It seems that every news article I read that supports gun control features a picture of a revolver.
The standard practice is to send a photographer to a gun store and have them snap a shot of some wheel guns in a display case.
Just about every one of those signs advertising a gun free zone features a drawing of a revolver.
The recent incident where a crazed terrorist killed some US Marines occurred right where those signs are prominent.
This seems rather odd to me, as the handguns which gun control advocates find most alarming are of the semi-auto breed. (“So many bullets! Catch me while I faint dead away!“)
So why the images of a revolver? Do the people who go in for gun control think a drawing of an autoloader will be ignored over a revolver?
I just don’t get it.
A revolver is the paradigmatic hand gun, probably because of 50 years of movie westerns.
A “paradigm” is the representative member you think of when you think of a varied group. For instance, chairs vary all over the place, with rocking chairs, recliners, and so on. But the paradigmatic chair is a wooden kitchen chair. Right?
By the same token, a revolver is the paradigm for hand guns.
(“Paradigm” is term of art from set theory. Unfortunately, it’s been coopted by postmodernism and changed to mean something else entirely.)
50 years of westerns? Don’t you mean 90 years of westerns? The revolver has been in westerns since the silent movies days.
50 years of lots of westerns; not so many recently ( a horse might get HURT).
I’ll bet there’s a standard somewhere that defines what a “No Weapons” symbol looks like and that is it.
For example, the symbol for handicapped parking is defined by the Federal Government in the Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), which is very explicit on what it looks like: http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/resources/interpretations/2_09_111.htm
The link is to a specific ruling that states cannot up and change it themselves, which is running headlong into activists who came up with their own symbol and started spray-painting it onto signs and pavement.
In AZ, it can be a revolver, but mostly they post this one with what I think is a Desert Eagle.
http://azccwpermit.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/firearm_sign_en-300×2312.jpg
Odd choice, if you ask me.
That kind of looks like a 1911 with a compensator on it to me.
If I squint a bit, it seems to me that it might be a SIG P220 Sport with a compensator.
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/File:SigP220Sport.jpg
FWIW, here in Illinois the victim-rich zone signs do depict a semi-auto handgun.
The signs vary wildly. I’ve seen them depict glocks, berettas, even old cowboy revolvers.
Maybe that’s why the murderers bring the semi-auto. After all, the sign said, not revolvers.
(Sorry, the Barracks Lawyer in me is strong today.)