Duck and Cover

Every time I think I have become used to the depths the modern media have sunk to in their quest to brainwash the nation, I run across something like this... something from a supposed advocate of tolerance and understanding.

Our long national nightmare is over. With the 10-year federal ban on 19 types of assault weapons expiring, happy days are here again. Finally, we can get back to hunting squirrels with an AK-47. To scaring away salespeople with a Colt AR-15 Sporter equipped with barrel extender. To showing our children how to reload a MAK90 with a 30-round clip. We can return to the kind of America our forefathers envisioned when they wrote the Constitution--an America where you can walk into a Wal-Mart, purchase a Streetsweeper, modify the trigger, and make the girls in the typing pool back at the office pay for not going out with you.

Can you even begin to count the offensive stereotypes there? Apparantly anyone who opposes the assault weapons ban likes to brandish firearms at strangers, hunt squirrels with an AK-47, endanger children with firearms, and commit mass murder in revenge for his own social ineptness. And that's just in the first paragraph!

As someone born in the free fire zone called the United States, I possess certain inalienable rights. To me, the Second Amendment is sacred, even if most of the others are a bunch of crap.

Most people who believe in the 2nd Amendment also believe in the other amendments that make up the bill of rights.

Renewing the ban would be the beginning of a long, slippery slope ending in the settling of personal disputes by hand-to-hand combat or--worse still--calm, sober discussion.

Checked the statistics on concealed-carry permit holders lately? How's that for calm, sober discussion as a problem-solving method?

While loaded opinion polls may show that 68 of 100 people favor renewing the ban, you can bet an Uzi those are 68 people who have never experienced the pure exhilaration of firing a Kalashnikov with grenade launcher at a Planned Parenthood clinic.

So now all 2nd Amendment supporters are abortion opponents who shoot at clinics? (Sorry, not me; I support the ability to have an abortion because I don't feel it's my right to make someone else's moral choices for them; and I certainly don't support violence).

When you take a long-range view of it, a Columbine here and there is a small price to pay for a joy ride with the sunroof down and a fully loaded TEC-9 pointed at a newspaper box.

Columbine had nothing to do with the assault weapons ban, which had been in effect for 4 years before the shooting. It was a massacre because police surrounded the school and then did nothing, not because the two criminals had especially powerful weapons.

And while some argue that the DC snipers used a Bushmaster assault rifle, who has had the courage to ask why no one was firing back?

I don't have to ask. Handguns are illegal in DC, remember?

The spineless enemies of freedom have taken aim and tried to make this into a safety issue. But as any serious student of economics knows, the free market will take care of the whole thing. The reintroduction of hundreds of thousands of assault weapons to our streets, playgrounds, and malls will foster healthy competition from other hungry, innovative gun manufacturers. Gun owners choosing to fire modified Beretta AR-70s irresponsibly will be countered with friendly-priced laser-sighted shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, in essence establishing a balance of power and ushering in a new golden age of national security. An armed society is a polite society, and assault weapons are the walking stick.

Excuse me a moment, I need to check the streets.

Nope, still no blood.

The anti-gun crowd used this argument to oppose concealed-carry, and they have been proven wrong in every single state that has enacted it. The argument is even less valid when applied to "assault weapons" stored in the home, not carried on the person.

So right now, I have a lot of catching up to do. Ten years underground is a long time, and if you think keeping up with the Joneses is hard, try keeping up with the bin Ladens. Sure, I'll be a bit rusty, but they say shooting up a post office with a TEC-22 is like riding a bike. More importantly, as always during trying times, we must look beyond our own immediate needs. We must remember our unique position and duty as a nation. By refusing to renew the ban, we can make a statement to the rest of the world, which is, essentially--duck.

I haven't shot up any post offices lately, not with a TEC-22 (whatever that is) or anything else.

With this kind of ignorance and bigotry passing for legitimate journalism, it's no wonder that Dan Rather can be taken in by a left-leaning partisan with a folder of clumsily-forged documents.