Gun control addicts and their fellow travelers in the media must take pride in their ignorance; there’s so much of it. Of course, having knowledge might interfere with their spiel. People might begin questioning not just their propaganda, but their purpose, goals, and their “commonsense” laws.
But when their ignorance-based claims become pure propaganda with no basis in fact, it’s time for a history lesson.
The whole “military-style weapons” theme is a joke, especially considering the federal government has been dumping real military firearms, such as the M1 carbine and the M1 Garand battle rifle, into the civilian market for well over 100 years. The total is more than 700,000 now.
Describing the AR-15 as “extraordinarily dangerous” is a bit of a stretch. Any firearm can be dangerous, but the AR-15 isn’t extraordinary in that regard. There’s a whole industry devoted to making barrels and upper assemblies for AR-pattern rifles so hunters can use their rifles with a more powerful cartridge suitable for medium-sized game, such as deer.
Despite the strident claims of ban fans, the AR-15 is used for hunting. It’s especially popular among ranchers, farmers, and hunters for taking feral hogs, an agricultural pest that does millions of dollars in damage every year.
O’Brien wants gun control nuts to make it clear the AR-15 is not “your grandfather’s hunting rifle.” I don’t know: I’m a grandfather and only two of my grandchildren haven’t yet finished high school. I have owned not only an AR-15, but the larger AR-10, as well.
My own granddad was born in 1888. The year he turned 15, Winchester introduced the Model 1903, a semiautomatic rifle designed for hunters. By the time he was 21, he could have bought a semiautomatic rifle that could accept a magazine holding more than ten cartridges. These were all marketed to hunters: It would be nearly two decades before the U.S. Army adopted a semiautomatic rifle as a general-issue firearm.
All told, Remington and Winchester made nearly 400,000 semiautomatic rifles in the first half of the 20th Century. There were probably lots of grandfathers whose hunting rifle was a semiautomatic.
