, there are a number of MP-5 semi-auto variants; check the gun sales boards.
And I completely agree that the critical issue is lawmakers who valye “show” over “go”.
Bob –
Actually, M-15’s haven’t been jam-prone since the late 60’s/early 70’s; Mini-14’s are an interesting case – they were never banned (like Colts were) because Bill Ruger struck a deal with the government (they also can’t hit the broad side of a barn).
A very small % of the LEO’s killed have been killed with ‘assault rifles’, and of those, very few wouldn’t have been killed had their assailants used a legal rifle – like a semi-auto hunting rifle.
Most big-city police leadership is well imbued with the essentially libreral values of we big-city dwellers – otherwise they wouldn’t get or hold their jobs – and are beholden to the political leadership to keep their jobs and be effective in them. No major city police officer could come out against strong gun control (of which this is a part) and expect to heep his or her job. In the big cities, many of the officers also adopt the values of the communities they serve (as they should).
Your proposal is one of the few that is at least logically consistent; the problem of course is a) what to do with the millions of semi-auto guns out in the marketplace (which reduces it to the kind of cosmetic regulation discussed); and b) it’s not clear rthat this would make any substantial difference in the use of guns in violence – so other than making some people feel better because the guns aren’t as scary, what are we trying to accomplish?
A.L.
AJL,
I agree that John Lott isn’t a great spokesman, and neither is Wayne LaPierre. But the news media has been ignoring my letters and offers of *free* consulting on gun issues for years.
But…if you want serial liars, then the proponents of the AWB are pretty good candidates. I’ve NEVER, EVER, NOT ONCE seen one of them forthrightly say “I don’t mind pistol grips, but pistol grips in combination with folding stocks is much too deadly to have on our streets.” But I have seen them refer to them as machine guns: see Volokh.
And Bob, I love hunting, but the real issue for me is self-defense against criminals, rioters, invasion, and tyranny. And for that, “traditional hunting arms” are inadequate (low rate of fire) and inappropriate (high risk of overpenetration).
I should also have said that it’s possible–even likely–that those who think “assault weapons” and machineguns are the same thing are simply ignorant, not lying.
BUT–given that this is a federal statute, available for free on the web (or pay through Lexis), and given that media organizations and politicians MUST be receiving tons of letters from gun owners pointing this out, I consider the ignorance as inexcusable as a knowing lie.
“Because I don’t make people cranky enough…”
You made me laugh.
Well, I’d sure credit sosmething in a Lyman op-ed over Lott. With Lott, it isn’t just the sock puppet. It’s (just to cherrypick) the survey he claims to have conducted without knowing the names of any of the people he paid to do it, any receipts for expenses, any advertising for volunteers, etc. He’s on the list where I can’t trust any statement in his writings, because even something so simple it couldn’t be a statistical artifact or other sophisticated mistake may be a total fabrication.
As a very minor correction to a comment upblog, the White Panther Party that attempted to recall Feinstein is not on any standard political chart. It’s economics may look left, but there’s a strong dose of Montana Freemen type anti-government stuff in there too. (The leadership of the WPP includes a number of strong chess players, which is how I’ve met them.)
To return to the matter at hand, are there proactive measures that the WoC gun owners can see to reduce gun abuse that you would support? (A.L. doesn’t have to respond, at least until I read his other posts.)
AJL,
Jail violent felons caught with guns, even if they aren’t doing anything else wrong at the time (provided their 4th Amendment rights weren’t violated, etc). Expand concealed carry license availability. Crack down–HARD–the the kind of sloppines we saw at Bull’s Eye. Encourage the use of gun safes/lock boxes (I don’t like trigger locks), for instance through vouchers (they had them in King Co, WA) and with sales tax exemptions (also in WA). Consider gun-safety (NOT anti-gun) programs in schools.
And, more broadly, encourage stable families and hold children in public schools to high educational/behavioral standards. Rethink the war on drugs, which is the source of most gun violence.
Rob,
“Rethink” the WO(s)D is far too little; I admire your clever use of understatement. 🙂 Seriously, though, while I am all for doing so, I’d caution us all not to think this will be a magic bullet. We seem to have always had more homicides per capita than England, for example, as in figures I’ve seen comparing Londond and NYC in the early 1900’s–way before Prohibition even.
OT–Are you in the Puget Sound area?
Hmm, I meant to use the belittle abbrieviation “WO ( s ) D” above (war on SOME drugs) but MT ate my “( s )” when I wrote it w/o spaces. Does this sequence mean something magic (and invisible) to MT?
Some more rejoinders: As to AR-15/M-16, it is true that they’re less prone to jamming once the forward-assist was introduced. However, I did command a BCT company and the M-16A1s they were using were kind of old — old enough so that I had to use a marlinspike knife on the range to clear double- and triple-feed jams. And storage methods — AR 190-11 (if I remember the # right) kept tightening up on security — meant M-16s got to be more and more dried up or rusty.
