Fun With Firearms

 

By Mark Howell

 

“Offhandedly” is a gun term, meaning shooting a rifle or pistol without aiming and without premeditation.

 

 

The phrase “to gun a motor” dates back to early airplane accelerators that resembled the trigger of a gun.

 

 

A bullet fired from a Colt .45 automatic has the equivalent impact of being hit by a brick travelling at 140 miles per hour.

 

 

At the siege of Sebastopol during the Crimean War, the British fired approximately 10,000 tons of iron shot at the fortress and the French fired 510,000 round shot, 236,000 howitzer shells and 350,000 mortar shells – a total weighing the same as four Eiffel Towers.

 

 

The production team for the movie “Lord of War” purchased 3,000 real rifles to stand in for AK 47s because they were cheaper than the prop guns.

 

 

In 1986, the price for an AK-47 in a town in Kenya was 15 cows.

 

 

 

By 2005, the price had dropped to just four cows.

 

 

There is only one legally operated gun store in all of Mexico.

 

 

There are approximately 270 million firearms possessed by civilians in America and 897,000 carried by police.

 

 

Judge John Paul Stevens, a member of the United States Supreme Court from 1975 to 2010, a Republican appointee (who during those 35 years served with mostly Republican appointees under three Republican chief justices), has just published a book arguing for constitutional amendments that call for judicial restraint by reducing the role of the federal courts in American political life, attesting to the fact that in recent decades the most aggressive decisions have come from the right, that is the conservative wing of the Republican party.

 

 

In “How and Why We Should Change the Constitution,” Stevens tackles the Citizen’s United decision regarding corporate campaign financing (“a big mistake,” he writes) plus political gerrymandering and gun control.

 

 

On the latter, Stevens points out that as late as 1991, even retired Chief Justice Warren Burger, a well-known conservative appointed by President Richard Nixon, said that the Second Amendment — “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” — “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud’ on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

 

 

Stevens writes that in 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, a majority of the Supreme Court accepted the very view that Burger deemed to be a “fraud” and that in so doing the Court departed from the original understanding of the Second Amendment and greatly increased judicial power to oversee what state and federal governments do to prevent gun violence.

 

 

Stevens thinks that democratic processes, and not federal judges, should decide on the fate of regulations designed to minimize gun violence. As a remedy for “what every American can recognize as an ongoing national tragedy,” he would amend the Second Amendment to specify that it applies only to those who keep and bear arms “when serving in the Militia.”

 

 

“She’s not a girl who misses much

“She’s well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand

“Like a lizard on a window pane

“Mother Superior jump the gun

“Mother Superior jump the gun

“Happiness is a warm gun

“Happiness bang, bang, shoot, shoot

“Happiness is a warm gun, mama

“Happiness bang, bang, shoot, shoot

 

 

“When I hold you in my arms (oh yeah)“And I feel my finger on your trigger (oh yeah)“I know no one can do me no harm (oh yeah) “Because happiness is a warm gun, mama“Happiness bang, bang, shoot, shoot. “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” Beatles (1968).

 

 

 

Quote for the Week:

“Life is too important to take seriously.”

— Capt. Ron Hignite

[livemarket market_name="KONK Life LiveMarket" limit=3 category=“” show_signup=0 show_more=0]