When Seconds Count...

 Selwyn Duke has a post at the American Thinker entitled Remebering when gun control was at least remotely rational. Yes, I remember those days and they weren't truly rational even then. But the fact that they can not sustain the irrationality and emotionalism to get the desired results has led to censorship as well. You will find that story here at Bearing Arms. But back to Selwyn Duke: the current obsession with banning so called "assault weapons" is totally irrational. These rifles, that are semiautomatic and thus operate like any other semiautomatic rifle are used in fewer murders than fists and feet.

In contrast, handguns are used in 62 percent of murders committed with firearms. There was a time when this guided gun-control activists’ thinking, too.

Back in the ’80s and into the ’90s, our rancorous firearms debates centered around banning handguns. I disagreed with such a course, but at least the gun-control set’s arguments contained a smidgen of logic.

These weapons are used to commit a robust plurality of our nation’s murders, they said.

They’re concealable and thus are criminals’ firearm of choice, they said. So if anyone believed in gun control as remedy, the focus on handguns at least made sense: Banning firearms would reduce crime, the thesis went, so it was rational to focus on the guns most used, by far, in crimes. It was today’s SJW’s grandfather’s gun control.

But those days now almost seem quaint. Emotion, which always figured prominently in gun-control appeals, has now completely taken over. No longer is there focus on handguns, not even a peep. Instead, it’s all Assault Weapons™ all the time.

Duke analyses what he thinks the reasons for this change is strategy might be. Among those reasons, he believes is the rise of school shootings and other mass murders. These are rare events, despite the news medias concentration on them. But media's scaring moms into believing that these things are happening everywhere is a strong motivator. What I think is that the gun grabbers want to score a "win" anywhere they can. Despite the popularity of AR-15 variant rifles, they still represent a small enough target that gun grabbers think they can score a victory with them. In any case, both reasons may be driving the assault weapon ban agenda.

Lastly, those who’d criminalize firearms generally believe the weapons are at best superfluous because they trust the government to protect them. That’s certainly a quaint idea. Remember the L.A. riots in 1992, when the government, constrained by political correctness, refused to quell the unrest and allowed miscreants to run amok? Hapless truck driver Reginald Denny was beaten to within an inch of his life, and some of the only people we saw who could defend themselves were Korean store owners wielding firearms. There also was Hurricane Katrina in 2005, during which many police abandoned their posts and armed gangs were roaming about. Then, of course, there were 2020’s 600-plus BLM/Antifa riots, which also were allowed to proceed unfettered and destroyed billions in property and claimed at least two dozen lives.

But, hey, we’re sure that the next time the boogeymen come, the gubmint will be there for you, right?

Like most gun owners, I pray to never actually have to use my gun outside of a shooting range for training. If one has to use one's weapon, no one can predeict the outcome. But when one is forced to defend oneself, one wants the most effective weapon available. And even if the government does want to protect you, when seconds count, they are minutes away.