Talking Back to My Senator

Here in Florida, our two senators are Marco Rubio, the young "rising star" (as I keep hearing) of the Stupid Party, and Bill Nelson, the old, "burning out star" of the Evil Party.  As I have tweaked all of my representatives about the flood of gun control bills coming to the floors for debate, I have gotten responses that are sometimes good and sometimes not so good.

I wish I had saved Senator Nelson's email to present here because it was just the sort of political crap you get from the Evil Party.  Dr. Jim over at Every Blade of Grass posted his reply from Babs Feinstein and Nelson's was almost that bad.  But Senator Nelson is actually from my town from when it was even more of a small, southern town.  Locals recall seeing him in church when he was State Insurance Commissioner.  So he gave me the old, “I'm a hunter and I've owned guns all my life, but AK-47s were designed to kill people” line.

I decided to reply to that and include my response here.  Maybe someone else will get some ideas from it.


Dear Senator Nelson:


Thank you for your email explaining your position on the second amendment.  To paraphrase, “I'm a hunter and I've owned guns all my life, but AK-47s were designed to kill people”.

Indeed they are; that's beyond dispute.  They are also probably the most widely made and owned guns in the world.  I've seen one made from a shovel. 

Also beyond dispute is that your hunting rifle was designed to kill people.  I don't know what kind of hunting rifle you have, but most hunters use a bolt action rifle.  These are direct descendants of the German Mauser rifles used by the German Army from the late 1800s through the second World War.  The only real difference between the AK and your bolt action rifle is the semiautomatic action, which wasn't perfected until the early 1900s, after the Mauser was fielded.  

Military style?  Every firearm style has been used by some military. 

What your letter failed to say was that since murder, taking guns into a school and many other crimes committed at Sandy Hook are already illegal; how can making them “more illegal” possibly stop the psychotically insane?  All you will do is impact the law abiding, who already navigate through thousands of pages of laws on guns. 

James Alan Fox, America's leading scholar on mass killings, says the average number of such killings has not changed as long as statistics have been kept; 35 years. 

There is no crisis to react to.  There is literally nothing to see here. 

Yes, Sandy Hook was a terrible tragedy, but more people die every weekend in Chicago than were killed at Sandy Hook, and Chicago has the strictest gun control in the nation.  Even at Sandy Hook, in Connecticut, an “Assault Weapons Ban” was already in place. 

Criminals get their guns from other criminals.  The guns are stolen, not sold at a gun show, according to the FBI.  Background checks will have no effect on this.

More gun control laws will do nothing to stop mass killers.  The Sandy Hook killer committed over 20 felonies.  Another law would prevent this from happening?  Seriously? 

Sometimes the smartest thing to do, and the most courageous thing to do, is nothing. 

I am opposed to all of the new proposed gun control laws.

Cordially,
etc.

Yeah, I obviously didn't put in any of the counter proposals from yesterday's post.  Since I was answering him, I wanted to keep it shorter than it was.