Bear with me. I find this series of letters to the editor interesting and couldn’t pick a single quote but instead chose to use them all. Whether or not a fourth letter appears is anyone’s guess.
Dec. 16 — To the Editor:
Let me start by thanking all the pro-assault rifle folks for coming to our boycott demonstration at KTP on Dec. 8. Our boycott of KTP continues to bring attention to the horrific sale of semi-automatic rifles by KTP, and the pro assault rifle supporters also bring needed attention to this matter.
One striking persistent comment of pro 2A people is that they don’t like calling assault rifles “assault rifles.” They prefer the term, as Michael Dow states in his LTE, a “certain kind of sporting rifles known as the AR.” I don’t know if Michael Dow knows, or cares to know, what the high-speed bullets of such ARs do to bone or organs of people when they are struck, but that is well known to the doctors who treat such injuries. Those bones or organs are pulverized, destroyed, as the high-speed bullets tumble in their path of destruction through the body. That is why so many people die in the mass shooting that are becoming the “new normal” in our country. This is far from “sport,” and it is terrorizing our people, our children. This is “our tyranny.”
The bottom line is that the vast majority of US citizens want a safe society, and we are determined to do what is reasonable to make our society safe.
– Leonard Korn MD, Immediate Past President, New Hampshire Medical Society, Why We Continue to Boycott Kittery Trading Post
Two days later another reader fired back with their own letter. I only wish he had known enough about firearms history to mention early repeating arms can be traced to the 14th century – yes, really…primitive though they were they existed. And let’s not forget the sixteen-shot wheel-lock of the 1590s.
But I digress:
Dr. Leonard Korn recently wrote a letter to the editor…
Unfortunately, in the editorial, he also chose to discuss firearms; a subject on which he clearly has severely limited knowledge.
He suggested that the Trading Post sold “assault rifles” – they do not. Even a cursory fact check about “assault rifles” would reveal that, among other things, they must be capable of selective fire; in other words, able to operate in full auto mode similar to a “machine gun”. The Trading Post does not sell these. It does, however, sell firearms that resemble rifles that can be used this way, but resemblance does not equal functionality.
Dr. Korn speaks of the damage done by these “assault rifles”. Curiously, he separates out the “assault rifles”, suggesting that the damage done by them is greater in some way than that from any other rifle, pistol, or shotgun – it is not.
What he describes is the result of contact with a very fast moving object, such as a bullet, or for that matter a car.
He further seems to think that the Second Amendment is restricted to the technology of the day. He says our forefathers were referring to muskets, not self loading rifles – again, it just isn’t so. They were a wise lot. Let’s face it, if restricted to the technology of the day, the First Amendment would only apply to the printed word. You see, electronic media in all it’s forms didn’t exist back then. – Everett Leland of Kittery, Maine, Writer’s View on Guns, Trading Post, Ill-Informed
It wasn’t over yet, though. Here comes letter number three from the anti side:
Everett Leland wants us to believe that Doctor Korn is too dumb to know what an assault rifle is. Anyone can plainly see that the Kittery Trading Post sells military style weapons that look nothing like sporting rifles and that is their appeal. Clearly the intent of these weapons is to kill people. You only get one shot at a deer. These weapons come with large capacity magazines that have no sporting purpose. That is why they are favored by criminals and are smuggled over the border to arm the narcotic gangs. This of course contributes to our nation’s immigration and drug overdose problems but let’s not get into that now.
Everyone also knows that these weapons are easily converted to automatic fire as has been demonstrated numerous times; the most dramatic being the mass shooting in Las Vegas.
Why would a manufacturer of these assault rifles include a “man card” with each purchase? Unbelievably, you get a wallet sized card you can carry around that says that since you own this assault rifle you are a real man. – Bill Kingston of New Castle, Writer’s Defense of Assault Rifles is Obviously Specious
Man card? Well…yes, Bushmaster made a less-than-bright decision to do the man card thing almost a decade ago. The link has long since expired but there are still some advertising images around:
These arguments are endless and the anti-gun side has a tendency to get down in the dirt right off. Maybe it’s time we learned to respond in kind (but for the love of God, stop gifting them ammunition to use against us).