Rob Lyman’s proposals are interesting. I would add restrictions on certain types of ammunition. There’s been real concern in the Bay Area on .50 AP rounds and I see little reason to have them on the market. The .50 round can pose a threat to some of our industry and it’s one method we might want to deny an enemy.
Finally, this: the enemy already has a history of attacks on airport concourses &c. (Rome, Vienna, so we’re not giving them ideas here). Limits on accessibility to assault weapons might cramp their style.
Affect
🙂
A.L.
What weapons would you ban, if any? And why? (FYI, I know zero about guns and although I’m liberal, am open-minded about the subject.) As a gun owner, give me your gut reaction about how safely you think your average Joe is storing his/her firearms. Gordon Liddy (you know, Mr. Watergate) for one feels that an unloaded firearm is about as useful as a rock, therefore he feels it’s smart to keep a loaded gun handy if one is concerned about home security. Do you think this is a common view? In terms of keeping kids safe in a house where there’s a loaded gun, Liddy believes that you spend a great deal of time teaching your kids to not touch the gun and they just won’t out of fear and respect. As a person who has taught literally thousands of children aged 10 to 21, I feel that’s, well, insane. Curious to know what people think. I think statements like his lead to potentially silly gun laws being passed because a lot of people have my reaction.
Bob,
As we’ve been discussing on this and other threads, “assault weapons” is a catagory that is based on cosmetic features. Perhaps you could explain why a terrorist would want to attack an airport with a gun featuring both a pistol grip and a folding stock but would refrain from doing so if the stock were fixed.
Kirk: PS area is my hometown, but I’m in VA for law school at the moment.
Alice,
I can’t speak for AL, but for myself: I probably wouldn’t ban any small arms at all. That’s an extreme position, but I don’t think bans actually make a damn bit of difference in availability to criminals, so why bother? Besides, I regard self-defense as the ultimate individual right. But ban crew-served weapons: cart-mounted machine guns, mortars, etc.
I don’t think the average Joe does a good job storing his guns. Lord knows I’ve seen enough bad gun handling at the range to convince me he doesn’t know how to handle them safely. But then, I think most people are bad drivers and misuse alcohol, as well, so this hasn’t led me to conclude that gun control is a good idea.
I don’t know how common loaded guns at home are, but Liddy’s right about the rock comment. Not that rocks aren’t decent weapons in their own right, though.
I don’t know a ton about kids. I don’t think, though, that simply teaching them not to touch it is enough; you need to teach them to handle and shoot it. A kid is going to be curious; better to satisfy that curiosity than to oppose it (indeed, opposing it is likely to be disasterous). But on the other hand, I think even a fairly young child who has seen a pistol bullet explode an apple or orange like a bomb will learn not to point guns at people. At least, I did.
Thanks for you reply. Regarding your very last point, that doesn’t take care of kids visiting the home. And of course Liddy was saying that kids should be educated too, my experience with kids just doesn’t lead me to believe that that’s enough.
Well, Alice, all of my guns are in a huge steel safe, so I wouldn’t say I’m fully in agreement with Liddy here. And I’ll defer to your experience and keep them in that safe.
Phew!
Here’s my 52-yr-old-woman input to Alice’s questions:
My husband and I own a number of handguns and he owns an M1 Garand (semiautomatic rifle), which required federal approval for him to buy. The weapons are stored in a locked safe. Ammunition is stored elsewhere.
With regard to loaded weapons for home protection, there are small safes that respond to fingerprints … it’s possible to keep a loaded handgun in one, where an adult who is authorized to the system can get it quickly but children never can, even if the adults are away. These cost a few hundred dollars, well worth the investment.
One caveat to the analyses above. While it’s true that calibre is calibre, it is NOT true that all guns of a given calibre are eqully accurate nor that all ammunition of that calibre is equally powerful.
For instance, some models of the Remington 700 series are very popular for military / law enforcement sniping or for long range precision competition shooting. The reasons for this popularity are several: the material, manufacturing quality and rifling in the barrel are excellent. However, the more subtle reason is that the 700 is usually bought in the .308 calibre for longer range targets (up to 800 yards) because the twist in the barrel is optimized for the .308 load for those distances. In other words, this particular rifle and barrel, in this caliber, puts just the right combination of spin on a bullet of that calibre to keep it going accurately for those long distances.
That also isn’t enough to account for the popularity. Another factor is that it’s possible to buy off-the-shelf .308 ammunition which is very accurate and very consistent. At long ranges and high powers, small differences in the manufacturing of a cartridge can result in significant differences in how they shoot. To put this in perspective, law enforcement snipers may need to hit a target no bigger than an orange from 4 or 5 football fields away. If they miss, they might hurt someone else, so the precision is important. This is why many snipers and precision benchrest competition shooters actually manufacture their own ammunition using manually-controlled tools and custom combinations of powder, primer, bullet and metal jacket, to fit very exacting criteria and the specific conditions under which they expect to shoot.
