IDIOT JOURNALISTS ARE MORE DANGEROUS THAN GUNS

Who is the biggest wuss in journalism today?

Gersh Kuntzman of the New York Daily News went to a firing range in Philadelphia to shoot the AR-15, the most popular semi-automatic rifle in America.  For him, it was a harrowing experience:

“It felt to me like a bazooka – and sounded like a cannon,” he said. “The recoil bruised my shoulder. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick. The explosions — loud like a bomb — gave me a temporary form of PTSD.”

Mr. Kutzman bruises easily.  The AR-15 shoots a .223 caliber cartridge, just a smidgen bigger than the .22, the smallest caliber of ammunition sold.  Recoil is negligible.  If Mr. Kutzman thinks an AR-15 “sounds like a cannon,” he’s never heard a cannon fired.

The ejection port is on the right hand side of the receiver. The brass cartridge casings could “fly past his face” only if Mr. Kutzman were firing the rifle improperly.

The AR-15 is “a style of tactical machine gun”, Mr. Kutzman said. Machine guns are fully automatic (once you pull the trigger, it fires until its ammunition is exhausted).  The AR-15 is semi-automatic (you must pull the trigger each time to fire a round).  I suppose Mr. Kutzman threw in the word “tactical” to make it seem as if he knew what he was talking about (all machine guns are “tactical.”)

Nor is the AR-15 an “assault rifle.” (The AR stands for ArmaLite, the designer).

“You can get a military-styled weapon in seven minutes in this country,” Mr. Kuntzman said. It’s been illegal since 1934 for private citizens to own automatic weapons.

It’s easy to convert an AR-15 into an assault rifle, Mr. Kuntzman implies.  It isn’t. The bolt carrier and internal lower receiver of semi-automatic versions are milled differently, so that the firing mechanisms are not interchangeable.

Mr. Kuntzman asserts an utterly impossible rate of fire for the AR-15. The death toll in mass shootings has been high not because their guns were unusually deadly, but because only the killers had guns.

“In gun-free zones like the Pulse nightclub, we’re sitting ducks to maniacs and terrorists,” wrote Tom Palmer, a gay man who carries a weapon for protection.

In the wake of the Orlando shooting, many gun control advocates call for reinstatement of the “assault weapons ban” in effect from 1994 to 2004.  They are idiots, or think you are.

The only differences between the “assault style” rifles and similar sporting rifles were cosmetic.  The banned guns had a pistol grip, a folding stock, a flash suppressor, a bayonet stud.  They looked like an M-16, but the firing mechanisms were the same.  The number of people killed with rifles is 27 percent lower now than the in the last year the “assault weapons” ban was in effect.

Most of the laws gun control enthusiasts advocate have been on the books for years, but are poorly enforced.  In 2000, the last year for which data is available, the government determined that 45,000 gun sales shouldn’t have been permitted.  But ATF attempted to recover only one in 9 of the improperly sold guns.

It would make sense to limit the capacity of magazines sold to civilians to 10 rounds.  And if the time allotted for background checks were extended from three to up to seven days, maybe the FBI wouldn’t do such a piss poor job of it.

Democrats – and Donald Trump – want to prohibit gun sales on the basis of secret lists, a chilling assault on constitutional rights.  This wouldn’t have prevented the Orlando massacre, because the FBI had removed Omar Mateen from the terror watch list.

Banning semi-automatic rifles to prevent mass shootings is like fighting drunk driving by banning automobiles.  According to the FBI, you are five times as likely to be stabbed to death, three times as likely to be beaten to death as you are to be murdered by a rifle.

Between 5 and 10 million Americans own rifles like the AR-15.  At least 99.98 percent haven’t committed a crime.  Mass killers have been nut cases or jihadists. To stop mass killings, we must focus on stopping them.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration.  He is the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.