We live and we learn. I have known ranchers and farmers all my life. I knew them in Colorado, growing up, and in neighboring Nebraska and Wyoming. I also knew horse breeders in California. Yes, ranchers and farmers keep guns. Yes, they do so to guard against predators. And it is brand new information to me that you need an AR-15 to shoot a raccoon who might be threatening a hen.
But that is what Colorado congressman Ken Buck would have you believe. Pro tip, Ken: sane ranchers keep handguns and shot guns. You don’t need war level weapons to take out a raccoon.
P.S. The clip I’m referring to is the bottom clip, but watch the top clip, it’s a gem as well. Congressman Steube gets peeved when somebody suggests how he should handle guns in his own house.
Rep. Ken Buck: "Blaming the gun for what's happening in America is small minded … in rural Colorado, an AR-15 is a gun of choice for killing raccoons before the get to our chickens." pic.twitter.com/nWmcJsqcBp
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 2, 2022
The GOP has turned into a death cult. That is not hyperbole. It really is true. They do not want to change the insane gun laws, even though we have had 233 mass shootings (“mass” being defined as four or more victims, not counting the perpetrator) in the first 152 days of the year, which was yesterday.
It’s amazing how attitudes towards guns have changed. As I’ve shared before, I used to be a card carrying member of the NRA. Seriously. I used to shoot a handgun, a Smith & Wesson .45. It was a nice gun. I even had the grip customized to my hand.
Marksmanship used to be a sane sport. I enjoyed it. I used to go to the gun club on a weekend and shoot moving paper targets. It was relaxing and fun and I wasn’t a lunatic clad in body armor, collecting massive amounts of guns and ammo, preparing for the day when I would fight the next revolutionary war.
I knew other people who also shot guns and we would have a mild competition going, who was the better marksman. We’d go have a drink afterwards.
Those days are gone. Nowadays if you are pro-gun, you are a lunatic. I haven’t owned a gun in years. My last gun was stolen and I chose not to replace it, because by then the cultural wind had shifted and I was having severe misgivings about guns in America.
I don’t know the precise moment America took a wrong turn, but I can tell you this: I have seen people kill rattlesnakes with a shot gun and a rattler is a lot more lethal threat to livestock than a raccoon. You don’t need an AR-15 to kill a snake. Or a raccoon. Or a fox.
Ken Buck is nuts and so are the rest of the GOP death cult.
Like Ursula, I too have many rancher/farmer friends, I spent many months working on ranches in Wyoming and Colorado, and not once did I ever encounter an assault weapon. Shotguns in a rack behind the bench seat in a pickup truck were and might still be normal, 22s for sure, hunting rifles for those who hunt. Never an AR15-type assault rifle to kill raccoons, foxes, rattlesnakes and maybe a turkey vulture.
Nobody is killing a raccoon with an AR-15. Buck either is insane or he thinks we’re all stupid or both.
If you need an AR to kill “varmints”, you might be in an area where you’re the intruder, and you should give serious consideration to moving someplace where you aren’t a potential dinner.
Obviously raccoons don’t wear body armor where you live, Ursula.
Where I live now, raccoons wear glitter and capes and go to shows on The Strip. :))
The only guns that were for use at my parents’ house out in the country were an air-rifle for scaring birds out of the big elm in the back corner (didn’t need a murder of crows there) and a shotgun for varmints (or protection – it lived near the front door, the one for strangers.)
Ken Buck, like 95% of all Republicans in Congress, is an a**hat. The most irritating and fatiguing thing about a**hat GOP congress people isn’t their total inhumanity, it’s their unbelievable stupidity. Thomas Jeffersons they ain’t…
+He is indeed. Yet he is also exponentially less of an ashhat than his opponent i the Republican primary And in that district, the winner of the Republica primary will win the general. I don’t live there, I live in Lamebrain’s district, but that’s one primary I would consider rat****ing if I did live there,
Whose district do you live in? Boebert’s?
Lamborn.
He is also not a rural coloradan.
He s a city district attorney.
Let’s face it. These people are stocking up on assault weapons so they can be on the winning side when they start a civil war. The only reason to own an AR-15 or any gun that holds more than 6 bullets at a time, is to kill many humans as quickly as possible. And I believe they plan to start a civil war because that’s the ONLY way they can keep their precious white supremacy.
They always think that no one left of them has weapons of any kind. Or any kind of intelligence.
It isn’t guns that kill, it is,KILLERS WITH GUNS. Take away the guns and you stop.mass murder. One idiot on Facebook last night said they would just use knives. I pointed out that a knife requires you to get up.close and personal which means you can easily be overwhelmed and lose the knife. You cannot kill.from.a,safe distance with a knife or shoot 20 people in a matter of minutes.
When I read the headline I just burst out laughing! OMGoddess!!