Bob Ault wants to ban…
Something.
Now is the time to discuss gun control: Letter to the Editor
We need sensible gun legislation now. We need to ban military style assault rifles, bump stocks and high capacity magazines now, and then move on to pass legislation for universal background checks for all gun sales, which is supported by 90 percent of Americas.
But he’s confused as to what. Is it insanely expensive, highly regulated, taxed, and registered assault rifles of very limited quantities? Or is is nonexistent “military style assault weapons“? If the latter, can he inform of us of what country in the world generally issues semiautomatic rifles to its regular troops?
He tells us that that 90% of Americas [sic] want unconstitutional prior restraint of a constitutionally protected right through universal preemptively-prove-your-innocence — PPYI (“background checks,” is his term). Can he tell us in what state such PPYI was actually approved by 90% of the population when put to a vote? I can’t help but recall polls predicting Jeb Bush would win the Republican primary, Clinton would defeat Trump, Moore ahead of Jones, or… heck, everyone knows Dewey beat Truman.
Can he tell us how PPYI would have stopped the Mandalay Bay murderer, who passed such checks; the Sutherland Springs killer, who passed such checks because the Air Force never reported his involuntary committal or domestic violence conviction; or the Sandy Hook murderer who bypassed checks by murdering his mother and stealing her guns? Can he explain how prohibited persons can be required to self-report their unlawful attempt to obtain firearms, which would be in violation of the Supreme Court’s Haynes decision?
Since Bob Ault believes there is no need for civilians to have weapons such as that possessed by the Sutherland Springs killer, does he believe the man who stopped the killer with his own AR-pattern rifle should instead have let him go to keep killing?
Can Mr. Ault explain, should a ban on semiautomatic rifles be enacted, how he expects to identify gun owners when mere estimates of their numbers range from 55 to 120 million; or to find the rifles when estimates of firearms in civilian hands range from 265 to 750 million?
If Ault’s solution involves kicking in the doors of 125 million households to search them all — in case they’re heavily armed — will he personally volunteer his jackbooted services?
[An abbreviated form of this column was sent to Cleveland.com as a Letter to the Editor in response to Bob Ault’s letter. It was not printed.]
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That is such an excellent letter. I’m shocked they didn’t print it. If they will print something factually challenged, you would think they would be grateful to have someone do their work for them and print the letter that points out the fallacies in Mr. Ault’s letter. It’s like they have their own agenda or something…./snark. Really good letter though!
I’d be shocked if any of these papers ran my letters. The last time I recall one of my victim disarmament letters being published was in the ’90s in Saint Louis. And I didn’t realize at first. They ran two letters side by side, one pro-gun control, one anti. I read the anti letter; it was a grammatical mess, with screwed up numbers. I remember wishing they’d run the letter I sent that hit all the same points, but intelligently.
Then I worked my way down to the sender’s name.
Me. They’d deliberately edited the letter to make the anti-gun control look like semi-literate, ignorant hicks.