I think shooting at exploding targets with tracer ammo is fun. There’s certainly nothing inherently wrong with that. I also am more sane than any critics who reflexively want nobody to have possession of or a permit for suppressors (usually called “silencers”). These devices reduce recoil as well as report — and they do not make guns Hollywood-style silent or nearly silent, but just reduce a centerfire to a rimfire-level report; they do nothing to eliminate a supersonic bullet’s crack. They also make handguns harder, not easier, to conceal.

Simply by posting these facts, now watch, I’ll face more false far-right accusations. [sigh]

* * *

K, please ditch the phallic myth of guns and shooting. (It really doesn’t fit female shooters, for one thing.) The psychological appeal of shooting is the same at its core as is so with archery or even rubber-band shooting: it’s the satisfaction of being able to hit a target out of your reach. Marksmanship is rewarding. The report (I doubt the recoil) of firearms also add something to the experience that some no doubt enjoy.

If an honest guy actually had the guts to admit he was repelled by hunting would it kill his candidacy?

It depends on where and when he runs. In Berkeley or Cambridge, MA (”Berkeley East”), it probably would boost his (or her) candidacy already. In another 10-20+ years, this will be true for more places as shooting and especially hunting have fewer adherents, either absolutely or as a fraction of the electorate.

If an honest guy actually had the guts to admit he was repelled by hunting would it kill his candidacy?

Rudi — people don’t play with automatic weapons in this country unless they get a federal machine gun permit. You should know by now that so-called “assault rifles” (the real thing and the cosmetic copy-cat versions) are semi-automatic. (Only criminals convert them to fully automatic.)

DLS – Then please explain this:
http://www.machinegunshoot.com/shootinfo.htm

The Machine Gun Shoot is a Semi Annual Event held in April and October. The participants are machine gun dealers, collectors and enthusiast from all over the country . The Machine Gun Shoot itself consist of four rounds of firing at a wide variety of appliances, vehicles, pyramids of tires, and barrels of fuel with pyrotechnic charges attached. The pyrotechnic charges are then painted orange for the shooter to see. The charges are set off by the impact of the bullets. Creating large and small mushroom clouds and fire balls from hell!! Their objective is to destroy everything down range. A wide variety of rare and exotic weaponry will be on display for all to see. Such as quad 50’s, mini guns, MG 42’s, water cooled browning AK 47’s and many others too numerous to mention.

Until just a few years ago, class III weapons(machine guns) were allowed to be purchased.
http://www.fortliberty.org/american-politics/nfa.shtml
http://www.westernfirearms.com/

Class III Weapon Sales

Western Firearms Company (WFC) is a Texas-based Class 3 business located just north of the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. Not only have we been dealing in machine guns for 24 years, but our association with the weapons business in general stretches back to 1971. As specialists in Class 3 weapons and military weapons of all types, WFC boasts one of the largest inventories of collector-grade arms in the state of Texas.

In 1986, the United States government banned the future importation and domestic manufacture of machine guns for civilian consumption, and the already limited inventory of Class 3 weapons has since diminished substantially.

The Kentucky show isn’t the only one were a father and son can fire class III weapons.

Let’s also mention that even that federal machine gun permit doesn’t make a privately-owned machine gun legal in states that have banned them entirely, as many do.

“You know your luck is all bad when that hunting trip you won is with Dick Cheney, and Ted Kennedy is driving…”

Please end cruciality of (especially) Iowa and NH

Truly diseased behavior and dangerous behavior associated with guns (yes, it can be pathological, going beyond self-actualization, which is bad enough) is disturbing, but it has never been an honest way to depict typical gun owners and shooters, such as me, much as so many anti-gun nuts do, anyway. The distinction is obligatory.

DLS Using a 12 gage to hunt a meal versus plinking with a AK-47 in a rural area is what even Liberals in the Midwest and North call as normal gun use. Now these shows were people play with automatic weapons is another story.

And we can already envision Hillary Clinton lugging an M-60, so there’s no need for her to pose in a tank.