Thursday, August 19, 2010

Obama quietly hoses gun owners. Few notice.

Thankfully, the Korean press wasn't as silent on this outrage as the American press was.
The U.S. government is opposing Korea’s bid to sell thousands of aging U.S. combat rifles to American gun collectors.


By Jung Sung-ki

The U.S. government opposed South Korea’s bid to sell hundreds of thousands of aging U.S. combat rifles to American gun collectors, a senior government official said Thursday.

The ministry announced the plan last September as part of efforts to boost its defense budget, saying the export of the M1 Garand and carbine rifles would start by the end of 2009.

The U.S. administration put the brakes on the plan, citing “problems” that could be caused by the importation of the rifles.

The problems the U.S. government cited were somewhat ambiguous, said an official at the Ministry of National Defense on condition of anonymity.

“The U.S. insisted that imports of the aging rifles could cause problems such as firearm accidents. It was also worried the weapons could be smuggled to terrorists, gangs or other people with bad intentions,” the official told The Korea Times.

“We’re still looking into the reason why the U.S. administration is objecting to the sale of the rifles and seeking ways to resolve the problems raised,” he said.

Critics say the ministry pushed to sell the firearms in a hasty manner without enough consultation with the U.S. beforehand, as calls were growing to increase defense expenditure.

The Seoul government sought to sell the outdated U.S guns back to the United States.

A total of 86,000 M1 rifles and another 22,000 carbines were to be sold, as the weapons have been mothballed for about five decades in military warehouses. The per-unit price of the M1 rifle is about $220 and the carbine is more than $140, according to the ministry.

Firearms accidents? Terrorists and gangs? Please... That crap sounds like it was written by Josh Sugarman or Sarah Brady personally. Unsafe? They were sure safe enough for our troops to use all over the world from World War Two up into the early 1970's. And criminals? Criminals don't want old, hard-to-conceal rifles like these. The only ones who do want them are American target shooters, military history buffs and collectors. These weapons flowed freely into our country without a problem during the eight years of the last administration and everyone was happy. But Obama is in a tough spot here. He promised his left-wing supporters that he'd enact new national gun control laws like the ones he supported in Illinois if they put him in office, but since then, he's read the mood of the people and realized that we're not in the mood for any more gun control, especially while he's still in the White House and his party is busy crashing our country. But Obama is and always has been anti-gun, and this move was a way for him to keep 100,000 pieces of shooting history out of the hands of American citizens, ideally without anyone noticing.

Well we're noticing. The question now is what we're going to do about it. Spread this around, gunnies...it may be too late to undo this screw-job, but at least we can hold the responsible guy and his followers accountable and rebut their claims that Obama isn't out to take our guns away.

6 comments:

  1. I saw a brief headline about this on Drudge a few days ago, but the link disappeared before I had a chance to look at it (thanks to Drudge's annoying habit of refreshing itself every 2 seconds). I would be one of those collectors standing in line to purchase a piece of history especially at the price they quoted in the article. Heck, at that price, I'd buy a couple and give one to a friend.

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  2. Quoted and linked - pisses me off, too.

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  3. This was opposed by the Bush admin as well. Petty bureaucrats with little oversight.

    Gotta be fair, even to Barry.

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  4. This goes as far back as the Clinton administration's ban on reimportation of American leaseed military materials.

    As Mr. B says, its not a new blockage just a continuation of a very longstanding one.

    There's salso a question as to ewhether these were sold outright to the government of South korea, in which case it should be able to sell them, or if they were leased. If they were leased then they should be returned to the US Army and resold through the CMP which would stop SK from profiting on the sales, which they probably don't appreciate.

    Of course the longstanding, never overturned, Clinton import block is preventing either action.

    The price is likley the wholesale price fromt he SK government to whatever importer is interested in buying them - expect to pay much higher amounts if their condition is in anyway decent, assuming this mess ever gets strightened out and they get reimported.

    I'm holding out for the US leased M-1 Carbines that were leased or sold outright to Israel myself - it would be great to have one but the same block also stops them from coming back, dammit.

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  5. Anonymous5:14 PM

    Some pure BS if I have ever heard it.Will cross post.

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  6. "The greatest battle implement ever devised."

    Bring 'em home.

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