Assault Weapons Ban Stuff
This article by Joan Burbick is interesting. I don’t agree with all of it (after all, if Cheney wants my support he should have posed with a Colt M4 with a folding stock, 11.5 inch barrel, bayonet lug, flash suppressor, and a selector switch; not a flintlock) but it does touch on the gun rights movement and its impact on politics:
Why have guns entered our national political stage? Why is it that the vice president needs a photo-op with a flintlock? Why does the president need to dress up in hunting gear? Why does the Kerry campaign need to counter that Kerry is a duck hunter, especially when he is called a fake and a poseur right away? True believers can always tell the difference.
And anyway, who cares? Why should we care if our past, present or future president is a duck hunter or a fake duck hunter? What does duck hunting have to do with the economy, foreign policy, social security, health care, education and the environment? Nothing, and at the same time everything.
And for the record, gun rights entered the stage before the 1970s. IIRC, I think it was about 1787.
And another reporter gets it wrong about he Assault Weapons Ban:
Ten years ago Congress banned automatic assault weapons such as AK-47s, but the provision is set to expire this September.
No, it didn’t ban automatics nor AK47s. Automatics have been regulated since 1934 and AK47s have been banned from import since the late 1980s.
Publicola writes Stealth Pro-Gun Candidate My Ass.
There are currently 99 days left until the Assault Weapons Ban expires. Write, call, fax, email your Senator and tell him/her not to support the extension of the ban.
