{"id":82374,"date":"2022-06-15T16:15:52","date_gmt":"2022-06-15T21:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=82374"},"modified":"2022-06-15T16:16:07","modified_gmt":"2022-06-15T21:16:07","slug":"82374","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=82374","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Not About the AR-15<\/a><\/p>\n

Gun grabbers have a peculiar tendency to invoke guns\u2019 use as sporting devices as a rationale for gun control.<\/p>\n

Take actor Matthew McConaughey, who just last week seems to have charmed the pants off of some Americans, and even some gun rights proponents when he argued in favor of gun control intervention to stop gun violence, such as raising the\u00a0minimum age<\/a>\u00a0requirement to purchase an AR-15 to 21.<\/p>\n

A few years back, however, he wasn\u2019t so measured and likable in his approach to gun control,\u00a0calling for an outright ban<\/a>\u00a0on \u201cassault weapons for civilians,\u201d saying that doing so is \u201ca no-brainer.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cAnd to my friends out there,\u201d he continued, \u201cthat are responsible owners of these recreational assault weapons that they use for recreation, please let\u2019s just take one for the team and set it down.\u201d He immediately went on to tackle magazine capacity, claiming that \u201cTexas has a three-shell limit to hunt migratory birds. Do the math.\u00a0 You get my point.\u201d<\/p>\n

What, exactly, is a \u201crecreational assault weapon?\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s the silliest description imaginable from someone that, somehow, the public seems to take so seriously on this issue.\u00a0 It\u2019s at once both oxymoronic and incoherent.\u00a0 If it\u2019s an \u201cassault weapon,\u201d after all, its purpose is to inflict violence upon other people. \u00a0If it\u2019s a \u201crecreational weapon,\u201d its purpose is for recreation, and not to inflict violence upon other people.<\/p>\n

What he means to achieve with this deceptive language, as all gun control activists do, is to obscure the purpose of the Second Amendment and to establish a distinction between types of gun owners.\u00a0 The Second Amendment exists, of course, solely for the purpose of Americans having weapons that can kill other people in defense of life and liberty, and has precisely nothing to do with recreation.\u00a0 But this narrative framework suggests that those who wish to use guns as recreational devices are good, while those who believe the primary purpose of their gun is to kill other people are bad.<\/p>\n

Guns, like any tool, have myriad uses, based on the user\u2019s desire.\u00a0 A hammer, for example, is equally useful in driving nails into wood as it is in fatally cracking a person\u2019s skull.\u00a0 The distinction is that a hammer\u2019s primary purpose is to drive nails into other objects.\u00a0 A gun\u2019s primary purpose, for most people, is not to kill migratory birds, but to kill\u00a0people<\/em>\u00a0who might do them harm.<\/p>\n

According to a\u00a0Gallup survey<\/a> in October 2021, a full 88-percent of gun owners say that \u201cprotection against crime\u201d is a reason for their owning a gun.\u00a0 That is to say, nine-out-of-ten gun owners keep their guns so that they can potentially kill other people if the need arises.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not an avid gun enthusiast, but I know enough to know that the AR-15\u00a0isn\u2019t ideal<\/a>\u00a0for deer hunting.\u00a0 But what the AR-15 does have is a large payload potential, mild recoil, and tremendous accuracy and stopping power.\u00a0 These are all traits that would make it incredibly useful for self-defense, if, say, your home was invaded by several intruders.<\/p>\n

\"\"It would also make this weapon incredibly useful in a\u00a0militia<\/em>.\u00a0 Herein lies even more incoherence in the argument being made by gun-grabbing progressives these days.\u00a0 Back in 1939,\u00a0the Supreme Court ruled<\/a>\u00a0that only guns with \u201csome reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia\u201d were justifiably afforded protections under the Second Amendment.\u00a0 By that logic, the AR-15 should be explicitly protected rather than isolated for exclusion from Second Amendment protections.\u00a0 But today, the left\u2019s argument is that the AR-15 is\u00a0too good<\/em>\u00a0in its potential usefulness in a militia, and its usefulness in deer hunting, or whatever, is lacking.<\/p>\n

None of that makes any sense, and that\u2019s because it\u2019s all smoke.<\/p>\n

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Whoopi Goldberg told<\/a>\u00a0the audience at \u201cThe View\u201d that she doesn\u2019t \u201cwant all your guns.\u201d\u00a0 But she wants \u201cthat AR-15. I want it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0 Ostensibly, because the AR-15 is so deadly that it needs to be taken away from even law-abiding citizens.<\/p>\n

But you know what\u2019s deadlier?\u00a0 \u201cHands, fists, feet, etc.\u201d as\u00a0the FBI categorizes<\/a>\u00a0these things in its aggregation of the data.\u00a0 \u201cKnives or cutting instruments\u201d were also far deadlier.\u00a0 In 2019, a total of 364 murders were committed by murderers using rifles, including the dreaded AR-15.\u00a0 But 600 people were murdered by \u201chands, fists, feet, etc.\u201d in 2019, while 1,476 murders were committed using \u201cknives or cutting instruments.\u201d<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the big question.\u00a0 If people who view guns as an instrument to kill other people are the problem, as we are told, then why are handguns not the target of gun control regulation? \u00a0A handgun has little to no recreational use whatsoever.\u00a0 They exist exclusively for the purpose of killing people, and in 2019, handguns were responsible for 6,368 murders.\u00a0 That\u2019s the lion\u2019s share of the more than 10,000 murders committed with firearms in that year.<\/p>\n

Fewer than 4 percent of those murders were committed with rifles.\u00a0 But it\u2019s your rifle that Whoopi Goldberg and Matthew McConaughey want.<\/p>\n

Nonsense.\u00a0 They just want your guns.\u00a0 If the argument is that \u201cthis gun is so deadly that it warrants government regulation,\u201d then it\u2019s only logical to presume that other guns will follow after the AR-15 is banned.\u00a0 Our position should not be to let them incrementally gain ground in disarming Americans but to stalwartly deny them every inch of ground that they seek.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Not About the AR-15 Gun grabbers have a peculiar tendency to invoke guns\u2019 use as sporting devices as a rationale for gun control. Take actor Matthew McConaughey, who just last week seems to have charmed the pants off of some Americans, and even some gun rights proponents when he argued in favor of gun … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82374"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82376,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82374\/revisions\/82376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}