Memberships and Machine Guns

Wearing a cowboy hat does not necessarily make you a cowboy, assuming that by "cowboy" you mean a real cowboy who works on a cattle ranch. Of course there are other definitions of "cowboy", as in: "That guy drives like a cowboy." Truth be known, real cowboys, on average, probably don't drive their cars any more recklessly than the general population, but it's a figure of speech. Similarly, you can call yourself a Democrat because you vote for Democratic candidates, other people may call you a Democrat because you support the Democratic agenda, but you're not a real Democrat unless you formally join the Democratic Party. They may or may not issue you a card, they may or may not charge you dues, but there must be some way they distinguish members from non members.

Okay, forget about the cards and the dues. Every organization has some kind of leadership, officers or directors or something like that. If you are a member, you are entitled to vote for these guys. You may have to attend a meeting, or they may send you a proxy form in the mail but, one way or another, you can vote for the leadership when they have a periodic election if you want to. So, were you or were you not a member of the Democratic Party back in the day?

I don't know if political parties commonly expel members, but most organizations have a process for doing that. They may not do it very often, or at all, but they have some kind of procedure on paper by which they can expel a member.

We have discussed machine guns before, but a certain amount of memory loss is normal at our age, so let's review: The definition that you quoted is true as far as it goes, but it could be a little more specific. A machine gun is a fully automatic weapon, which means the gun will continue to fire repeatedly as long as you hold the trigger back. A semi automatic firearm will only fire once each time you pull the trigger. Anybody who knows how can easily convert a semi automatic into a fully automatic but, as soon as he does, he is now in possession of a machine gun, which is already illegal.

Certain military rifles have a selector switch by which the gunner can change from the semi automatic mode into the fully automatic mode and back again. These models, when sold to civilians, come without the selector switch and are locked into the semi automatic mode. To convert them to fully automatic, it is necessary to take the gun apart and tamper with the trigger mechanism which, as I said, is not hard to do if you know how. Most of the semi automatics that have been on the civilian market for upwards of a century can be converted to fully automatic the same way, but they were not designed to fire like that and would quickly jam up if a person tried it.

When we last had his discussion, I indicated a willingness to accept a ban on the modern military type of gun that is frequently called an assault rifle, if the law was specific to that type of gun and did not include the semi autos that were designed for the civilian market. You then declared the intention of banning all types of repeating firearms and restricting us law abiding citizens to single shots. This is what happens when you try to compromise with a liberal, which is why I and my ilk are reluctant to do it anymore.