The post-Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre anti-Second Amendment witch hunt continues. The rationale for infringing (and how) on Americans’ Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms is centering on the semi-automatic rifle (a.k.a., assault rifle). Apparently the guns are just too damn lethal for citizens. To wit this from nypost.com: “Has technology rendered the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution obsolete? That is, has the application of modern military design to civilian firearms produced a class of weapons too dangerous to be in general circulation? We say: Yes.” Do the gun grabbers know the difference between a fully-automatic rifle and a semi-automatic rifle (one bullet per trigger squeeze)? Yes. Do they care? No. In their opinion, neither should you . . .
. . . the fact is that the volume of fire produced by Lanza’s semi-automatic arsenal was substantively the same as the fully automatic “gangster guns” effectively outlawed by Congress in 1934 and again in 1968.
That ban did no real violence to the 2nd Amendment, so it’s hard to see how constraining the availability of high-tech military knockoffs would do so today.
To their credit (somewhat) the Post also sees how hard it would be to ban/confiscate all the “high-tech military knockoffs” in civilian hands. But why let a little thing like practicality stand in the way of principle?
. . . Adam Lanza’s rifle of choice — the M-16 knock-off Bushmaster — is insanely popular, just for starters.
Which underscores the fact that historically there is scant political will for weapons control. And it’s unlikely that there will be, once the Sandy Hook slaughter fades from the nation’s consciousness.But that won’t negate the need for reform. Weapons designed expressly to kill human beings, and then modified (wink wink) to meet the federal machine-gun ban, have no legitimate place in American society.
Time to get rid of them.
Or, we would politely suggest, not. Again, if they’re good enough for the NYPD—who, in New York, seems to have some problems not shooting innocent bystanders—why aren’t they good enough for civilian defense?