The Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this month almost made me forget about this fancy piece of fiction from The New York Times editorial board, which is that the AR-15 is an automatic weapon. The board was voicing their support for Americans to sue the gun industry; it’s a position that would certainly be abused by anti-gun liberals to litigate the gun manufacturers out of existence. We cannot let that happen. This nauseating March 4 op-ed was written as the families of Sandy Hook wait to hear if their lawsuit against Remington Arms can move forward:
The world recoiled in horror in 2012 when 20 Connecticut schoolchildren and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School by a deranged teenager using a military-style assault rifle to fire 154 rounds in less than five minutes. The weapon was a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle adapted from its original role as a battlefield weapon. The AR-15, which is designed to inflict maximum casualties with rapid bursts, should never have been available for purchase by civilians.
The op-ed was about the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which Sen. Bernie Sanders voted for in 2005 when he was a member of the House of Representatives, that bars gun manufacturers and gun dealers from any legal action if their products are unknowingly used in felonious activities. It’s a fantastic piece of legislation that further protects our oldest civil right.
Lastly, let’s point out the AR_15 rifle is a semiautomatic weapons system. It fires one round per trigger pull, not “rapid bursts.” To make things more embarrassing, the Times used semiautomatic and rapid bursts in the same sentence. Nomenclature is key when discussing Second Amendment matters–and the liberal media has proven with metronomic regularity that they know nothing about firearms. Granted, I have made some errors in the nomenclature myself, but have always strived to read, understand, and correct the record if someone points out an error. Of course, don’t expect the liberal media or anti-gun liberals to bother doing their homework, or offer corrections for that matter.
Our own Bob Owens over at Bearing Arms took the Times to the woodshed over this editorial, accused them of lying (which is true), and offered numerous occasions where the AR-15 rifle is used for self-defense, target practice, hunting (he noted that they can be chambered in 30 different calibers for different game animals), and competitive shooting. Millions of Americans own AR-15s. This is nothing more than an egregious assault on our Second Amendment freedoms using the courts since liberals can’t beat us on the legislative end. There’s simply no real room to maneuver. Republicans control two-thirds of the governorships, 66/99 legislatures (the most ever), and have the most lawmakers elected into office since 1920.
Nevertheless, I’ll let Mr. Owens explain a little bit of history to The New York Times:
There has never been a single criminal homicide committed in the United States with a legally-obtained assault rifle, which are heavily-regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934.Assault rifles have been outlawed for manufacture for the civilian market since the Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986. That is correct: assault rifles have not been made for the civilian market at any price for 30 years.
The evil perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre used the most common and popular semi-automatic rifle sold in the United States, which is not a military assault rifle capable of burst fire.
[…]
he 5+ million AR-15s in civilian hands do not have the capability to fire “bursts” in fully automatic mode. They are semi-automatic. One trigger press fires one bullet, and one bullet only.
This self-loading firearm technology was invented in the 1880s and has been in common use for more than one hundred and thirty years. Semi-automatics were adopted for sporting use for two full generations—roughly forty years—before the U.S. military became the first army in the world to adopt semi-automatic rifles for general issue in the 1930s.
Today, semi-automatic is the most action type for rifles and handguns, and is poised to become the most common kind of action for shotguns (presently, only pump action shotguns are more commonly sold).
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