Showing that the smaller papers are more prone to avoid the pants shitting hysterics of the big city papers, The Rock Hill South Carolina Herald manages to produce a pretty balanced article:
Take a drive along Cherry Road, and you’ll see David’s Pawn Shop advertising the weapons on its marquee, “AK-47s Now In Stock.” Owner David Dresner said he started selling the Romanian-made weapon recently, and it’s been a big hit with collectors and for those taking target practice. Some individuals also use the guns for hunting, he said.
But I thought they didn’t have a legitimate sporting purpose?
Dresner said the AK-47 he sells is a semi-automatic rifle just like the ones used by Iraqi police allied with U.S. troops in the Middle East. It looks similar to the famed Russian AK-47, a fully automatic machine gun made popular during the Cold War. Those guns, however, are only sold to individuals specially licensed by the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, he said. And they carry a $25,000 price tag.
Good to see this mentioned. I doubt the Iraqi police are using semi-autos, but they appear to get the distinction.
“AK-47s should not be available for sale. There’s really no argument,” said Zach Ragbourn, a spokesman for the Brady Campaign, the nation’s leading gun-control lobby. “They’re designed to attack people, period. They’re not for hunting or a fun collector’s item.”
Well, it wouldn’t be a “balanced” article if it didn’t get a few Brady mis-characterizations in there. Designed to attack people? I’ve spent a lot of time with my AK-47, and it’s never once tried to attack me. Maybe there’s something wrong with it.
But not fun? Zach, Zach, Zach. I know you’ve commented on here once or twice, and I know you guys are occasional readers, so I’ll make you an offer: I’ll take you guys out to shoot both my Kalashnikovs, and if you still think it’s not fun, afterward drinks are on me.
Ragbourn said the term “assault weapon” was coined by the gun industry years ago as a marketing tool. He said any weapon capable of firing multiple rounds in a split second shouldn’t be offered on store shelves.
“A 100-round magazine is not a cosmetic feature,” he said. “It’s nothing but a bunch of lead in the air in a short amount of time.”
I’m pretty sure that term was invented by politicians. Assault Rifle was invited by the Germans (Sturmgewehr) in World War II. But what we shoot aren’t, they just look like. I don’t have a 100 round drum magazine. They take too long to load, and then take too long to shoot, because we’re not talking about machine guns here. You knew that right? Of course you did, but you hoped no one else would.
I e-mailed the writer politely w/ a few technical corrections. No reply though.
“He said any weapon capable of firing multiple rounds in a split second shouldn’t be offered on store shelves.”
He’s never seen a Colt Python, I guess.
And besides, who wants to carry a mag that weights more then the gun?
And in point of fact I believe it was the LPOS in the fore-runner to the bimbo bunch who demonized the term “assault rifle”. They took the idea from Pete Shields to deliberately confuse uneducated people about the differences between a true assault rifle and a semi-auto firearm.