A common target for liberal fear mongering is guns. My jury is still out as to whether or not all journalists are completely ignorant of any working knowledge of firearms or if they know better and just go with the flow of their uninformed liberal peers. Let me try to provide some disambiguation.
Assault Rifles
Okay look, here’s the deal: a gun has to have fully automatic capability to be an assault rifle – period, end of story. The AK-47s and AR-15s at your local gun store don’t have that magic third position on the safety selector that turns them into machine guns. Despite the fact these firearms look like their brethren in military service, they won’t keep firing as long as you hold down the trigger. They are only capable of semi-automatic fire, which is one shot every time you pull the trigger. If the BATF&E finds out you have converted a civilian AR or AK to produce a fully-automatic weapon (which isn’t as easy as you may have been led to believe), you will soon find yourself the bunkmate of some finely tattooed gang banger in a nicely furnished federal facility. Probably not your preferred vacation spot.
High Capacity Magazines
A high cap magazine is defined however the democrats or rinos darn well want to. The 10-round magazine mandated by Congress while Clinton was in office hold bullets that are just as dangerous as those in a 15- or 17-round mag. What’s the point? Well, it has to do with the same principle as that used when cooking frogs. Keep whittling away at your rights a little at time until, gradually, there’s nothing left. Obama has abandoned this practice in favor of the BOHICA method but that’s another story.
The Gun Show Loophole
Here’s the dirty little secret: there isn’t one. If you’re a federally licensed firearms dealer, you have to do a background check as required by law no matter where you are, gun show or not. What you often get at large gun shows is some private citizens walking around trying to sell or trade weapons they legally purchased. These guys don’t have to call anyone’s permission to sell a gun because it’s none of the government’s business what they do with their own property. Open this kind of door and the gov’t will use that to get even further into your business than it already is. McCain’s efforts to close this non-existent loophole should have caused every conservative paying attention to make an obscene gesture in his general direction.
Microstamping
The idea of using a unique serial number microstamped onto the end of a firing pin is just stupid. It’s unproven technology and makes no sense in the real world. The firing pin of an AR is easy to remove. (You have to get the thing out to clean it anyway and God forbid you let your AR get cruddy.) Ditto for Glock firing pins. You’re going to create a huge market for “pre-ban” firing pins, of all things. Would you have to contact the BATF to get permission to buy a new firing pin if yours broke? Gun prices would go up due to the costs of manufacturers tooling up to produce the microstamped firing pins. Old school gun nuts could rejoice in a surge in revolver sales (since they don’t eject the spent cases after each shot) but that would be the only bright spot.
Banning Lead in Bullets
Seriously? I don’t even understand the argument. Hunters have been eating deer they shot with lead bullets for years with no problems. I would speculate that most shots pass through a white tail anyway and most bullets aren’t going to leave lead fragments in the animal. If you see a big chunk of lead in the deer while cleaning it, don’t pull it out of the carcass and eat it. End of story. If we’re talking about adding lead to the environment, let’s look at the amount of metal in question here. The most popular hunting cartridge is the .30-06. The most popular bullet weight for the .30-06 is 150 grains. Common bullets in other calibers are often lighter. It takes 7,000 grains to equal a pound. This amount of lead isn’t going to poison your water supply any time soon. The condors won’t dig bullets out of the ground to eat them. Get a grip.