It’s not about fact. We all know that. There is a narrative that must be peddled and using proper gun lexicon is not a priority. This has been the case for over 10 years. They don’t know what semiautomatic means. They don’t know the difference between semiautomatic and automatic. It’s a magazine, not a clip. They mistake a shotgun for an AR-15 rifle. We all know this. It’s tiring and for Stephen Gutowski of The Reload, he’s done with it. He was commenting on an op-ed from Gail Collins of The New York Times, who penned probably one of the worst anti-gun pieces in recent memory. Of course, she was commenting on the recent mass shooting in Buffalo. And yes, she was calling for a ban on semiautomatic rifles:
It turns out that in many states, semiautomatic rifles are basically regarded as weapons of sport — the kind of thing you’d use to go hunting deer or target shooting.
“The industry has gone to an extreme effort to argue it’s a needed hunting gun. I think they doth protest too much,” said Ryan Busse, a former executive in the gun industry who’s now become a critic. (A memoir of his transformation, “Gunfight,” was published last year.)
Claiming that you need a semiautomatic rifle for hunting, Busse said, is like arguing that you need a Formula One racecar to go shopping. “There’s a lot of safer and more effective ways to get to the stores.”
Congress did indeed ban semiautomatic rifles in 1994, in a law with a 10-year expiration date. After the ban expired, the number of mass shootings increased. And Congress responded by … pretty much ignoring the matter completely. Hey, the Republicans had taken control.
Same thing now, of course. Nobody believes anything as controversial as banning semiautomatic rifles is going to get through the current Senate. Joe Biden would love to take action, but he hasn’t come up with anything more dramatic than nominating a permanent director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
[…]
Get rid of assault rifles. All assault rifles. Ban them. Hunters can work on becoming better shots. The gun industry can diversify — and maybe start marketing swords and medieval knight costumes at its trade shows. I know swords can do a lot of damage, but we live in an age when one victim at a time would definitely be progress.
If you've read one uninformed, incoherent New York Times op-ed on guns, you've literally read them all. The same lack of understanding about even the most basic terms (like semiautomatic) layered over the same couple of talking points about hunting. https://t.co/KL5KsMvlJT
— Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) May 19, 2022
Gal Collins apparently thinks we banned all semi-automatic rifles in the 90s for goodness sake. Does anyone at the New York Times read these things before they're published? Or, rather, anyone who knows what semi-automatic means?
— Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) May 19, 2022
It's boring to even comment on these mistakes anymore. This is what? The 500th time this has happened? Nobody there cares about getting the basic facts right let alone trying to make any sort of persuasive argument. They're just going through the motions.
— Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) May 19, 2022
Like, how many times do we have to play this game? We know the assault weapons ban (silly term) isn’t coming back. It barely got 40 votes the last time it was proposed in 2013 post-Sandy Hook. It’s constitutionally questionable. It doesn’t enhance public safety. Even liberal writers have admitted this. We should just be resigned to the fact that this movie will be on repeat after every mass shooting.
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