The foreign press often has a field day with our culture, and the Daily Mail in the UK is no different. But they are worse than our media about getting things right:
That looks like a .22 AR to me, rather than being an M16A2. The real irony is if the authors are thinking Americans are crazy for allowing ownership of guns like this, provided one obtains a Firearms Certificate, that firearm is perfectly legal to own in the UK. The UK did not ban semi-automatic firearms chambered in .22LR, and they have no “Assault Weapons” nonsense in their gun laws.
I won’t even get into the fact that even if that was an M16, it couldn’t have been an A2, since the A2 did not have a removable carry handle, and that the US Army has largely abandoned the M16 in favor of the M4 carbine. If they had said US Marines, that would have been correct, but they use the M16A4, largely.
My niece got her first gun (a Cricket single shot 22) at 6. She help my brother and I cut up a deer at 2. She’s 9 now, and loves to hunt, fish, and hike with her mother. Her Dad (relatively absent, thank goodness) doesn’t support it, but Uncle J and Uncle Tim do, and so does Mom (who got her first deer this year, a very nice 4×4). Hunting and shooting, hiking and fishing… they are outdoor sports, they require a lot of gear and time, and they really are family affairs. Our opponents just dont realize the community, family spirit we have. Its a shame. It would be nice if something other than fear and hate vrought them together.
When we look crazy to the English, I consider that a good thing. If the English start looking at us and seeing something that they approve of, then it is time to be concerned.
I don’t know if I’d say that the UK media is worse in terms of accuracy … I feel like if it were an American media outlet, they’d have called it an AK-47.
One is left to wonder why they never give the Swiss this kind of treatment in their press.
Because the Swiss do not have a gun crime problem (or crime problem in general), as we are always quick to point out.
The A2 still had a fixed butt stock too, right? That girl wouldn’t have even been able to shoulder it and reach the trigger.
Ron’s right, my Match Rifle follows the A2 configuration with a carry handle upper and fixed stock.
The spent brass beside her is still another clue.
The rifle is a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 in 22 cal; look at the two shell cases on the bench. The scope appears to be a Nikon P-22 scope mounted with P22 scope mounts. My 7 yr old daughter fires this configuration all the time. My 10 yr old daughter will hit a tennis ball at 50 yards 9 out of 10 times.
There is another political dimension people don’t see vis-a-vis the U.S., the UK, and guns: Through the 1970s U.S. civilians were one of the biggest suppliers of guns to the IRA in Northern Ireland.
I don’t remember the details off the top of my head, but the Boston Police Department was alleged to have a big hand in supplying weapons; and I think it was mobster Whitey Bolger (late in the news after being “missing” for years) who is said to have ratted out the shipment of something like seven tons of arms aboard the Marita Anne, that was interdicted somewhere mid-ocean. (I have my suspicions how he succeeded in remaining “missing” for all those years — in plain sight.)
Having thoroughly disarmed its people, the UK doesn’t want any repeats. Under the current Extradition Treaty with the UK one of the things that can get you extradited to England as an American, no questions asked, is accusation of loosely defined “weapons offenses.”
Make that Whitey BULGER.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_Bulger
“Beginning in 1975, Bulger served as an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). . .Beginning in 1997, the New England media exposed criminal actions by federal, state, and local law enforcement officials tied to Bulger. . .On December 23, 1994, after being tipped off by his former FBI handler about a pending indictment under the RICO Act, Bulger fled Boston and went into hiding. For sixteen years, he remained at large.”
My crime-novelist’s theory is that the FBI kept him in hiding the whole time; but after the Peace Process in Northern Ireland began in 1998, the “ancient history” of Americans’ involvement with that conflict made whatever deal they had struck with him moot, and they abandoned him.
Damn, that’s scary. By UK law I bet we all are committing “Weapons Offenses”!
When are they rounding us all up and shipping us to the UK? I assume after the elections?
This is actually “current events,” but not involving weapons offenses — yet. The Brits are actually far more upset about this treaty than we are, as we have been invoking it against their citizens for things like copyright infringements,etc., more often than they against us. But, wait for weapons to be involved!
In any case, the Brits have fairly recently been putting pressure on Mitt to commit to doing something about it if he is elected, and he has so far declined, the last I checked; while BHO has “promised” to work for treaty reform in his next administration.
I tried to get involved in resisting this treaty back in 2003 when Ashcroft and his British counterpart promulgated it; I knew all of its anti-sovereignty details at that time, but it took three years for our Senate to ratify it, and I can’t swear it passed in exactly the form I knew it. In 2003, my local newspaper refused to believe (and print) what I wrote about it; and when I referred them to the DOJ website for verification, came back with, that my column must be part of a “coordinated campaign,” (it wasn’t) and therefore they wouldn’t print it. And, I found that I couldn’t get rock-ribbed “conservative” supporters of “U.S. Sovereignty” interested at all, reinforcing my conclusion that they only get interested in what they’re told by their handlers to get interested in — but again, I digress.
Anyway, even almost ten years ago I was already getting tired of shoveling shit against the tide, so I shut up and moved along.