As I am sure you noticed — unless you were lucky enough to be away from radio, television, Internet, or gossip — we just had a bad weekend. If you were — momentarily — fortunate enough to miss it, two socialist chumbuckets gunned down a lot of innocent people. As I write, the tally is 29 dead (so far; more victims are in critical condition), and dozens more wounded, in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.
Mainstream media latched onto a manifesto (let me know if the link goes dead; we need to know the enemy) purportedly written by the El Paso bucket o’chum, and declared him to be a pro-Trump white nationalist who hates immigrants. The actual manifesto paints a picture of an anti-capitalist, envirowhacko (he cites The Lorax) socialist who wants to get rid of immigrants to make implementing universal basic income more palatable, and wants to reduce the nation’s population to a “sustainable” level. He wanted all this long before Trump came on the political scene. Before pages got edited, he appeared to be a registered Democrat. He used a WASR-10.
The Dayton asshole was a self-avowed socialist, who wanted to impose socialism on everyone whether we want it or not. He advocated for more gun control. He allegedly made “hit” and “rape” lists in high school. He murdered his sister and her boyfriend and seven more people. He was a registered Democrat. His weapon was an Anderson Manufacturing AM-15.
Naturally the media labeled both incidents white nationalist domestic terrorism, and returned fire on the Second Amendment, joined by politicians and pundits. Trump is calling for “strong” background checks.
Both of the scum purchased their weapons lawfully and passed NICS checks. Just like Gilroy Garlic Festival SOB.
My news feeds are full of examples, but let us focus on one from the New York Post, a call for an “assault weapon” ban.
Come up with answers. Now. Beginning with the return of an assault weapons ban.
We know: That label doesn’t actually describe a clear class of guns. And that some studies show that the last ban, in effect from 1994 to 2004, had a limited impact. But that simply means the next ban should be better written, with a clear definition focused on factors like firepower — rate of fire, muzzle velocity, etc. — not on cosmetic features.
Rate of fire. Where have we heard that before? Should the NYP’s suggestion be adopted, at a minimum, that would ban every semi-automatic firearm.
Muzzle velocity. You did take note when CBS pushed the “AR-15s are so much more powerful than 9mm” narrative, right? Hunters better be paying attention to this.
The shootings prompting this call reportedly used .223 Remington (Dayton) and 7.62×39 (El Paso), despite the media hype, those aren’t all that fast (or powerful) compared to common hunting rounds. If we take 2349 FPS as the threshold, then the NYP ban would eliminate anything chambered for nearly every common hunting round. Fudds, beware; this time they are coming for your guns.
If both of those proposals were adopted, and depending on the arbitrary “rate of fire” chosen, that would probably ban every repeating firearm: semi-automatic, bolt, lever, pump, or revolver. You’d be left with single-shot, pistol- or varmint-caliber firearms.
If you’re lucky.
Yes, they’re coming for all semi-autos.
The Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment protects the right to own “guns in common use.” That doesn’t cover the semiautomatic weapons regularly used only in mass shootings.
Only used in mass shootings? Hello, NYP; reality calling.
100 MILLION honest gun owners didn’t kill anyone with 16 MILLION AR- or AK-pattern weapons over the weekend. 100 million people certainly didn’t kill anyone with 393+ million firearms.
But let’s punish them all for the actions of two chumbuckets with two guns.
Like banning newspapers because Jayson Blair.
[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited, and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]
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