• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

It Has Happened Again...

Katana

Illuminator
K
Joined
May 28, 2006
Messages
4,812
Boy Shoots Ak-47 Inside School

The student was wearing a mask and pointed the assault rifle at Principal Steve Gilbreth, Assistant Superintendent Steve Doerr and two students, saying, "not to make me do this," Superintendent Jim Simpson said.

Simpson said the teen then fired a shot into the ceiling, breaking a water pipe, and said again, "Please don't make me do this."

"It was a very close call," Simpson said.

Doerr and Gilbreth persuaded the student to leave the building, where he was confronted by two police officers with weapons drawn. The student dropped the rifle and was taken into custody, Simpson said. The student's identity was not released.

Joplin police Officer Curt Farmer said officers found a note in the student's backpack indicating that he had placed an explosive in the school, which has about 700 students. Students in the school were moved to nearby Joplin Memorial Hall, and the school was closed while officers searched the building.

The student was wearing a mask and apparently had been planning an attack for a "long time," Simpson said. He didn't elaborate and said authorities did not know whether others were involved.
Click to expand...

Fortunately, no one was hurt this time.

The fact that it appears that he was planning this for a "long time" suggests that this isn't a copy-cat of the other recent school shootings. So what the hell is going on?
 
Tricky said:
Dad's bottom drawer?

Seriously, guns are so easy to get in the US it is ridiculous.
Click to expand...

Some guns, sure. I can walk into a pawn shop down the street and pick up a 9-millimeter semi-automatic handgun for $50. I can get a high-powered rifle from pretty much any sporting goods store.

But getting a Kalashnikov takes a wee bit more effort. You can't just waltz into a Wal-Mart and get one of these bad boys. It takes some pretty major connections with some fairly shady characters to land one.
 
In all the JREF gun threads (and all the pages they've taken up) has any one's mind been changed once?

What's the point of arguing the same points page after page when you know the other side isn't going to change their mind. And both sides present the same old arguments and blah, blah, blah. Isn't there some cliche about how insanity is repeating the same actions over and over and expecting a different outcome?

That's right. I called you all insane.
 
Cleon said:
Some guns, sure. I can walk into a pawn shop down the street and pick up a 9-millimeter semi-automatic handgun for $50. I can get a high-powered rifle from pretty much any sporting goods store.

But getting a Kalashnikov takes a wee bit more effort. You can't just waltz into a Wal-Mart and get one of these bad boys. It takes some pretty major connections with some fairly shady characters to land one.
Click to expand...

Impact Guns
 
HarryKeogh said:
In all the JREF gun threads (and all the pages they've taken up) has any one's mind been changed once?

What's the point of arguing the same points page after page when you know the other side isn't going to change their mind. And both sides present the same old arguments and blah, blah, blah. Isn't there some cliche about how insanity is repeating the same actions over and over and expecting a different outcome?

That's right. I called you all insane.
Click to expand...

I feel the same about the 9/11 CT threads, forums, etc.

Having said that, I fail to understand how anyone could rationalize making automatic assault rifles available to the public. I have no issue with gun ownership, but I support mandatory wait times, background checks, and limiting the type of guns available. I'm certainly under no illusion that I will change anyone's mind on this, however.
 
Cleon said:
Wow. Are those actually AK-47s, or just single-shot rifles designed to look like them?

(Shows how much I know about guns.)
Click to expand...
As far as I know they are all knock-offs and all are single action. However there is a kit out there somewhere to convert them to fully auto. I can't tell you where though...
 
RandFan said:
As far as I know they are all knock-offs and all are single action. However there is a kit out there somewhere to convert them to fully auto. I can't tell you where though...
Click to expand...

But even if you got that kit (and please excuse my ignorance of such matters), would it actually be a fully automatic AK-47 or a cheap lookalike POS with fully auto capability?
 
HarryKeogh said:
In all the JREF gun threads (and all the pages they've taken up) has any one's mind been changed once?
Click to expand...
Thread participants? Probably not.

But you know, there are lurkers here. I'm sure there are people here who do little or no posting, but a lot of reading. They're windowshopping in the marketplace of ideas, trying some of them on and accepting or rejecting them. Those of us who argue amongst ourselves will doubtless change very few minds amongst ourselves, but there are always people who haven't made up their minds yet.

