How can I tell that this is propaganda? A few reasons:
- The round topped cylinders in the front of the picture are 40mm grenades as used in the M-79 and M-203 grenade launchers. You cannot go into a gun shop or go to a gun show and just pick these up. They are regulated as "Destructive Devices" by the National Firearms Act of 1934. Acquiring either a launcher or a single grenade requires you to fill out an application with the BATFE, pass a background check, and pay a $200 transfer tax on each item, over and above the purchase price.
- The cylinders in the left background are either smoke, tear gas, or white phosphorous grenages. Smokes are legal to buy without any paperwork, I'm not sure about the tear gas or WP grenades, though they may be similarly unregulated on a Federal level. Either way, it's not like they're bombs.
- Finally, the real telling piece, is the group of the circular objects with a little cylinder sticking out of the top, most numerous in the picture. What are these dastardly devices of mass destruction? Why, they are Combloc-surplus OIL BOTTLES. I have several which I acquired along with AK or Mosin-Nagant rifles.
Edit 3/21/09: Well, this post seems to have drawn some interest from a couple of other blogs. Welcome! Please look around.
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10 comments:
I also have one of those oil bottles that came with a Mosin Nagant.
And the police are holding M16's ... and yet they are outgunned by AR15's ...
Just a thought, they COULD be improvised grenades, much like a pipe bomb. They'd be better off hitting the hardware store for some pipe given the thickness of those oil cans.
Come to think of it I've read articles about illegals hanging out around home improvement stores. Hmmm.
I also have a combloc oiler that I got with my SKS rifle. Gee, why do we never see any pictures of SKS rifles being seized by the Mexican authorities? There have been plenty of those in American gun shops for years, and the media sure likes to call these rifles "assault weapons," even though they technically aren't.
Anyway, I can only dream of the day of when I would be able to go to some flea market or gun show somewhere and see the vendors offering on their tables just a fraction of the military ordnance that I see being seized from these Mexican gangsters all the time now, things like live grenades, .50 M2 Brownings, and M72 LAW rockets, and I don't mean just the empty and expended tubes, either.
Of course even if they were grenades, I still don't know where to buy them, they don't sell grenades in my sporting goods store.
All in all it’s just other attempt to make people afraid and gain more control of the masses.
What scares me is the majority of the masses will fall for it.
I did see one picture that actually had grenades in it, they were the old Pineapple style, probably from the stocks the US gave Mexico back in the 60s!
Looks like a typical post-seizure propaganda shot saying, "hey look what we seized". They aren't attempting to claim anything other than this is the stuff they seized and we are displaying it.
Of course, the gun nuts would have to seize the wrong end of the stick and try and claim something that wasn't claimed. I am unsure why gunnuttery is such a terrible delusion but its the perfect image of the anti-gunnuttery that they claim they oppose.
Guns are tools. Tools, if dangerous, should be regulated. Get over it. Gun ownership is a privilege. About time American gun nuts realised that.
Yeah, they're not claiming anything other than, "Look at all this *dangerous* stuff we seized."
As as for gun ownership being a privilege as opposed to a right, you fail.
There is ZERO historical evidence that the people who wrote the 2nd Amendment regarded it as anything other than a right. Further, this question was settled last year in "District of Columbia v. Heller" by the Supreme Court of the United States. The court held 9-0 that the 2nd Amendment recognized there was an individual right to keep and bear arms. Where the court split was in the extent of the right and whether the DC's handgun ban violated that right.
Gun banners really need to give it up on the "2nd Amendment doesn't really mean what the plain English says it does" crap.
No, gun ownership is a privilege. Only delusional Americans believe otherwise.
As for the supposed "plain English" of the 2nd amendment, you have to be joking, right? If it was "plain English" why then has it been argued over for the last 200+ years?
Time for the USA to catch up with the rest of the world and start actually addressing the major cause for why their society is so violent - the wide prevalence of guns. Remove the guns and the violence would decrease markedly.
Actually Europe is more violent prone than in the US. If you removed guns, violence would increase only the Wolves would be armed while us the sheep would be powerless to do anything about it. Even better firearms in the hands of the citizens keeps the government from turning to a dictator or s European form of government. True free men are armed.
Interestingly those areas of the world with the strictest forms of gun control also have the highest levels of violence.
Steve in Colorado
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