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Reach out & touch someone!
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — With the stroke of his pen, Governor JB Pritzker made Illinois the ninth state to ban assault-style weapons.
The governor and supporters of the measure say the passage is long overdue.
“Today, I couldn’t be prouder to say that, ‘we got it done,’” Pritzker said. “We got this done for all the victims. The spouses, the children, parents, friends, and loved ones who are no longer with us, and for those who have survived mass shootings.”
Passing gun legislation is never easy. After a private battle that lasted for days, Democrats, who control the legislature, moved forward. Pritzker’s signature comes after the Illinois House voted to pass an assault weapon ban. The 68 to 41 vote took place after the Senate approved an amended bill on Monday that bans the sale, delivery, and purchase of assault-style weapons.
Owners of such guns can keep them, but they must register them with state police by Jan 1. Failure to do so is a misdemeanor and then a possible felony for subsequent offenses.
Also, the sale of large-capacity ammunition magazines — more than 10 rounds for long guns and 15 rounds for handguns — are banned.
Illinois State Police will be allowed to update the ban list periodically.
Before the vote, Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch claimed victory.
“It’s time that we protect Illinois communities. It’s time that we protect Illinois families,” he said.
Republicans rallied against the measure calling it unconstitutional.
“Unfortunately, this bill again is not going to stop gun violence. It is not going to protect our most vulnerable neighborhoods or our most vulnerable children,” said Illinois Rep. Toni McCombie.
“We have constitutional rights in our country. They protect our freedoms from the government. They are not rights that are given to us by the government,” added Illinois Rep. Patrick Windhurst.
The lone Republican ‘yes’ came from outgoing House Minority Leader Jim Durkin, who said he hoped his vote would honor the mass shooting victims at Highland Park’s Fourth of July parade.
HOLLY TOWNSHIP, Mich. (FOX 2) – A man accidentally shot himself in the leg while cleaning a gun Wednesday afternoon in Holly Township.
Michigan State Police initially were dispatched to the home in the 6200 block of Grange Hall Road for what they thought was a suicidal person. However, while on the way there, they learned it was an accidental shooting.
When troopers arrived, family members told them the man was downstairs. Police found him on the floor next to his bed, along with a spent shell casing and a magazine. A .380 handgun was on the bed.
EMS applied a tourniquet to the man’s leg and took him to Genesys Hospital. His current condition is unknown.
Police said they will be submitting their investigative report to the prosecutor’s office for review.
Q: Who cleans a gun when it’s loaded?
A: A complete fucking idiot who deserves to shoot himself.
TANGIPAHOA PARISH, La. (KLFY) — A Louisiana mother shot and killed a home intruder before dawn Sunday, authorities said.
According to the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office, Robert Rheams, 51, was armed with a shovel and a lug wrench when he allegedly forced his way into the home of the woman and her two young children.
Chief Jimmy Travis said during the incident, a physical altercation took place between Rheams and the homeowner which led to Rheams being shot and killed.
He was pronounced dead on the scene.
Travis said at the time of the incident, Rheams was out on parole after serving approximately 20 years in prison for armed robbery.
He was also tied to a carjacking that happened hours prior to the home invasion, Travis said.
This is an assault rifle. It is already massively regulated in America.
I understand the motivation. I really do. It seems some deranged psychopath is shooting up a school every week. However, despite that sordid reality there are three major reasons why we really shouldn’t try to ban assault weapons.
First, banning assault weapons would be like outlawing foul language or sunburn. Doing so might make us feel good, but it in no way affects reality. We seem incapable of devising a cogent definition for just what an assault weapon even is. “Just because it looks scary” seems dangerously vague in a legal document.
Such a ban might have made a difference half a century ago. Today, there are 440 million guns in America — rifles, pistols, shotguns, et al. If each of those guns was a typical GLOCK pistol it would be 8 inches long. If you stacked those guns muzzle to butt they would stretch from the surface of the earth to the International Space Station and back 109 times.
According to 1994 definitions, there are roughly 25 million assault weapons in circulation. If each of those was an AR15 stacked end to end they would stretch from New York City to Los Angeles and back 2.3 times. Non-gun guys have no idea the true scope of guns in America. They haven’t a clue. No amount of legislating will ever touch firearms in this country. Outlaw assault weapons tomorrow and the bad guys will have assault weapons when the sun burns out. The gun control ship sailed a couple of hundred million guns ago with the election of President Obama. There’s no putting that back in the box now.
This is what the Left would call an assault weapon. In reality, it is simply a
semiautomatic sporting gun owned by tens of millions of law-abiding Americans.
