Biden Wants Your Guns – and Freedom
In the wake of shooting at Nashville Christian school
After this week’s shooting at a Nashville Christian elementary school, President Biden predictably demanded an “assault weapons ban.” By coincidence, on the morning just before the shooting, the Washington Post ran a series of articles headlined, “From outcast to political symbol: How the AR-15 emerged as an icon.” Subhead: “The AR-15 wasn’t supposed to be a best-seller. It’s the result of a dramatic shift in American gun culture fueled by the firearms industry and its allies.”
After the shooting, the WaPo has been promoting this series, which it hopes will lead to sweeping gun control against the American people it despises. The article read: “Today, the AR-15 is the best-selling rifle in the United States, industry figures indicate. About 1 in 20 U.S. adults — or roughly 16 million people — own at least one AR-15, according to polling data from The Washington Post and Ipsos.
“Almost every major gunmaker now produces its own version of the weapon. The modern AR-15 dominates the walls and websites of gun dealers.”
The Post did report the AR-15 is related to the M-16 many of us carried in the U.S. military: “The new gun was met by complaints that it was prone to jamming, even mid-firefight, until Colt revamped the design. Despite its mixed success, the new gun won over military leaders.”
Actually, the problem was the M-16 was a precision weapon that, in Vietnam’s jungles, needed to be cleaned almost continuously. That also tainted the similar AR-15 for veteran gun purchasers back home in The World from Nam. But over time, that was generally forgotten. The weapon’s excellent characteristics eventually won out, as few Americans live in jungles. Keep it clean, and it’s a fine weapon.
Neither the Post nor Biden can tell us how they would wrest those 16 million AR-15s and tens of millions of similar “assault weapons” from Americans sporting bumper stickers reading, “I will give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.” Biden in one of his speeches this week even referred to AR-15s as “AK-47s,” meaning the Soviet-era weapon that excelled in Nam and other places because it has a looser construction, with less accuracy, but letting it survive better in jungle mud conditions. Americans own many millions of AKs, too.
The Post lists killings in which the killer used an AR-15. But it doesn’t report this and other guns are used 1.7 million times a year in self-defense. Nor does it report how many home invasions have been prevented because potential invaders feared what was behind a home’s front door.
After reading this, step outside your home. Look at the cars going by. Almost all are just folks driving by, going home or to work, taking their kids to school, whatever. But now and then, maybe one out of a thousand, somebody might be casing your home. But does the potential invader know if you have an AR-15 waiting to grease him? He doesn’t. So it doesn’t matter whether you have that or any other weapon. The uncertainty is enough to deter.
There’s no way to quantify this, but it’s real. Most husbands and fathers I know have guns to protect their families. Those are the guys Biden, the WaPo and the other gun controllers especially want to disarm. They want them defenseless against future assaults on our freedoms. They want to make sure no one can stop their tyrannies.
The question is: Will we let them?