Yeah, it did...
Production of the AR-15 sporting rifles a big mistake
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I’m a strong Second Amendment rights person. I stand against fire arms registration and government control and confiscation of our guns. But I strongly feel that the firearm manufacturers of our country are making a big mistake in producing the AR-15 sporting rifles.
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These modern sporting rifles are inflammatory in looks — they don’t look like modern hunting rifles. They are military in looks. They look like they were produced to kill men, not deer.
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...why endanger our Second Amendment rights by manufacturing and defending a modern hunting rifle that has such an inflammatory design? It plays right into the hands of the anti-gun movement. They love the looks of the AR-15. It’s easy to enrage the average American against such an “assault rifle.”
Let’s get wise. We have a difficult enough task defending our right to own firearms without this foolish battle.
Wow, where to start here? I think if you say things like "I support the Second Amendment, but..." my fellow gun owners and I are well within our rights to call you out as NOT supporting the right to keep and bear arms. Either you do or you don't, and if you support throwing any kind of gun to the anti-freedom wolves, for any reason whatsoever, you are not a supporter of the right to arms. I really do believe it's just that simple. Jim Darnell makes it even easier to call him out, as he even readily acknowledges the excellence of the platform for hunting, calling the rifles "light, compact and accurate." Yet he still advocates ceasing production of the rifles on the flimsy grounds that "it's easy to enrage the average American."
So I guess he thinks it's not even worth trying to educate this archetypal "average American." Of course that's ASSUMING what he says is true. And I'd be willing to bet that isn't the case, because of the very facts he uses in his column -- namely that it's a very popular rifle and that it's produced by several different manufacturers in MANY different calibers, from the .223 Remington right on up to the .50BMG. With that large of a market for those rifles, after the expiration of the Clinton gun ban and especially after last year's elections -- and the lack of a groundswell of support for a semiautomatic rifle ban -- it's worth asking just how "enraged" Americans are about these weapons. Not enough to make that much of a difference, I think, if ANY.
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