The Effort to Ban the AR-15 Is Incremental Step Toward Total Gun Ban

In the article at The Federalist entitled The Gun Control Campaign Against The AR-15 Is Full Of Lies David Harsanyi subtitles his article "Efforts to outlaw the AR-15 are part of an incremental movement to ban all semi-automatic guns". While I have great respect for Harsanyi, author of the recent book First Freedom on the history and meaning of guns in American culture, he left out one important detail. The effort to ban the AR-15 is a marker on the road to banning not just all semiautomatic guns, but all guns period. If they can find a excuse that sticks, they can use that excuse or another like it to ban every other gun.  Of course the police and military will be exempt while on duty at least.  The gun grabbers mean to disarm us. But otherwise, Harsanyi's article is correct. All weapons are designed to be able to kill, though in use as a self defense tool the intent is not to kill but to stop the other guy from killing you.

Harsanyi concludes his article thusly:

Gun restrictionists focus on the AR-15 because it looks like a military weapon. Once stripped of emotion, however, the argument against ARs, which feature the same mechanics as many others firearms, is that they work better. There will always be a gun that works better than other guns. Which is why we know banning them is part of an incremental push towards broader prohibitions. After all, many gun controllers openly argue that we should roll back technology to musket—also a weapon of war—because the founders never imagined firearms would become more powerful. This is historically inaccurate, as well. But when politicians go back to writing pamphlets rather than making their cases on TV and the internet, we can start to have that conversation.

And so Harsanyi makes the subtle case that technology drives methods, but that the fundamentals remain the same.  Just as better technology has made communication faster and more efficient, so too has it made weapons more deadly.  In both cases there are good and bad effects of newer technology, but in the end both kinds serve basic human needs.

I have read his book entitled First Freedom: A Ride Through America's Enduring History with the Gun, From the Revolution to Today. Okay, so I am a slow reader these days. In any case, the level of scholarship and the attention to detail in the writing of this book is astounding considering its readability for the average reader.

Harsanyi for example focuses in on the effect the Kentucky Long Rifle had during the Revolutionary war. Of course the leadership of General George Washington, the decision of the French to enter the war on the colonist side, the effect of Baron Von Steuben training our Continental Army in the ways of European warfare no doubt all contributed greatly to winning the war. But Harsanyi is right to single out the Long Rifle as perhaps tipping the balance in America's favor.

I plan to do a book report on First Freedom though I don't know when I will get around to it. It is a book well worth reading for yourself, though, so get a copy and read it for yourself.