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New York Times on the Black Rifle

Posted by simonov on 4 June 2007

It’s starting. The mainstream media are finally waking up to the reality of the AR-15 industry and market in America, including the true nature of the people who own and shoot these and similar black rifles and “assault weapons.” And guess what? We aren’t all drug dealers, terrorists or other criminals. Who knew?

Yesterday an unusually informative and balanced article on black rifles appeared in the Money section of the New York Times. The article does a good job of describing the emergence of the AR-15 industry in the wake of the 1994 Federal “assault weapon” ban, without actually going so far (as we do) as suggesting the rise of the AR-15 was caused by the 1994 law (bless you, Dianne Feinstein).

Of course, you can’t produce an article on firearms for the mass media without consulting the most firearms-ignorant commentators available (ie, spokesmen from the VPC and the Brady Center, as well as Senator Charles E. “They have no place in our society” Schumer). But that’s just the nature of journalism in America. Despite the usual brainless quotes from the strident anti-gun militancy, it’s a good article, certainly the best article on guns I’ve ever seen in the New York Times.

Published comments from Jim Zumbo also reveal some of the thought process that allowed Zumbo to call AR-15s “terrorist rifles:”

“Having met the people who shoot these things, they were regular folks; they weren’t sinister people who were bent on causing harm, they weren’t hostile people,” he says. “They were interested in the guns because they were fun to shoot.”

It might be as simple as that. As a hunter, all Zumbo cares about guns is their utility in killing animals. But most non-hunting gun owners in American (this would be most gun owners overall) are interested in firearms because they enjoy owning, collecting or shooting them. That’s why we are more sensitive about gun control — any gun control — than hunters like Zumbo. That’s America’s Gun Culture.

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