{"id":34721,"date":"2013-03-24T09:17:17","date_gmt":"2013-03-24T13:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=34721"},"modified":"2013-03-24T09:17:17","modified_gmt":"2013-03-24T13:17:17","slug":"veterans-strong-voices-in-maryland-gun-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=34721","title":{"rendered":"Veterans’ strong voices in Maryland gun debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pat sends us a link from the Washington Post<\/a> which does a fairly good job, surprisingly, representing Maryland veterans in the gun debate;<\/p>\n

Since he has returned from Afghanistan, A.J. Wynne, 24, who was a corporal in the Marines, has spent countless hours shooting in the farmland north of Frederick. On a recent Sunday, he picked up his semiautomatic rifle, put down his demons and let muscle memory take over.<\/p>\n

Breathe. Focus. Squeeze.<\/p>\n

The weapon erupted into a violent cacophony \u2014 30 shots in 11 seconds \u2014 and sent the crows in the treesbolting skyward.<\/p>\n

The smile made his beard rise. He reloaded.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not yoga \u2014 it\u2019s not graceful in any sense of the word, but I could do this all day long,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just something that you go do to relax, to calm down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wynne knows there are those who would argue that he is perhaps the last person who should be given unfettered access to high-powered, semiautomatic rifles that are designed to emulate the weapons he was trained to use in battle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the article, some delegates to the legislature are rethinking a total ban on scary black rifles because of veterans and competitive shooters who have entered the debate. But, of course there are idiots in the article like Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown, a colonel in the Army Reserve who says;<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nonsense,\u201d said Brown, the highest-ranking U.S. elected official to have served in Iraq. \u201cThe military trains us on these military-style assault weapons to perform a combat mission, and that combat mission does not exist in the communities of Maryland or anywhere in this country.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But, I’ll bet you that the dingus has a scary black rifle in his den. I didn’t realize how much I missed my M16 until I bought an AR this last year and that familiar feel of the pistol grip, my thumb knew right where to go for the selector switch and it felt like coming home. I didn’t need a foregrip on it, because the plastic handguards felt so good, but when I read Dianne Feinstein’s bill and discovered that she thought a foregrip should be illegal, I bought one. When I read that the Department of Homeland Security warned surplus store owners that anyone buying bipods for their rifle might be a terrorist, I immediately went out and bought three bipods.<\/p>\n

The Post actually admits that veterans are are influencing the vote in Maryland with facts;<\/p>\n

But the plight of veterans is one lawmakers, especially in the House, have heard loudly.<\/p>\n

Veterans were a heavy presence among more than 1,300 people who on March 1 amassed in Annapolis to testify against O\u2019Malley\u2019s plan. Many cited federal data to stress that their rifles are for good, not for harm: Out of 398 Maryland homicides in 2011, two were carried out with rifles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, so guns are a veteran issue, especially judging by the links that y’all send me dealing with the gun issue, and because the NRA and other gun groups keep us supplied with links and information, too, since we’re primarily a military-issues blog with a large audience of veterans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pat sends us a link from the Washington Post which does a fairly good job, surprisingly, … Veterans’ strong voices in Maryland gun debate<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}