The reason I mention all this is that there’s a lot to discuss when considering the power and potential for misuse associated with a handgun, rifle or shotgun. Fully automatic weapons have been illegal in the US since the 1930s. That leaves semiautomatic rifles to consider, and the expired ban addressed things like removable magazines. I don’t personally have a problem limiting large-capacity removable magazines, but that doesn’t really hold up well either, since good shooters can swap out magazines very quickly. *I* can do that with a handgun and I don’t compete in timed events. I did do it as required to score Expert on the Army’s M9 handgun proficiency test recently, however, so I know that a ban on magazines doesn’t do all that much either.
Alice and others, that’s probably more than you want to know!! Heh.
Alice –
Hmmm. I’d probably look at two things: energy (one measurement of a bullet’s performance is the energy it has when fired from a specific gun – mass x velocity^2); it might be reasonable to pick some level of energy somewhat around the major big-game calibers (and the 50 BMG) and cap private weapons there.
Clearly automatic (as opposed to semi-automatic) weapons.
That’s about it. Things that shoot explosives (bazookas and mortars etc.) are already banned as ‘destructive devices’.
I don’t think changing the standards to this would make a whit of difference in the social issue of violence caused by people using guns.
I’d make the auditing of existing paperwork requirements frequent and intensive, and work with law enforcement to find and close sloppy or crooked gun stores.
I’d mandate some more effective training to go with firearms purchases, and create huge liability penalties for people who don’t lock up their guns and who have them stolen or misused.
My kids have all fired guns at this point, and have all had the ‘eddie the eagle’ mantra drilled into them – don’t touch, leave the room, tell an adult.
Sadly, the thing that would do the most to lower deaths using firearms in America would be to solve the problems of the inner cities. But what do I know, I’m a liberal…
A.L.
A.L. – why the energy limits?
I kind of go with Rob – I think I draw a rather soft line at crew-served weapons – but I could be persuaded that with proper storage and use where it’s safe, they’re not really a problem.
A clarification: NFA 34 didn’t BAN much, it TAXED a lot. So, at the Federal level (and we know states and localities are different) it is legal to own machineguns, cannon, mortars, mortar bombs and such like things. _Finding_ one might be difficult; _affording_ one might be a problem – I believe the tax on one mortar bomb is US$200; but they’re legal to own and resell to buyers who pass the background check, get no objections from local law enforcement, and fill out the application and pay the tax.
I’m not happy imposing restrictions on legal ownership until someone shows a pattern of actual misuse. Potential for misuse is _always_ present — how much sanity must we attribute to our population?
Because energy is a good proxy measure for the amount of damage that gun/cartridge combination can do.
Note, however, that it is the combination of rifle model and specific cartridge that have a certain energy level.
Thanks for all of the excellent answers. I learned a lot. I had no idea about those fingerprint safes.
Well, why does _the amount of damage that gun/cartridge combination can do_ matter?
High density energy sources and expenditures are quite common. I routinely drive a 3400 pound automobile at 65 miles per hour, in the presence of hundreds of roughly similar vehicles at similar speeds. Lot of energy there – by itself, it doesn’t mean much to me, in terms of precautions, regulations, training, licensing etc.
I can see being punished if I drive my car into other cars or into other people’s living rooms; it just shows there are safe and unsafe possibilities.
I’ll argue that safe storage and training are very high *moral* obligations on any gun owner. I recognize that the moral sense of some such seems to be different from mine, and some imposition of standards and performance by outside agencies appears to be necessary in some cases. We are suffering, however, from an excess of zeal on the part of those who create and fund such agencies in our governments, such that unjustifiable restrictions are being applied. And, once allowing regulation into an area, keeping it from unwise growth is proving very difficult.
To Rob Lyman, you do have a point; certainly a terrorist would find a cosmetically-altered weapon to be just as useful. I’ve seen such AKs, the fact that it has a thumbhole doesn’t mean it can’t shoot just as rapidly, and certainly the numbers of high-firepower weapons in urban centers testify to that.
A ban founded on model or name, on extrinsic features (bayonet sockets? pistol grips? flash suppressors?) begs for circumvention.
Robin,
What federal approval would have been needed to buy a Garand? It certainly was never on the AWB list.
Kirk I’m assuming he got it through the “CMP”:http://www.tsra.com/garand.htm (Civilian Marksmanship Program)…you get to buy a surplus Garand v. cheap if you qualify.
A.L.
A.L.,
Sure, I thought of the CMP, but the requirements there are solely related to purchasing through the CMP. Any gun store in the country can sell a Garand on exactly the same basis that they sell any other rifle, can’t they?
Good post, A.L., thanks for putting all this info together in one place. I was fairly ignorant on the whole issue until recently and have been looking for somebody to explain from a pro-Second-Amendment perspective. I added my own thoughts “here”:http://jeffbrokaw.net/archive1/000837.html