Assault weapons

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by Pio1980

Volunteer or draftee?
You don't seem to be the jarhead type

During WWII draftees went into all branches of the service...I could not find any information as to the numbers who ended up in the Marine Corps.

During the Vietnam War about 42,000 of the approximately 450,000 Marines who were actually stationed in Vietnam during the war were draftees, 14,844 Marines never made it back home.

When I lost my student deferment in late 1968, I decided to take some control over my likely service and enlisted in the Marine Corps. I figured, perhaps wrongly, that my chances of survival should I end up in country were better in a mostly volunteer branch. A friend who was in the Corps told me that the Marine Corps processed enlistees and administered the oath way faster than the Navy or Air Force, and since my deferment was already gone my best chance of avoiding being drafted into the Army was with the Marine Corps. During the process, I found out I was in the next month's draft call, so I'm glad I did it that way. I scored really high on a battery of tests when I wandered into a Chicago recruiting office, and they asked me how soon I might want to take the oath. They swore me in that day.

When I enlisted, 10% of the draft call went into the Marine Corps. I remember seeing it happen when I was at the Chicago Induction Center for just one day for a pre-induction physical. There were hundreds of us in this enormous hall at various stages of the induction process, and there was a huge long line of guys who were at the last steps in the process. Some official went to the front of the line and walked down the line counting out inductees by 10's. So it went "1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-MARINE CORPS!" A typical reaction was..."WTF!!!!!!!" All the number 10's went over to a different area of the hall to do their Department of the Navy/Marine Corp paperwork.

My Marine Corps service was as a radio operator (actually a radio telegrapher) in the Air Wing. I never set foot in Vietnam. I spent most of my time sitting in rooms sending and receiving encrypted code messages in groups of letters that meant nothing to me. I have no Vietnam Service Medal. I'm what is considered to be a "Vietnam Era Vet." So the whole thing worked out pretty good for me.

One of the things I vividly remember from Marine Basic Training was when our platoon commander DI said to us, the first evening we were together as a platoon..."There are only six of you assholes who didn’t ask to be here." My impression was that if anybody was ever cut a smidgen of slack in Marine Corps basic, it was the draftees. They beat the hell out of all of us, but the draftees didn’t get as much of that part of Basic training as the rest of us.

[Pio1980]

I was also 'Nam era, not even a REMF. My rationale was similar to yours, but I enlisted Army with option for a preselected mos. What was available and attractive was as a Hawk anti-aircraft missile crewman. The 'Cong didn't have much of an air arm to anti-aircraft at.
I spent my first enlistment @ Ft.Bliss and permanent party @ Grafenwöhr Germany & an antiaircraft site outside of Auerbach on the Czech border during the Prague Spring and after, when the Russians crashed the party and wouldn't leave.
My second enlistment after a break in the inactive reserve occurred about the same time as the withdrawal from Saigon. I tried for Navy both times, never ever considered the Corps, which would have been a personal disaster for an autistic closeted gay guy.
The Army turned out to be a good fit in medical/dental for career but not advancement, much more MASH than John Wayne. Nonetheless, I retired well enuff.

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

Come on ZJ...let's have your plan for taking firearms out of the hands of the law abiding mentally ill. I can't fucking wait.

Not surprisingly, ZeroJ has no plan. None of them have a plan. They just toss out "mental health" the same way they toss out "thoughts and prayers."

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by Pio1980

I was also 'Nam era, not even a REMF. My rationale was similar to yours, but I enlisted Army with option for a preselected mos. What was available and attractive was as a Hawk anti-aircraft missile crewman. The 'Cong didn't have much of an air arm to anti-aircraft at.
I spent my first enlistment @ Ft.Bliss and permanent party @ Grafenwöhr Germany & an antiaircraft site outside of Auerbach on the Czech border during the Prague Spring and after, when the Russians crashed the party and wouldn't leave.
My second enlistment after a break in the inactive reserve occurred about the same time as the withdrawal from Saigon. I tried for Navy both times, never ever considered the Corps, which would have been a personal disaster for an autistic closeted gay guy.
The Army turned out to be a good fit in medical/dental for career but not advancement, much more MASH than John Wayne. Nonetheless, I retired well enuff.

Just one other little possible point of interest...when the lottery went into effect in 1970 my number was 305 and the draft never got even close to that. But I would have been drafted in early 1969 so it didn't matter.

[ZeroJunk]

Originally Posted by Ike Bana

You people keep saying the same shit over and over...so we have all had the opportunity to listen to you carp about the mentallly ill. So...lets have it. Who's mentally ill enough to disqualify themselves from firearms ownership even though they have never broken any law? The psychopathological? The sociopathological? The psychotic? The delusional? Those with dementia. The clinically depressed? Those with clinical anxiety? The bipolar? The narcissistic? The anti-social? The histrionic? THE FUCKING HOPELESSLY NEUROTIC??? And...whos gonna assess/evaluate those who want guns? Mental health professionals that ignoramuses like you approve of? Somebody like me who was run off an alt-right forum because I had the audacity to tell the anti-LGBTQ bigots that minor children age 12 years and older have counseling and mental health confidentiality rights and who can refuse to disclose the content of their gender-affirming therapy to their hateful, shaming, bigot parents.

You want somebody like me, a licensed mental health professional who's services are paid for by the health insurance industry and by medicare, telling you that you're too fucked up to get a gun license?

And mentally ill? What about in juridictions in some red states where the legally blind cannot be denied a gun permit? THE LEGALLY FUCKING BLIND!!!

Come on ZJ...let's have your plan for taking firearms out of the hands of the law abiding mentally ill. I can't fucking wait.

Hi Ike. You are not going to herd up the mentally ill and you are not going to confiscate the guns. Not going to happen.

Hell, if you even try and restrain a nutcase on a subway you will be charged, so exactly how are you going to fix that. And, if you want to go confiscate the guns, good luck in that contest.

So, harden your soft targets. You have a country spending $6,000,000,000,000 a year and you can't afford that ?

[Ike Bana]

Originally Posted by ZeroJunk

Hi Ike. You are not going to herd up the mentally ill and you are not going to confiscate the guns. Not going to happen.
go confiscate the guns, good luck in that contest.

Pathetic. You people have two, and only two interventions....

1. Mental health screening
2. Armed school teachers

So...you’ll never get #2, and you have no fucking clue how to facilitate "1. Pathetic as it gets...you have no plan...outside of more thoughts and prayers.

Mental health screening is bullshit misdirection. You gunners keep insisting on it because you know there's no way to facilitate it.