Second, mass shootings are the physical manifestation of the post-modern moral darkness that seems to be engulfing our nation and the world. Such horrors rightfully touch a visceral chord in any parent. I honestly cannot imagine the pain of something like that. However, there is the issue of scale.
According to Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control group, there were 1,363 people killed in mass shootings in America from 2009 through 2020. That’s 123 deaths per year on average in a nation of 328 million people. During the same time we lost 478,000 people PER YEAR to smoking. We lose 40,000 non-smokers (think little kids with asthma) to secondhand smoke per annum. So, it’s really not about the body count. It’s not about saving children. It’s about virtue signaling. Non-gun people believe themselves more virtuous than gun people.
When something horrible happens you always want something to vilify, someone to hate. We humans are hardwired to want a villain. For gun control types they see that awful stuff and hate the NRA. The NRA isn’t some faceless corporate entity. It’s just several million of their fellow Americans who disagree with them.
Lastly, and this is the big one, an assault weapons ban will actually make things worse. In medicine we call it First Do No Harm. No matter what you do, ensure your actions do not exacerbate the problem.
We are losing 123 Americans a year to mass shootings. There are 25 million assault weapons in America. Without confiscation an assault weapons ban is lyrically ineffective. If those guns are suddenly made illegal who exactly is going to enforce that law? You really can’t make a fresh new law if you don’t have a plan to enforce it. Laws without enforcement make a mockery of the system.
I have any number of good buddies in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. A huge percentage of assault weapon owners simply will not comply with a ban. Are we going to send my ATF pals to go knock their doors down? Are we willing to incinerate their families to ensure that Beto O’Rourke’s grandiose confiscation scheme is enforced (“Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47…”)?
123 deaths a year are undeniably horrible. Forcibly disarming otherwise law-abiding Americans would create literally millions of new criminals out of thin air and would be Waco on steroids from coast to bleeding coast. There is so much hatred and paranoia online nowadays that if even a tiny percentage of gun guys pushed back it would be a bloodbath.
There are 77.4 million gun owners in America — about one third of the adult population. For comparison purposes, there are nearly three times as many gun owners in America as there are soldiers on the entire planet. That’s every person in all the uniformed armed services in the world.
Guns in America have nothing to do with hunting. Nothing. Guns in private hands, especially the scary sort, have everything to do with a monopoly on power. The reason America has done such amazing things in the past 246 years is our unprecedented levels of personal freedom. Gun ownership is a critical part of that freedom. Real freedom is messy, ugly, bloody, and gross, but that’s the reason we have been the most powerful force for liberty the world has ever seen. You really can’t have one without the other.
Look at our recent crop of professional politicians. All they need is an excuse to forcibly impose their will on the American people. That will never, ever happen here, because 77 million of us own guns. Absent the will of the governed an armed populace is ungovernable. That’s the reason the founders designed it the way they did 246 years ago. And that’s why you really don’t want to try to ban assault weapons in America today.
Images courtesy of Armor Plate Press.
Beginning on May 10, 1940, German forces struck against Western Europe, invading Holland, Belgium and France. By June 5, Holland and Belgium had fallen, and what remained of the British Expeditionary Force had been evacuated to England. Paris fell on June 14. By June 22, the Battle of France was over. With a stroke of a pen, France signed an armistice with Germany and hostilities were over on the continent. Western Europe was under Nazi control, and Hitler danced his little jig at Versailles.
The photos presented here show many of the small arms of the Battle of France. Certainly to be of interest to firearms enthusiasts and history buffs, the images represent the infantry weapons of the earth-shaking Blitzkrieg that thrust World War II into full gear in the West. But these are also illustrations of a cautionary tale: No one believed or expected that the numerically and technologically inferior German forces could overwhelm the Allies and control the continent in little more than five weeks.
Over time, the legends of the Blitzkrieg would have us believe that German forces represented an overwhelming strength of numbers and technological might. The reality is shockingly different. France alone could deploy more than three times the number of armored vehicles than Germany’s panzer force. Just 10 percent of the Wehrmacht was even motorized at all, with many German units relying on horses (and this remained true even until the end of the war).
Only half of Germany’s divisions were truly combat ready, and almost all German units were not as well equipped as their French or British opponents. During the 1940 battles, almost half of all German Army troops were at least 40 years old, comprised of men mature enough to have served in the Great War.
While French officials maintained tepid confidence behind their Maginot Line, German planners found innovative ways to go over, around and through the obsolescent forts and the outdated “Maginot Mentality.” With Germany’s new quick-strike, combined arms principles of the Lightning War, there would be no repeat of the plodding trench warfare of World War I. Casualties were minimized by comparison, but then again so was French independence.
