{"id":66917,"date":"2016-07-17T10:52:05","date_gmt":"2016-07-17T14:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=66917"},"modified":"2016-07-17T11:45:03","modified_gmt":"2016-07-17T15:45:03","slug":"you-asked-me-about-john-s-butler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=66917","title":{"rendered":"You asked me about John S. Butler"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DSCF0004\"<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

Some of you folks sent me a link to an article written by John S. Butler in The State entitled “I know assault weapons \u2013 and you shouldn\u2019t have one<\/a>“. Butler claimed to be a Vietnam veteran who had experience with “assault weapons”, whatever an assault weapon is these days.<\/p>\n

I am calling on veterans who have served in active combat \u2013 lived and almost died depending on the assault weapon strapped to your body \u2013 to speak out. We are the people who have true insight on this issue. Without wealth and connections to keep a deferment, I was drafted and in active combat for a year in Vietnam from Nov. 1967 to Nov. 1968. During the Tet offensive in Jan. \u201968, some of the worst fighting in the war, I was frequently in first-hand combat along the Mekong River and through the rice paddies in the delta radioing coordinates for artillery firepower.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, I’m happy to report that Butler is who he says he is. He was in Vietnam from November 1967 – November 1968 and he served with the 3\/34 FA which provided indirect fire support to the brown water Riverines in the Mekong Delta region, according to one unit historian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Butler<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

Now that we’ve established his truthfulness, which I’m embarrassed that we had to do, let’s look at his words;<\/p>\n

Assault weapons are just that: for assault. They are not for the general public to play at target practice or use for sport. They are too dangerous. The general public is not trained sufficiently nor mentally strategic enough to understand their raw power. They should be in the hands of only the military and tactical, highly trained law enforcement.<\/p>\n

Disagree with me? If you\u2019re a veteran and served in active combat with an assault weapon, I value your opinion \u2013 even if it differs from mine. If you\u2019re simply a gun enthusiast who believes it\u2019s your inalienable right to play with assault weapons, I don\u2019t value it because you really don\u2019t understand the consequences \u2013 you haven\u2019t witnessed them. If that\u2019s who you are and what you want, join the military and be useful with that.<\/p>\n

I believe in the Second Amendment. I own a gun. I have a concealed carry permit just in case I need it \u2013 not to carry routinely. What\u2019s the old saying … if you carry around a hammer, you\u2019re always looking for a nail?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The term “assault weapons” is just a word that people use to scare other people with. I own modern sporting rifles that have the accoutrements that have been determined by politicians to be features of “assault weapons”. I also have bolt-action rifles with the same accoutrements, that were assault rifles in their day, but are no longer considered such. I have a rifle which is bolt action that has a muzzle brake and a box magazine which will punch a fist-sized hole in your chest at more than 1500 meters. At ranges under a thousand meters, it will penetrate body armor. I’d consider that to be much more dangerous than anything anyone else would call an “assault rifle”. Needless to say, it’s fun to shoot, too.<\/p>\n

In the hammer\/nail comment above – I, too, have a concealed weapon permit, I use it everyday where it’s legal. I’ve never found a nail upon which to use my hammer, though.<\/p>\n

I am an infantry combat veteran with two decades of carrying an M16 nearly every day, but I don’t think that my opinion on the issue of the Second Amendment has any more weight than anyone else. We’re all American citizens. People who have no experience with firearms have no place in the discussion, and they prove their unworthiness in that regard everyday in the media, but there are people with much more experience than me who never served a day in the military – their opinion is valid, too.<\/p>\n

While I agree that untrained people probably shouldn’t own modern sporting rifles, untrained drivers shouldn’t drive high-performance automobiles on the Autobahn, either, but it happens every day. Who am I to force my common sense on the inexperienced?<\/p>\n

By the way, my M16 had a “full auto” feature, and that made it an “assault rifle”. The weapons that Mr Butler is talking about don’t have the “full auto” select, so they’re not really the same weapon he carried in Vietnam, or the one that I carried for two decades. They only look alike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of you folks sent me a link to an article written by John S. Butler … You asked me about John S. Butler<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66917","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=66917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/66920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}