I don't know what it's going to take.

My Dad, with a medical condition, trained soldiers in how to handle rifles, machine guns and grenades during WWII. He was a really good shooter - breathtaking how accurate he was. My brother inherited those genes and I didn't. I was a pretty good shot but I didn't care for it. My brother and Dad liked to hunt. I liked animals. But I learned a lot being around it.

My brother moved west and some decades ago, I went to visit him. He'd joined this informal gun club and asked if I'd like to come along. He promised no animals would be shot. So I did.

The place we went was some farmer's field surrounded by hills so a stray bullet couldn't get away. I heard them say something about a forest. So we go out to this field and my jaw drops when I see them unload their trunks full of weapons and steel cases of ammo. They've AR15s/M16s, Nato FNs - a whole bunch of heavy duty semi automatic rifles. There are about 6 heavily armed guys.

About 100 yards or so away, there's a hunk of forest kind of sticking out from the rest of the forest about half a football field. These guys line up and open fire on this forest. In two to three, maybe five minutes, it's basically gone - all cut down. The farmer wanted it taken out. It was a young forest in that I don't think any or many tree trunks were more than 6" in diameter. It just shocked me how powerful these weapons were.

They had some magazines there used to promote gun sales and the advertising pictures were of dead people and how big of a hole the weapon put in the dead guys head. They'd roll the dead body over to show you the entrance and exit wounds in the ad. Might have been an ad for bullets. I don't know. It make me feel like puking looking at it. Very disturbing.

These weapons are so powerful, it's frightening. Two of the guys in that group failed some sort of psych test, one trying to become a cop and the other with the army after he joined. The army forbid him to own a weapon. So a few months later, he bought an APC and a SWAT team took him down. Third untested guy should have failed -he was in the process of trying to buy a little howitzer that he thought he could tow to the farmers field on the back of his Volkswagon Rabbit. Seriously. I begged my brother to get away from these people - which he eventually did.

I was working one day in an industrial park and I heard shots. I called the police. Uniforms got there pretty quick. They took the report quickly and started to get in the cruiser. I grabbed him and said "You can't. It's 30 odd 6." Their faces went pale. I went on "Get the SWAT team. Please don't go." Ignoring me, they got in their cruiser and went looking for the shooter. I was sick with worry as I saw them weaving around in their cruiser. At 100 yards, it's really hard to miss with a good rifle. You can kill someone a mile away. A 30 odd 6 can blow a 6" hole in your head. If those police got into an altercation, pretty good odds at least one of them is dead because the shooter could be just waiting and sees them before they see him.

I know we've heavily criticized cops rightfully for slaughtering unarmed blacks but those two cops were very brave that night. They shouldn't have to face as much of that as they do. If you had to do that frequently, I think it would make you pretty jumpy - on edge too much.

I do not understand after things like Sandy Hook or Colorado or Columbine, etc why we continue to subject our society to this craziness. This was my first Sandy Hook:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman#Funeral
In 1966, Charles Whitman killed 16 people at the Univ of Texas. I'll never forget it. The tragic anniversary is fifty years this August and we really haven't done much about it.

Your concern for the police was not unfounded. In a northern suburb of the DFW mid cities police were called to investigate gunshots in a city park. The responding officer was shot and killed with a high caliber hunting rifle.

I would personally like to see all semi auto guns with interchangeable magazines banned or destroyed after a mandatory buy back. The ability to kill with these guns is limited only by the shooter's physical strength to carry ammunition. Failing that a $1000 tax on the weapon and $100 tax on each magazine.

This from a gun collector with a Federal Firearms License.

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There were shots exchanged. The officer shot the culprit six? times with his handgun and the culprit survived. Back then, the police used solid bullets that would pass through without doing much damage. The culprit hit the cop once and kills him with a .357 or something more powerful with a hollow point bullet that does more damage because it flattens. Since then, most police upgraded their bullets and weapons some ...

At camp, I used to target shoot with a rifle. Conventional targets got boring. But horseflies used to land on the targets in the sun. They were the kind of fly that could bite and make you bleed. They were a bit of a moving target so therefore, more of a challenge. So we used to bet bullets shooting the wings off the fly without killing him with our 6 or 10 power scopes. That was with .22s that are not as accurate as the higher powered rifles. The point is, a rifle is a precision killing instrument. Pistols and shotguns are not. Nearly all the kids could hit the target, about the size of a head, at 40-50 yards with a 22 and a scope. Practical range of a Glock pistol is about 30 yds. One on one, an officer going up against a kid with a 22 has a real problem to get close enough to him.

Up against an AR15, the officer armed with a pistol, has little chance. Getting behind the cruiser won't help unless he is behind the wheel and engine because those bullets will go through a car and often his body armor. It's an unfair fight.

I know Bernie is against some of the weapons the cops have but I have mixed feelings on that. If you've got a nut with a high powered gun roaming the streets or a heavily armed gang robbing a bank, you have to be able to respond quickly or people can die. You don't always have time to wait for the marines. You can't perpetually put police in positions where they're badly outgunned. But when people are protesting like in Ferguson, keep the Rambo stuff in the garage.

