Barack Obama Agrees with Communist Chinese

You know, sometimes I can't believe that a journalist can make statements like the following with no sense of irony:

The Second Amendment, however, consists of one 26-word sentence, which includes the words "well-regulated." Furthermore, it was written to protect a citizen's right to own a single-shot, muzzle-loading musket with an effective range of fewer than 50 yards.

But that is exactly what Gene Lyons did in the Hattiesburg American in an opinion piece entitled The Threadbare Gun Debate. See, by that standard, the First Amendment only protects hand presses capable of printing one side of one sheet of paper at a time, after painstakingly assembling the material to be printed from a kit of capital and lowercase letters, then proofed, before rolling ink on the assembled printing block and "pressing" the paper to it. Think of Benjamin Franklin.  The process, while state of the art for its day, could only produce a few pages at a time.  So, since technology has advanced, I guess the Constitution no longer protects Mr. Lyons, and the government is no free to impose prior restraints on what he says.

And it appears Mr. Lyons needs a little prior restraint for publishing falsehoods as if they were fact:

As for military assault rifles, I'd put it this way: As much as I like cats, I've sometimes thought it'd be cool to have a pet lion. However, I realize it'd be anti-social and borderline crazy. So is letting anybody with a driver's license own an AR-15 or AK-47.

The facts are that "military assault rifles" have been restricted from American citizens since 1986. We can not own an M 16 or AK 47, or any other fully automatic weapon manufactured after that date. The fact is that the Aurora, Colorado shooter used semiautomatic weapons that function just as any other semiautomatic rifle. As for power, the AR-15 shoots a .223 Rem cartridge, which is not a large round, or a particularly powerful cartridge. The civilian version of the AK 47 fires a somewhat more substantial round, but is confined to relatively low power by the fact that its full auto cousin would be uncontrollable if the round were as powerful as, say the .30-06.  The facts are that AR 15s are scary looking, but if  dressed instead like  the Ruger Mini 14 Ranch Rifle they would deliver the same destructive power on the target.  It is the target, rather than the weapon, that needs to concern us.

So, why the rush to reimpose the so-called "assault weapon ban?"  The original had no impact on crime,  But it was symbolic as a marker.  If they could demonize this group of semiautomatic weapons, then ban them, the gun grabbers would immediately start demonizing another group.  Slowly, but surely they would whittle away our gun rights a slice at a time.  Eventually, they would have banned handguns and anything more powerful than that musket, and those would probably be locked up in an armory.  You see, Leftists, and most of those calling for gun control in the wake of Aurora are Leftists, want to disarm you and me.  If you want to know why,  check the Western Rifle Shooters Association.