German infantry arms were superior to those of the French and Belgian forces, and were slightly better than those of the British. In 1940, the Battle of France saw the first significant use of some of the finest light machine guns of the war: Germany’s MG34 (as well as many captured Czech ZB vz. 26), the British Bren gun, and the lesser-known French Modèle 24/29 (Chatellerault).
The Germans had also introduced a growing number of submachine guns into their armed forces, and the then ultra-modern MP40 made a huge impression on the SMG-starved British. While the Panzers and Stuka dive bombers captured the headlines, astute observers saw the dawn of a new era of infantry firepower during the Battle of France.
By the summer of 1940, England stood alone, and the British armaments industry struggled to resupply its army with up-to-date infantry weapons. English eyes turned to America, soon to become the Arsenal of Democracy.
Here’s a look at a few little-known images from the Battle of France, detailing the men who fought and the guns they used:
Blitzkrieg Team
Two of the most influential infantry weapons of the Blitzkrieg: the German MG34 light machine gun and the MP40 submachine gun. These innovative firearms would occupy the thoughts (and nightmares) of Allied arms designers in the long months ahead.
Left Behind
German soldier’s photo of captured Vickers machine guns in France 1940. Thousands of British infantry arms were abandoned to the Germans after the “Miracle of Dunkirk” evacuation. In German service, the Vickers was designated the 7.7 mm sMG 230(e).
Preparing To Face The Panzers
British troops train with the .55-cal. Boys anti-tank rifle Mark I. The Boys was reasonably effective against tanks of the era (21 mm of armor penetrated at 300 meters), but was unpopular due to its excessive recoil and tremendous weight (36 lbs. unloaded).
Marching To War Again.
Glum French troops march to frontline positions in the spring of 1940. These men are armed with the archaic Lebel Model 1886 rifle, chambered in 8×50 mm R Lebel.
Held Over From The Great War
French troops with the 8 mm Hotchkiss Mle 1914. The strip-fed Hotchkiss had been France’s primary heavy machine gun in World War I, and it served the same role in 1940.
Colonial Troops In The Defense Of France.
Moroccan troops clean their arms during 1940. To the right are a pair of Mle 1924/29 light machine guns (7.5 mm), and to the left, a Berthier Model 1907/15 rifle (8 mm Lebel).
The Battle Of The Alps
Italy attacked France on June 10, 1940, and two weeks of fighting in the French Alps ensued. These French mountain troopers are equipped with the Berthier Carbine Mle 1892 M16. Another holdover from World War I, the Berthier Carbine was chambered in 8 mm Lebel, and proved to be a solid and reliable little rifle that served French troops until the early 1960s.
The Spoils Of War
A German soldier’s photo of a French small arms collection point in 1940, featuring a pair of Mle 1924/29 light machine guns and a wide assortment of French rifles. All of the captured arms from Holland, Belgium, France and England went into the Wehrmacht’s arsenal.
Marching Into France
For German troops in 1940, their efforts were rewarded with a stunning victory and a complete reversal of the humiliating Treaty of Versailles in 1918. In a little more than four years, this advance into France would be turned into a headlong retreat.
Germany’s Base Of Infantry Firepower
By the spring of 1940, the ground-breaking MG34 was the finest general-purpose machine gun in the world. Light (26.7 lbs), fast-firing (900 rounds per minute), and highly effective, the MG34 brought firepower and mobility to the German infantry’s contribution to the “Lightning War.” The gunner’s assistant carries ammunition and the Kar98k rifle.
Little-Known French Submachine Gun
The M.A.S. Modele 38, chambered for the French 7.65 mm Long pistol round. It was light (about 6.5 lbs.), well made of machined steel, and easy to use. Unfortunately for the French, few had been made prior to the 1940 invasion. The Germans thought enough of the gun to keep it in limited production during the war to equip collaborative French police units and for their own occupation troops.
Man-Portable Anti-Tank Technology
In 1940, the anti-tank rifle was best weapon the infantryman had in the battle against the tank. The German 7.92 mm Panzerbuchse PzB 39 fired a 7.92 mm bullet (with a tungsten core) necked down from a 13 mm cartridge.
Offering 30 mm of armor penetration at 100 meters, the PzB 39 was ineffective against many Allied tanks of the era. Within 18 months of the Battle of France, the PzB 39 had essentially disappeared from frontline service.
![r/WarshipPorn - Graphic of the Royal Navy during WW2 with the ships in red the ones that were sunk - Truly incredible to see the scale of their force [2744 × 1398]](https://preview.redd.it/8esdcgt9lfx71.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=9eebf6d299dc3455aaf5d4c7b47df315cc837f9f)
The ones in Red were sunk during WWII