Thanks for your response. I hope they do something.

would at least warrant mention in the local newspaper. If so, can you provide a citation?

Oh, and is "30 odd 6" some kind of wildcat cartridge? I must say I've never heard of it.

That's just my memory of what that group called it. They called the .308 "308" instead of 30 odd 8. And it may be the "odd" was ought (as in zero). I'm not a real gun guy. I was just around it some. 223 for the AR15s was 223 (or whatever the number is - I don't remember). They had "22 conversion kits" for the AR15s. Cheaper I guess for some stuff. They used those for going through woods and shooting targets while being timed. Some of the targets were silhouetted cardboard human shapes that could pop up somehow.

They had what they called an elephant gun. I think it was .75 caliber. Only one of us was able to shoot that and remain standing up it had such a kick.

My brother was into old muskets - Civil War and before - won some stuff with those and WWI and WWII guns. He and they often made their own ammo. I think he had a "Lee Enfield" (that's what it sounded like - I think it used 303) and a "M1 Grand" (don't remember the caliber) There was an old car by the field they claimed they put a 44 magnum through the engine block with some souped up bullets they made for it. I never saw them do it but I saw the hole. I think they damaged the gun doing it.

It was a little less than 40 years ago. I'd gone back home/to school. Archives only go to the 90s for the paper there. It probably got some write up - don't think it would be a big blurb.

According to my brother who told me about it sometime later, he was unarmed (because they made him dispose of about $3,000 worth of weapons - which was a lot more weapons than $3,000 would acquire today - probably closer to $12,000+ in today's dollars) and he used that to buy this APC truck-like armored vehicle - wheels on the front and tracks on the back - sounded like one of the vehicles I saw in Lawrence of Arabia movie. But driving an armored vehicle around town naturally freaked a few folks out - I think it was on a Sunday morning - he'd been up all night drinking. So they sent the SWAT team. He took them on a bit of a chase - kind of driving around and around a traffic circle near a college but no shots fired. It wasn't high speed because this thing couldn't go that fast. I think he had an accident with it - hit a pole or something - my brother said it was not easy to drive looking through the slots - and the accident ended the chase. Not exactly front page news - particularly in light of the fact that the guy was mentally messed up.

I don't think he ever got charged with anything or a court-martial. He was still in the army at the time but not for much longer - probably 39 years ago because of that - not long after I went home. I think they put him in a hospital and then cut him loose after a while. They had the tests he'd previously failed and he obviously wasn't well. He was really nice, mild-mannered, kind of gentle person to talk with. You'd never know from a casual conversation he had problems. Never saw or heard about him after that. Don't know what became of him. I remember his first name but not his last but I wouldn't post that anyway.

There's no point in making a story like that up. That's the best I can do. I doubt my brother would have kept a clipping.

I'd say one of the other guys from the army and my brother were the only two "sensible", don't-have-a-mental-issue in that group. That was the point. These guys were armed to the teeth and not that solid mentally. They had everything they basically wanted in powerful weapons.

One other notable thing for this forum. They were paranoid of laws people were talking about that would take their guns away - even back then. So they took some of these guns, packed a bunch of ammo for them and whatever else they'd need to maintain them (packed them in grease I think) and did it in such a way, they'd be preserved for decades, took them up to the mountains and buried them. All of them did that including my brother. If anyone attacked or took their guns, they were armed & ready for war. I'd never hung with people like that so I found it a little shocking - particularly my own brother. When people scolded Obama for saying folks "clinged to their guns", to me, those words resonated - they struck me as kind of true.

I had the impression the SWAT team used deadly force on the fellow, which would be news worthy.

Yes, 30-06, or caliber .30 , model 1906. Sometimes pronounced "thirty aught six".

of it and it does look like what my brother described.

I heard about his problem while I was out there because it was kind of sad. I think they gave him 90 days to sell his weapons. He'd been coming out for quite some time and sadly, these were some of his last days he was going to be able to enjoy his guns.

Thanks for "aught". Like anything else, the "hobby" (if you will) has it's own vocabulary or slang terminology. I just remember what it sounded like (and I have a bit of a hearing problem - missing some frequencies). I don't recall ever seeing it in print but I did recall the 30-06 on the label. Always wondered what that was about.

One of the group, he was a bank manager. Had a degree, etc and was successful - seemed good at that job. He applied to be a policeman. He really wanted to do that. They declined him. He flunked his psych test .. 40 years ago. We think they picked up that he'd be a danger to kill someone. When we were out target shooting, he saw a coyote about half a mile away. He grabbed his 30-06 and had to go after it to kill it. His eyes dilated and he just had to do it. We were upset with him because this blood thirty idiot could shoot us if the coyote got in between us. As I suspect you know, a 30-06 can kill from a mile away.

And then there is this other guy in the army and the army figures out the guy is too bonkers to own a gun and somehow, they have a mechanism to get him to dispose of them.

The point there is 40 years ago, institutions had the ability to diagnose whack jobs with some sort of accuracy who shouldn't have guns or be cops and in the army's case, had some sort of ability to force the guy to dispose of them. For some reason, 40 years later, we still can't seem to get that for civilians to protect them from nuts with guns. It just doesn't make sense to me.