Another assault weapons ban? All we need is a couple more horrendous shootings, particularly in a school in a Southern state, and maybe a couple of House GOP members will switch their votes and Joe will get what he wants.
The gun-control group leading the charge is promoting the idea that the AR-15 is a ‘weapon of war,’ a term which has never been precisely defined but was used by my friend, the late Tony Scalia, to describe guns that did not merit Constitutional protection when he redefined the 2nd Amendment in 2008.
Since the AR-15 now issued to our military can be set to fire in semi-auto mode (one trigger pull, one shot) it’s pretty difficult to hold onto the idea that this rifle is some kind of ‘sporting’ gun. So, what the gun industry has now done is describe the weapon as a personal, self-defense gun.
Take a look, for instance, at this spiel by a guy who works for the Unites States Concealed Carry Association, which promotes armed, self-defense. Of course, notice that he’s also talking about keeping the gun in your home because it’s not the kind of weapon that can be easily carried around concealed outside the home.
But that’s just a small nuance, which doesn’t in any way detract from the idea that an assault rifle is what you should use if the wrong person comes knocking on the front door. Which will no doubt be the explanation used by the guy who shot a Kansas City teenager in the head because he thought the kid was a threat and he was just defending himself in the best way he could.
And since defending yourself from being attacked is not just a Constitutional ‘right’ (although it’s not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution at all), it’s also a basic tenet of civilized life and thought. And self-defense is also recognized by the Almighty, in case you needed to ask.
Meanwhile, to get back to the whole ‘weapon of war’ shebang, this past Thursday, Kamala Harris went on one of the syndicated liberal noise shows and said that there was no contradiction between supporting the 2nd Amendment and promoting a ban on assault rifles because such guns are ‘weapons of war’ and don’t belong on America’s streets.
Neither Scalia nor anyone else who has opined anything about the so-called 2nd-Amendment ‘right’ to own a gun has ever defined what the term ‘weapon of war’ actually means. Scalia says the term should be used when talking about ‘unusual’ weapons which ordinarily aren’t found in the average person’s home. Maybe Scalia meant a bazooka or an F-35.
But with all due respect to Kamala Arris andHarris and her friends in the gun-control crowd, if she really believes the AR-15 is the only ‘weapon of war’ that can be found on American streets, then neither she nor her gun-control buddies know much about guns.
The guns which are used to commit most of the 100,000+ fatal and non-fatal gun assaults which America experiences every year all happen to be ‘weapons of war.’ You think that Gaston Glock designed his pistol to shoot a little birdie out of a tree? The gun was designed in response to an RFP issued by the Austrian Army which wanted a home-grown weapon to replace the weapons that were purchased from gun makers in Switzerland and France.
The United States is the only country in the entire world which allows residents to buy, own and carry guns like the Glock – polymer based, bottom-loading weapons using military-grade ammunition which are small enough to be easily fired while being held in one hand.
And we are also the only country in the entire world which regulates the existence of such weapons by trying to figure out who will use these guns in an inappropriate way instead of just restricting such weapons based on the lethality of those guns.
Thanks to the so-called experts in public health, the United States has a system for determining who can, and who cannot purchase such guns which was developed to help the insurance industry determine the safe design of – cars! Like there’s any comparison at all between the risk of driving a car versus the risk of owning a gun.
Want to get rid of gun violence? It’s very simple – get rid of the guns which are used only for the purpose of committing violence against other humans.
And do me a favor, okay? Don’t waste my time lecturing me about the difference between ‘good’ violence and ‘bad.’ And also, don’t shoot off your mouth to me about 2nd-Amendment ‘rights.’
In defining violence as a medical threat, the World Health Organization doesn’t make any distinction between different types of violence and the 2nd Amendment isn’t a ‘right,’ even if it’s listed in the Bill of Rights.