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False Advertising by the Antis

Posted by QuestionEverything on 11 July 2007

I remember how giddy I felt when I put my AR-15 together and headed to the woods with my friends to do some test-firing. Enough firepower to lay waste to a city in a compact six-pound package! Press releases from the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center had assured me that my new rifle was a mortifying instrument of mass destruction.

Its 5.56mm cartridge could penetrate entire buildings and destroy vehicles. The flash hider would make the weapon invisible to fire at night and quieter than a ninja’s church fart. And, as a dozen ashen-faced news anchors had assured me, the AR-15 was a fully-automatic weapon that could fire hundreds of rounds with one pull of the trigger. Pictured at left is the destructive effect typical of the AR-15 rifle as claimed by the Bradys.

You can imagine my dismay when I found that my new rifle would only fire one thunderously loud shot per trigger pull and that it took multiple rounds to do so much as break apart a cinder block. Later on I talked to a friend of mine who’d bought a Glock, and I was again disappointed when he told me the gun couldn’t pass through metal detectors and that the hollowpoint rounds he fired with it wouldn’t penetrate multiple layers of armor and turn a man’s body inside out.

The antis like to paint the NRA as a tool of gun manufacturers although their support is almost totally grassroots in nature. If you ask me, if there’s any political group that speaks on behalf of the firearms industry, it’s the Brady Campaign. They have to be one of the most ingenious promotional schemes in history—they grossly overstate the quality of the product and they get every major media outlet to parrot their words.

Seriously, these misconceptions would be funny if they weren’t being used as tools to take our rights away. It’s similar to the “Weed with Roots in Hell” propaganda that led to the Marijuana Tax Act. If you ask me, one of the most important things we as gun owners can do to guarantee our rights is stamp out these misconceptions wherever they’ve taken root.

From talking to non-gun owners, I’ve learned that:

Guns can “go off” without warning if you touch them or look at them.

Loose ammo can discharge if dropped or exposed to sunlight and propel bullets at lethal speed.

Guns left in a hot car can fire spontaneously, perforating the gas tank and blowing up the vehicle.

Thugs with shotguns can “blow away” multiple people in one shot without bothering to aim.

While the anti movement seems now to be shrinking, the lies they spread may long outlive them, poisoning the well for future debate on the gun issue. So write your representatives and donate to your RKBA organization of choice, but make sure you also take the time to debunk these claims whenever you hear them.

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