By Kurt Hofmann
Perhaps the most prominent objective of the forcible citizen disarmament lobby's post-Sandy Hook feeding frenzy is a ban of so-called "assault weapons." The language of Senator Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) proposed ban would seem to imply outright confiscation of tens of thousands of Americans' guns, and some of the more eager gun prohibitionists are not even bothering to try to conceal their wish to confiscate "assault weapons" (although they are keeping fairly quiet about how they expect to go about the confiscation without igniting--and losing--a bloody civil war).
Interestingly, the vast majority of people calling for bans of these "weapons of war" (as the anti-gunners like to call them) sees no problem at all with police having them (because police are apparently expected to fight a war now?). Some, in fact, go to the bizarre length of referring to the exact same firearm that they demonize as an "assault weapon" in a private citizen's hands, as a "patrol rifle" when in the hands of a cop.
We are expected to believe that police are simply more trustworthy and better qualified than the rest of us to handle guns in general--that police are the "Only Ones" to be trusted with guns. Astoundingly, some have taken this "reasoning" so far as to point to an incident last August in which two NYPD cops shot nine unarmed, innocent citizens in the process of killing their actual target, as "proof" that only police should be permitted to carry guns in public. From the New York Daily News:
Opponents insist that having more people armed at a school, especially teachers or administrators who aren’t trained to deal with crime on a daily basis, could lead to more injuries and deaths. They point to an August shooting outside the Empire State Building, where police killed a laid-off clothing designer after he fatally shot his former colleague. Nine bystanders were wounded by police gunfire, ricochets and fragments.
“You are going to put teachers, people teaching 6-year-olds in a school, and expect them to respond to an active-shooter situation?” said Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, who called the idea of arming teachers “madness.”A Tulsa homicide detective, though, provides (perhaps unintentionally) a different perspective. From the Tulsa World:
"It's an easy gun to shoot," [Tulsa Police Sergeant Dave Walker] said of the assault rifle. "I'm not a guy who shoots a lot. My handgun scores are very marginal. But I can shoot a .223 round 100 percent at a qualifying course with that gun up to 100 yards."In a few short sentences, Sgt. Walker debunks at least two myths sacred to the anti-"assault weapon," anti-armed citizen lobby.
One is the supposedly vastly greater shooting proficiency of cops. A police sergeant with more than 30 years experience--a homicide detective, whose job is to catch killers--does not shoot enough to be capable of better than "very marginal" scores with a handgun.
Second is the myth that "assault weapons" are inherently inaccurate--but "too deadly" for private citizens because they "spray fire" many shots quickly (a theme the anti-gunners sound over and over again, while simultaneously referring to the murderous creatures who terrorized Washington D.C. with a Bushmaster AR-15 in 2002 as the "Beltway snipers").
Sgt. Walker has, intentionally or not, made a pretty good case for the argument that if private citizens really are not particularly proficient with firearms, "assault weapons" are just what they need in a dangerous situation.
http://www.examiner.com/article/assault-weapons-patrol-rifles-only-ones-and-marksmanship
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