I believe you have Van Horn confused with San Angelo.Originally Posted by Rich_Jenkins
I believe you have Van Horn confused with San Angelo.
Recovering Gun Store Commando. My Blog: The Clue Meter
“It doesn’t matter what the problem is, the solution is always for us to give the government more money and power, while we eat less meat.”
Glenn Reynolds
You are sorely mistaken.
Van horn is a small (really small) town in one of the longest gaps between El Paso and central TX.
San Angelo is a small city and not nearly as remote.
San Angelo seemed pretty damned remote when I was there last, but that was nearly 25 years ago.
Recovering Gun Store Commando. My Blog: The Clue Meter
“It doesn’t matter what the problem is, the solution is always for us to give the government more money and power, while we eat less meat.”
Glenn Reynolds
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Horn,_Texas
Van Horn is a town in and the seat of Culberson County, Texas, United States.[3] According to the 2010 census, Van Horn had a population of 2,063,[4] down from 2,435 at the 2000 census. It is the westernmost incorporated community in the Central Time Zone part of the state of Texas.Compare that to San Angelo population 118,000.Van Horn is located in southwestern Culberson County at 31°2′33″N 104°49′59″W (31.042489, -104.832928).[5] Interstate 10 passes through the town, leading east 120 miles (190 km) to Fort Stockton and northwest 118 miles (190 km) to El Paso. Van Horn is the western terminus of U.S. Route 90; from Van Horn it leads southeast 73 miles (117 km) to Marfa. Texas State Highway 54 leads north from Van Horn 65 miles (105 km) to Pine Springs and the Guadalupe Mountains.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 2.8 square miles (7.3 km2), all land.
Last edited by HCM; 11-16-2018 at 10:20 PM.
For Pete's sake, please no one yell "Wolverines!"
The dachshund will be prowling the house and barking at every shadow for hours. He effing hates wolverines, maybe more than Badgers.
"If I ever needed to hunt in a tuxedo, then this would be the rifle I'd take." - okie john
"Not being able to govern events, I govern myself." - Michel De Montaigne
There's nothing civil about this war.
California has registered handguns since the 1960’s, maybe earlier than that. In my almost 30 year career in law enforcement there, I can recall one instance where a crime gun came back registered to the suspect in the crime under investigation. Virtually every handgun I had occasion to run, unless stolen, came back as no record, as in unregistered. Even hits on a “stolen” serial number had to be looked at carefully because the database was full of errors and duplicate numbers because some numbnut(s) put down the model number as the serial number.
We could get a very nice printout of every legally purchased handgun by an individual. Could also get a list of every Smolt Model 5768 sold in CA by date range or by city or county. I once asked for a list of every Randall 1911 .45 sold in LA County (One was identified as the murder weapon in a homicide via ballistics). The list was surprisingly long for what I thought was a relatively uncommon gun. Good luck if looking for a S&W revolver that way.
The first indication a bad guy should have that I'm dangerous is when his
disembodied soul is looking down at his own corpse wondering what happened.
The core objective isn’t “armed confiscation” or even crime mitigation. It’s to make owning a gun a logistical PITA so normal people abandon the practice. Then one day the Charlton Heston holdouts get old , and their kids duly phone the law when cosmoline wrapped pieces are found buried in the walls and soil.
The often quoted scenario of armed people going door to door in peacetime to seize specific guns is a logistical impossibility in the United States. Law Enforcement has trouble getting people for doing normal duties- where will they get the manpower and budget dollars to both seize thousands of weapons and maintain public service? Then there’s the issue of compensation. NRA estimates there are about 8.5 million ARs in circulation : times $600 and we get $5.1 billion in buyback costs alone. We all know even junk ARs are worth more then that, so the honest total would be far higher- and that’s just one brand of long gun. Hope the Blue Helmets have an Amex Black card handy.
The Minority Marksman.
"When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet."
-a Ch'an Buddhist axiom.
As long as we're chewing on all the angles of this, the financial aspects of the Australian gun buyback are interesting.
About a year and a half, maybe two years in, they had spent ~$360M AUS on the program. People were turning in "nest egg" collections with multiple pieces easily worth four figures, getting $200 AUS for them. The "takings" aspect of it was significant. That got them an estimated 30 percent of the existing stock. And that's in a country with a population about the size of CA, that was probably significantly less well-armed than CA is even today.
$360M is a lot of schools, just sayin'.
The general political situation around it was also interesting. (My understanding and recollection from what I've read - I'm being lazy and not doing any fact-checking on myself here.) The national government didn't have constitutional authority to implement the ban and seizure; that power was reserved to the states. The situation was similar to the US, where many of the more rural states opposed the ban, both at the government and population levels. But like the US, most of the Australian population is concentrated in a few large urban centers, including significant numbers of immigrants from places without strong traditions of individual freedom and firearms as a way of life. After the Port Arthur shooting, the "national mood" in the populated areas was such that most people believed a constitutional amendment to give the national government the necessary authority would have passed easily. (Apparently, that can be done with a popular vote, rather than the state-by-state ratification required in the US, but I'm crossing over some paint lines there.) So the national government leaned on all the individual states to pass something like a model legislation, or have the constitution changed. The states caved, in order to preserve the integrity of the constitution and prevent it being tossed and turned this way and that, based on whatever someone gets the people fired up about this election cycle.
Lessons are in there somewhere.
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Not another dime.
Indeed. The chief one being what happens when a community of gun owners goes tribal. The shooting community in Australia decided the opinions of “those city people” didn’t matter. One day the old and grey gunnies woke up and realized a generation of hoplophobes ruled their country.
The Minority Marksman.
"When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet."
-a Ch'an Buddhist axiom.
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