Oh, the lies they tell
A New York Daily News editorial:
Military-style assault weapons of the kind wielded by Henry have been showing up in increasing numbers since Congress and President Bush allowed federal ban on the guns to expire in late 2004. They did the bidding of the National Rifle Association, and it’s all but certain that innocent blood will be spilled because of the blind irresponsibility of the NRA and its agents in Washington.
First, the ban did not affect Military-style assault weapons. It affected guns that happened to look like Military-style assault weapons but functioned like any other semi-automatic weapon. The ban expired well over a year ago and I’m sure all this blood in the streets would have happened by now. But it has not. Henry’s Uzi-style machine pistol sounds made up. It’s either an Uzi or it’s not. I’m betting not and that it was a semi-auto clone of an Uzi, which functions just like any other semi-auto handgun.
I guess that’s why the NRA spends so much money lobbying. The Bradies get their propaganda printed for free.
January 23rd, 2006 at 11:21 am
Even if we grant their more expansive definition of the term “assault weapon”, there’s still a major problem with this editorial. Neither the ATF nor the BJS appears to have published statistics on the use of assault weapons in crime since the ban expired. I have to wonder if their claim that such crime has increased since the end of the ban is based on actual data or is merely being asserted on the basis of a reverse naturalistic fallacy (i.e. because X ought to be true, X is true).