Anti-gunners are a unique breed, they rant and rave about a device that they usually know nothing about. Sometimes an anti-gunner feels the need to attend a gun show because there are no anti-gun shows. The author of this article decided to attend a gun show and her ignorance is gloriously displayed in the article:
They’re eager to get new members today, but not so eager to talk to me once I pull out my microphone.
NRA REPRESENTATIVE: I’m sorry. We don’t do media.
That’s the basic attitude I get even when I enter the large grey exhibition center.
SUPERVISOR (over radio): Who is she with?
SECURITY GUARD: KALW Public Radio.
SUPERVISOR (over radio): Copy. Let me check.
Why all the concern?
Why the concern? Because gun owners are used to having everything they say or do used against them by popular media. There isn’t anything we can possibly say to the anti-gun dominated media that won’t be twisted to fit their desires so we’ve just decided to stop saying anything. And there was this amazingly ignorant statement made by the author:
In case, you’re like me and your knowledge of guns is limited to whatever you’ve seen in movies or on TV, the “AR” in AR15 stands for “assault rifle.” They’re massive, Rambo-style guns.
The “AR” in AR-15 stands for Armalite, the company that first manufactured the AR-15. As the AR-15 was the 15th model of firearm manufactured by the company they called it the Armalite Model 15, or AR-15 for short.
Also AR-15s are not massive Rambo-style guns. I would venture to say many AR-15s are actually much smaller than most rifles considered by the anti-gun media to be of a hunting purpose. You can build some amazingly small and light AR pattern rifles. Of course, being anti-gun, the author jumps on a statement made by one of the dealers:
MAIDA: This is an 1887 – so probably cowboy age – revolver. This is pretty old, too. This is from the mid-1800s.
DILLING: That’s really small.
MAIDA: It’s a little … They would call this a gambler’s derringer, because unlike what people think about the Old West, you had to check your guns.
Even in the Wild West, they had rules about guns.
It was that the Wild West had rules about guns, the property owners did. If a property owner didn’t want you in your establishment with a gun strapped they told you to check the piece. These weren’t laws but private property owners decided what they would and would not allow people entering their property to do. Personally I have no problem with such things because a property owner should be allowed to set whatever rules they desire as it’s their property. Likewise if I don’t like their rules I can go give my money to their competition down the streets.
But I’m left wondering – why would that love of guns extend to wanting to own a tactical military rifle? I ask around, but find that even in a warehouse full of people aspiring to be straight shooters, it’s hard to get a straight answer.
It’s hard to get a straight answer because people who are opposed to gun rights generally don’t understand freedom in general. The reason I want to own a “tactical military rifle” is because I like them and I bloody can own them. It’s the same reason I drive a Ford Range instead of a small car, I like the Ranger. Because I want to own something is a perfectly justifiable reason because I put my labor and effort into obtaining that thing I wanted.
I don’t need to prove a need to own something and I don’t need to justify what I want to anybody by myself (and if you’re married, to your wife). The fact of the matter is I exchanged my labor with somebody else in exchange for something I wanted. Usually that something I traded for was money (well Federal Reserve notes technically) because it’s a general purpose item that I can exchange for many different things I want. If I want to use some of that money to buy an AR-15 then there should be nothing stopping me from doing so because it was my labor that allowed me to obtain that rifle. The product of my labor is mine and I have no reason to justify why I want whatever that product is.
Anyways that is the kind of dribble you get when anti-gunners go to gun shows.