Earlier today, Ed picked through the bones of Eric Swalwell’s laughable gun control platform, pointing out a very real gap in the congressman’s grasp of the Second Amendment. But the longshot POTUS candidate isn’t the only member of his party that seems to have trouble grasping the finer points of the Bill of Rights. Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein (California) and Chris Murphy (Connecticut) published an editorial piece in Time this week and have since been busy publicizing it on social media and cable news.
The subject was “assault rifles” and the need for a renewed ban on such weapons. That’s pretty typical fare for them, but the reasons they invoke to support it are the stuff of comedy. For one thing, they seem to feel that interpretations of the Second Amendment are somehow predicated on whether or not a weapon is useful for hunting. (Free Beacon)
Two Senate Democrats falsely claimed Monday that the AR-15 is not used for hunting and isn’t “viable for home protection” in a tweet promoting gun control proposals.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) penned an op-ed in TIME calling for the banning of AR-15s and similar assault weapons.
“Guns like the AR-15 aren’t used for hunting and they’re not viable for home protection. They have only one purpose, and that’s to fire as many rounds as possible, as quickly as possible,” they wrote. “Outlawing these weapons, an action supported by 60 percent of Americans, will bring down the number of mass shootings and reduce the number of casualties, just as it did when the ban first passed in 1994.”
Here’s Feinstein making the same argument on Twitter.
Guns like the AR-15 aren’t used for hunting and they’re not viable for home protection. They have only one purpose: fire as many rounds as possible, as quickly as possible. 60% of Americans support outlawing these weapons. Read my op-ed with @ChrisMurphyCT. https://t.co/T2l8NeWTZX
— Sen Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) June 17, 2019
Here’s a fun fact for you. The word “hunting” doesn’t appear anywhere in the Constitution, say nothing of the Second Amendment. In as much as that amendment gives any sort of explanation, it refers to warfighting, but self-defense, against either criminals or, in a worst case scenario, your own government have long been understood to be part of this fundamental right.
But even if we ignore this false aspect of their argument, the rest of their explanation doesn’t hold water either. As the Free Beacon article correctly points out, plenty of people use their AR-15s for hunting. I’ve personally never been a fan when it comes to big game, preferring a trusty bolt-action 30:06 if you’re going after deer, but to each their own. I’m sure the AR-15 can get the job done.
The other half of their argument is that the rifles aren’t even useful for home defense. Try telling that to all of the Americans who have successfully employed these types of rifles in defense of themselves or others. Again, my personal preference is generally a handgun because of the portability factor in tight spaces, but it’s something for each owner to decide for themselves. To claim that this particular category of weapon is “of no use” in such scenarios is patently false.
And finally, they hyperbole meter gets turned up to eleven as the senators argue that unless we ban these firearms now, people will continue to die. I will once again refer you back to Ed Morrissey’s article from earlier today and the FBI data on murders committed in the country in 2017. Rifles and shotguns of all types, not just AR-15 style firearms, were among the least used weapons in murders. More people were stabbed, choked or beaten to death with bare fists than were killed by rifles.
I’ll leave the final word on this to our friend Cam Edwards of the NRA. He has some helpful tips for Senator Feinstein going forward.
AR-15’s and other semi-automatic rifles are absolutely used for both hunting and self-defense.
Gun bans like the one @SenFeinstein is pushing have only one purpose: to ban the most commonly sold rifle in the U.S. today. https://t.co/efYZvrwHfO
— Cam Edwards (@CamEdwards) June 17, 2019
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