Asinine Editorial
The Tennessean has a crappy editorial on the assault weapons ban:
No one needs an Uzi
Assault weapons exist for one purpose: To kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
They are inappropriate for hunting, for self-defense and for target practice. Nevertheless, Congress cannot muster the collective guts to extend a ban on the world’s deadliest weapons. And that’s pitiful.
What’s need got to do with it? The people at the matches at Camp Perry and The Texas State Rifle Association will disagree about target practice and civilian need. And the Korean shop owners who used their rifles to defend their livelihoods during the LA riots would disagree about self defense. Additionally, Uzis would be classified as machine guns and covered under the 1934 National Firearms Act. Semiautomatic Uzis (i.e., not machine guns) have been banned from import since 1989 by Executive Order.
The assault weapons ban which passed in 1994 prohibited 19 classes of semiautomatic weapons from being manufactured or sold in the United States except for police or military use. That ban is due to expire Sept. 13 unless Congress passes an extension.
No, it doesn’t. It limits certain aesthetic, non-lethal features that semiautomatics can have to one of the following: pistol grip, folding stock, bayonet lug, grenade launcher, flash suppressor, and threaded barrel capable of accepting a flash suppressor. The only difference between the banned weapons and your daddy’s semi-automatic hunting rifle is the exclusion of those non-deadly features.
Here’s what the law does not do. It doesn’t require the confiscation of any gun: Automatic weapons in existence in the United States prior to 1994 were grandfathered in to the law, and can be kept, sold or given to anyone who is legally authorized to own a weapon. The law also specifically protected 670 types of hunting rifles and shotguns.
So, I should be thankful that no one is knocking on my door to get my guns? The law doesn’t specifically protect 670 types of weapons. It lists 670 guns supposedly not affected by the ban. However, those guns must meet the same criteria as the supposedly banned 19 rifles (i.e., only one of the aesthetic features above).
Additionally, the ban has nothing to do with automatic weapons. Period. Never has. Implying that the ban somehow affects machine guns is misleading at best and outright lying at worst.
Yet the law is still valuable because it has prevented new weapons in these classes from being made and sold — thus protecting this nation’s streets from being flooded with the weapons of choice of terrorists.
Playing the terror card wreaks of desperation. Additionally, there has been no evidence that the ban has had any effect on crime nor any evidence that it has increased terror attacks in the US. The hateful rhetoric is quite desperate.
And here’s the kicker:
The absurdity is that in an era when American citizens can’t carry pocketknives onto airplanes, and are required to walk through metal detectors to enter many buildings, the U.S. government is about to remove the safety on one of the nation’s few significant gun laws.
I’m not real happy about the pocketknife thing either. And if you are, you are a fool.
The Tennessean does offer this counterpoint article by Chris Cox.
Contact info for The Tennessean can be found here.
August 17th, 2004 at 3:48 am
[…] ies over and over. But Say Uncle has been keeping after it, so I recommend you go read his fisking of another fear-mongering editorial.
[RTKBA] Posted 16-Aug-2004 2 […]
August 16th, 2004 at 11:03 am
I suspect that the person who wrote this really believes that the law in question banned “machine guns.” In fact, I’d say it’s quite likely that the sum total of this person’s knowledge about “assault weapons” comes from a superficial reading of the VPC site (notice the “as many people as possible” tag line).
Especially laughable is the idea that this law is all that stands between us and “this nation’s streets from being flooded with the weapons of choice of terrorists.” Really? The terrorist JUST HAS TO HAVE a flash-hider, a grenade launcher, and a bayonet lug on his “weapon of choice?” I guess he needs a spoiler and spinning rims on his car bomb, too.
Oh wait, there’s also the obligatory jab at gun makers for making “copycat assault weapons that are not technically covered by the ban but are just as deadly,” which means, of course, that the law needs to be stronger. So…on the one hand, the law protects us from a flood of these deadly weapons, because terrorists are picky about their firearm accessories.
On the other hand, the law needs to be stronger because, well, it allows the gun makers to sell weapons that are just as deadly (no word on whether the streets are flooded yet). I guess we’re lucky those terrorists don’t know about these perfectly legal and deadly substitutes.
August 16th, 2004 at 1:31 pm
As you know, I’m still somewhat up in the air about the AWB, and even I could tell that this editorial was written very badly. The Tennesseean could do better. Wait, what am I saying? No it couldn’t.
August 16th, 2004 at 9:09 pm
Sounds like our new-hire at the office.
This new guy at the office, early 50’s, decent vocabulary, probably excellent spellling, comes up with the CRAZIEST opinions. Yes, I mean that literally.
He is in favor of the USA abandoning the Laws of War and Peace. Says we shoud not take prisoners in war, etc. No, he was never a soldier.
He said that he wished someone drove by NRA HQ (not super-far from our offices) and spray it with machinegun fire. Then he goes on saying that “people” try to defend the right to own a machinegun by saying it is for hunting, as if this is some NRA position.
I had to interrupt at this point and ask exactly who ever did that. Yes, *I* would certainly hunt more (make that hunt, as I don’t any more) if I could use a machinegun and/or tracers, but that is not my reason for the desire to posess one nor is it a “justification” that I have ever heard! BTW, I know of noplace in the US where either is legal anyway. I did point out that I have heard that comment made in machinegun discussiones, but 100% of the time it was the way he did it, as a false assertion as the preamble to a trumped-up arguement against the false assertion.
He went on to say that it is “okay with him” for collectors to have them. Well thank you King William, but I am a Citizen, not a subject and especially not a subject of someone in the next county or State.
I told him to quit imposing his bad tase on me. If I want to pay the $200/gun tax I will get as many as I like and that tax is stupid anyway.
He asked me why I “need” a machinegun and I replied that it is NOT a matter of need in the slightest andy more than his taste in cars has anything to do with need. Then he babbled some nonsense about “need to know”, which had nothing to do with my statements.
For some reason, on his first day of work, he was compelled to tell me that he was a “Card Carrying Republican” before launching into some flaiming-left crap (yes, I knew what was coming when he announced which Left-of-Montag gang he was with).
On the brighter side, I might have some cool news in “the mysterious future”. Sorry, made a non-disclosure agreement but will be available for autographs if everything goes through 🙂
August 17th, 2004 at 12:18 am
More Media Lies About “Assault Weapons” Ban
I feel sorta bad for not blogging about this more. To be honest, I get kinda tired of repeating the same thing, over and over. But the anti-gun bigots keep repeating their lies over and over. But Say Uncle has been keeping after it, so I recommend you …
August 17th, 2004 at 12:19 am
Oh Argh. I hate it when I send a trackback, only to find that pingbacks are working too.
August 17th, 2004 at 12:30 am
“The ability to hunt Game or shoot Targets, being necessary to the Security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
You’d think that’s what it actually said, considering the way people invoke hunting and target shooting whenever they want to ban a gun.
August 17th, 2004 at 4:12 am
Just fisking these on the web doesn’t get the message out to everyone. If you can, find a web form where you can submit a letter to the editor addressing the factual errors in the piece. Note that you are expecting a retraction. The paper might print your comment, but even if not they’ll notice the demand for a retraction (especially if you post your letter with your fisking).