01-01-2014, 06:18 AM
Walter Wrote:Not all goverment is bad. The EPA does save lives. Is clean air bad? How about clean water? There should be a balance. Not sure how many people need machine guns. I am sure that you all know someone who should not own a 50 BMG. I am sure that there is some good in the ATF. That said ATF could use some help.
The EPA doesn't help keep the air clean, they act as a clearing house for entrenched businesses with enough lobbying power through K street in D.C., while small businesses get hosed. America has the cleanest air on the planet for any land areas with similar land mass and population density, because we have Pacific weather patterns and 3 major mountain ranges, with the most elaborate river and tributary network in the world. Since we have so much hydro-electric and natural gas power, we don't need to burn anywhere near the amount of coal that flatter areas do that have limited or no mountain ranges, like Europe, China, and Russia. EPA has nothing to do with air quality, and everything to do with acting as a front for targeting certain businesses for political reasons. Look no further than the legal disparity between how battery manufacturers are treated compared to ammunition. The EPA basically regulated lead-manufacturing out of the US this year.
The EPA and OSHA are business-destroying organizations, not there for their stated purposes, and at the end of the day, they are government-run, with no accountability, and increasing budgets for a negative return on the people who have to find a place to work to pay for the abuse.
How did our ancestors survive all those years with free access to machineguns, and a workplace with no OSHA and EPA? I'd rather live in a country where we err on the side of freedom, than places like where my mom is from, where the government can't find enough ways to insert itself into your life, let alone the obscene micromanagement of businesses.
For example, if every member here owned a machinegun, what would it change? I personally don't have a burning desire to own them, other than for collection purposes and the occasional holiday blast session, because they are expensive to feed, and are pretty much pointless from a mag-fed weapon. Since I don't have any ill intent to my fellow men, me owning a machinegun wouldn't change anything in the world. Now I really would like to have an 81mm mortar tube, with unrestricted access to HE rounds, as long as I stored them in a well-regulated bunker. Mortars are way more fun that long-range rifles, I don't care who you are!
I know plenty of people with .50 BMG rifles, and it hasn't changed a thing in the world. The only people that shouldn't have .50 BMG's that do have them, got them from ATF and the US State Department through WH-approved operations. That's the problem. Low-rate thugs in the US wouldn't know the first thing about being able to effectively employ a .50 BMG, whereas the military weapons that have been provided to military narco-terrorist gangs south of our border have also been accompanied by formal military training in the School of Americas, and teams of military units under State Department orders to provide training support for the Mexican Airborne El GAFE, which is where Los Zetas originated from.
Still think ATF just needs a little tinkering to help them out? We need more ICE and US Border Patrol agents, not internal gun gestapo who are funneling thousands of weapons to murderous narco paramilitary gangs.
Did you catch the part where I mentioned that 1362 ATF agents have active Federal Equal Opportunity Act violation complaints as of 2012? There are only 4770 ATF employees. They're a train wreck of an organization, regardless of how many good field agents there are. That means that 29% of ATF employees in 2012 had an active EEO discrimination complaint based on gender, race, skin color, creed, etc. http://www.examiner.com/article/atf-whis...complaints
Comparative figures for the FBI and DEA are less than 1%, and those organizations are tore up from the floor up with regards to management. For example, the DEA admitted last year that they were helping cartels launder drug money, to gain credibility with them. So we have ATF funneling thousands of guns to the cartels, DEA laundering cartel drug money http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=777_1323264375, while the Bureau hides in the shadows with their hands deep in both areas of scandal through US Attorneys' offices and OCDETF's in the various Federal regions.
This isn't government, this is organized crime that has taken over our government.