Another unsigned gun editorial
It opens with the ludicrous statement of the day:
Actually, I have an AR15 and all I hunt is paper targets. And those people with their M1s, Garands, and AR15s who lay waste to paper targets at Camp Perry would also disagree. Additionally, these weapons are functionally identical to most semi-automatic hunting rifles, they just look mean. More:
PRESIDENT BUSH says he favors legislation to extend the 1994 assault-weapons ban, which will expire Sept. 13 unless Congress acts. He isn’t, however, planning to encourage congressional action because gun issues pose an election-year minefield for some of his friends in the House and Senate.
Agreed, Bush is fence-sitting.
That is surely a fence-sitting position if there ever was one. The assault weapons that fall under the ban are not for hunting or personal protection. They are for the efficient, aggressive killing of human beings. They are military weapons. Sportsmen and those who own firearms for self-defense need them about like they need bazookas.
Comparing a semi-automatic rifle to a bazooka is almost as asinine as comparing a rifle to a baseball bat in terms of killing power. Make no mistake, this rhetoric is not intended in any way to allow a person to make an informed decision. This rhetoric is designed to mislead people into believing that the ban affects military weapons, which it does not. At least they didn’t pull an LA Times and call them weapons of mass destruction or play the nuke card.
A survey conducted in April by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, a research arm of the University of Pennsylvania, found that 71 percent of Americans support the ban’s extension, while 23 percent would rather it expired. Even among gun-owning households, 64 percent back the extension, the survey found.
And there is a survey that indicates the opposite is true. Both surveys are misleading.
Gun ownership, however, is one of those issues regarding which the tail wags the dog. The vehemence with which a minority of gun owners fight to protect their Second Amendment rights, which they view as unlimited, helps fuel the efforts of gun-control advocates, who have their own rabid subset. For example, the gun zealots who participated in a recent series of gun-brandishing incidents in Northern Virginia only threaten the rights of those who use and keep their arms responsibly.
So, you acknowledge the right and it’s restrictions? So do I. There are reasonable restrictions on the right to arms that I don’t oppose (a ban on bazookas, for example). These same restrictions apply to other rights (can’t yell fire in a theater, for example). I just don’t think that restricting the aesthetic features of a rifle (which is all the ban does) qualifies as reasonable. The ban does not affect military weapons, those have been regulated since 1934.
And it occurs to me that this is the same paper that Michael Zitz works for. I wonder if he wrote it?
August 10th, 2004 at 1:19 pm
What is most infuriating about the open carry debate here in Virginia is that state law REQUIRES us to open carry in a restaurant and the same gun grabbers who have fought to prevent CHL holders from carrying in restaurants are now trying to prevent us from carrying openly.
They’ll fail of course, because the numbers simply don’t fall their way.