My opinions on gun control, the death penalty, and abortion rights are not the same as they were thirty years ago. That is not the result of my brain's neurons one day spasmadically rearranging themselves; I was exposed to other ideas, and found some of them persuasive, and others wanting.

Think for a minute what the "E" in JREF stands for. These gun threads, abortion threads, death penalty threads, all serve that purpose. They educate.

Be grateful for that. There are many countries that won't let you have this kind of freewheeling exchange of ideas.
 
Cleon said:
:jaw-dropp:eye-poppi

Where the $%^& does a 13-year-old get an AK-47??!?!?!?!
Click to expand...

The same place he gets any other rifle (I could be wrong, but nothing indicated it was an automatic weapon) from his parents or a friends" house.
 
BPSCG said:
Think for a minute what the "E" in JREF stands for. These gun threads, abortion threads, death penalty threads, all serve that purpose. They educate.
Click to expand...

Then maybe we can pick one of the many gun threads and periodically bump that every few weeks. That way any newcomers can read the same arguments from both sides that are in every other gun thread and catch a glimpse of the usual name-calling, bickering, cherry-picked data and misquoting other people's stances that usually occurs in these threads.

Actually, I'm just being sarcastic. These threads are very educational. OK, now I'm really being sarcastic.
 
fuelair said:
The same place he gets any other rifle (I could be wrong, but nothing indicated it was an automatic weapon) from his parents or a friends" house.
Click to expand...

Even if it turns out to be automatic, there's a difference between "automatic" (chambers rounds automatically, but fires one shot at a time), and "fully automatic" (machine gun).
 
Cleon said:
But even if you got that kit (and please excuse my ignorance of such matters), would it actually be a fully automatic AK-47 or a cheap lookalike POS with fully auto capability?
Click to expand...

We're talking about a freakin' gun here! A cheap imitation POS kills just a easily as the real thing.

Besides, the advertizement says AK-47 and derivatives. At least some of them are real. A single shot model is just a modification from the full auto model. Anyone can modify it back.
 
Cleon said:
Some guns, sure. I can walk into a pawn shop down the street and pick up a 9-millimeter semi-automatic handgun for $50. I can get a high-powered rifle from pretty much any sporting goods store.

But getting a Kalashnikov takes a wee bit more effort. You can't just waltz into a Wal-Mart and get one of these bad boys. It takes some pretty major connections with some fairly shady characters to land one.
Click to expand...

Just a quick aside, Civilians have always been able to legally purchase semi auto-matic versions of military rifles (i.e. pull the trigger back once, one round is fired) here in the USoA. Civilians can not purchase either fully automatic weapons (i.e. the lead hose), or weapons that may fire of a “burst” of several rounds per trigger pull, without a serious amount of red tape and hoop jumping in the way of licenses that is intended for museums and the like to own and display full military versions of firearms.

It is easy and legal for anyone with a clean background to purchase a semi-automatic ar-15 or ak-47. There are not cheap “pos” but may be made by the government contractors that provide the military with them (such as Colt), by the original designer (Armalite), or by smaller gun manufacturers (like Bushmaster), without having to talk to dark figures from the underworld. I would be surprised if most gun stores did not offer some of these rifles. I could be wrong, but I think Wal-Mart and K-mart quit selling firearms of all types sometime after the assult weapons ban, and the negitive press that it generated.

There are ways of these “semi-automatic” rifles to be fully automatic, of course, but then since the technology behind them is not complex, and widely understood, how could there not be? Anyone with the know-how, and the access to a machine shop, can build all kids of things of questionable legality.

I did not read anything the news article that mentioned that the rifle was a fully automatic one, I would assume that it was a legal, “semi-automatic” one. Since the student is 13 years old, it is illegal for him to purchase any firearm. Unfortunately it is likely that Tricky hit the nail on the head and it was stolen from dad’s gun safe, or someone else that the boy knew.
 
mamapajamas said:
Even if it turns out to be automatic, there's a difference between "automatic" (chambers rounds automatically, but fires one shot at a time), and "fully automatic" (machine gun).
Click to expand...
Actually (and newspapers and tv muck this up consistently enough that I suspect it is intentional) if it only chambers auto it is a semi-automatic weapon not an automatic weapon.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom