TTAG has been doing its level best to keep up with the post spree-killings gun control agitprop. The anti-gun pundits have unleashed a tsunami of mis- and disinformation (and plenty of diss information). All of it lacks logic. Some of it lacks coherence. Like this piece of pseudo-journalistic weirdness crafted by Carol Marin [above, center] at Chicago’s suntimes.com: I tried to fire a TEC-9, but it took control starts with a mea culpa. “In 1989, I came close — we’ll never know how close — to shooting a producer and cameraman with a TEC-9 assault weapon.” I’m not saying anything about that. But I highly recommend you read on . ..
We were at a suburban gun range with a law-enforcement agent doing a story on how semiautomatic weapons can be illegally modified into automatic weapons, making them deadlier still.
The gun I was given to fire was a fully automatic TEC-9 pistol with a magazine of bullets. The target was straight ahead. My crew was far off to the right and safely — or so we all thought — out of the way.
But with one trigger pull, the weapon took control. My right arm jolted in an arc upward and to the right.
My crew, with lightning speed, dropped to the ground. The whole thing took just seconds.
I don’t think that proves what Ms. Marin thinks it proves. My takeaway: bad LEO! Bad! Also, who cares? How many members of Chicago’s criminal fraternity possess fully-automatic TEC-9s? Besides, didn’t that experiment prove that they suck?
Yes indeed; Ms. Marin underlines the point with a “these guns suck” quote from ATF Agent Tom Ahern.
“I’ve been shooting for 32 years,” he said by phone Thursday. “If I fired a fully automatic TEC-9 one-handed, it could jump up or down, right or left . . . the gun could flutter . . . and you could dump a 50-round clip in under five seconds. It’s going to spray all over the place.” And holding it with both hands, he said, won’t significantly improve accuracy.
And now the best line in the whole piece followed by the kind of exposition that makes deadly earnest first grade debates so unintentionally humorous:
Why are we talking about this?
Because on the streets of Chicago, there are all kinds of guns — legal and illegal. And all kinds of people getting shot — intended victims plus people who end up as the collateral damage of a barrage of bullets.
Even legal, semiautomatic assault weapons aren’t precision instruments. Though each bullet fired requires a separate squeeze of the trigger (unlike fully automatic weapons), after the first round is fired, the trigger loosens for subsequent rounds. It still takes only seconds to dump a high-capacity magazine.
That’s what happened in the theater massacre in Aurora, Colo. That’s what happens out on our streets.
I don’t know about you, but that’s some primo gun control stuff right there: an argument for increased gun control because guns are inaccurate.
You’ve already seen Ms. Marin’s erstwhile coupe de grace: “assault weapons just spray death.” Her last line asserts “You’d think more politicians would want to talk about that.”
Unfortunately, the pols who don’t respect our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms are talking about “assault weapons,” even though they’re not saying anything. The pols who supposedly protect our constitutionally protected rights are curiously silent.
Given the gun grabbing inanity infecting the mediasphere you’d think our allies would speak up FOR gun rights. Then again, it is an election year . . .