Guntards.net

A revealing insight into gun control laws

Posted by simonov on 19 April 2007

Representative Carolyn McCarthy has made waves in and out of the gun rights communities this year by, once again, introducing HR 1022, the “assault weapon” ban renewal. In the text of the bill, the weapons to be banned would include the following:

(D) A semiautomatic rifle that has an ability to accept a detachable magazine, and that has—
(i) a folding or telescoping stock;
(ii) a threaded barrel;
(iii) a pistol grip;
(iv) a forward grip; or
(v) a barrel shroud.

Now we gun rights folks have often made the point that the “assault weapon” bans at state and Federal level are little more than feel-good legislation enacting sweeping firearms bans based on mostly cosmetic but scary-looking features. Furthermore, we have also tried to get across the fact that these bans are drafted and promoted by people who are either cynically aware of this dubious policymaking or simply willfully ignorant of firearms and their operation. But this is a difficult point to get across because the ignorant ones don’t want to admit their ignorance, and the cynical ones would prefer to dissemble anyway.

Personally, I never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, and this MSNBC clip posted on Hot Air underscores how correct we gun rights people have been on this score.

In the clip, Tucker Carlson makes Representative McCarthy look foolish, by revealing that she doesn’t know what a barrel shroud is, and so has no clue about what her own legislation seeks to ban.

Now I know that much of the blogosphere is going to get a big laugh out of this; there’s nothing funnier than making a Member of Congress look like an idiot. But I think the clip illustrates a much more important point about gun control legislation: the people behind it often know little or nothing about guns. Furthermore, the people who do know about guns are usually the ones promoting gun rights. In fact, in my personal experience, the more people learn about guns, the more skeptical they become about the efficacy or fairness of gun control laws.

This is why widespread firearms education is so important to the cause of gun rights. And why people like the Brady Center, the VPC and, probably, Representative Carolyn McCarthy, are so opposed to it.

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