Last week the New York Daily News thought they would try to make a bold statement by donning a picture of a U.S. Marine dressed in military fatigues and holding a big bad “assault rifle” on the front cover with the following headline, “No civilian should own this gun.” In addition to such a blasphemous news cover, the editors of the paper snarkily added, “Hey, NRA: This Marine served in Iraq and says assault rifles should be banned. Does that make him a gun-grabbing commie, too?”
"This Marine" was a liberal Democrat congressman from Massachusetts.
Kevin D. Williamson of National Review wrote a piece in response to the front page cover, aptly noting:
“This is the sort of thing that would end several careers at a self-respecting publication. The New York Daily News apparently intends to be something else.”
Williamson then begins to singlehandedly rip apart the erroneous cover page – as he says, “let’s begin with the obvious…” – the Marine on the cover:
The Marine on the cover, who is U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, is in the photo holding what is, unless my eyes deceive me, an M-4 carbine, which would make sense inasmuch as that rifle is the weapon generally issued to Marines serving in Iraq. No civilian should own this gun? We could argue about that. What we cannot argue about is this: No civilian can own that rifle under current law. The sale of new fully automatic weapons has been generally prohibited for 30 years, meaning that the particular weapon Representative Moulton is holding, which was first produced in 1988, has literally never for a second been for sale to the civilian market in the United States.
Bang.
Williamson then takes aim at gun-control advocates who – in so many words - try to confuse the less educated when it comes to guns – because let’s face it, unlike those who believe in the Second Amendment or own guns themselves, gun-control advocates have no clue what the difference is between a semi and a fully automatic gun - they are programmed by the media to think “all guns are bad.”
Bang. Bang.
Explaining that the Second Amendment “ain’t about hunting ducks,” Williamson continued:
Moulton’s military service does not give his views on domestic-policy questions any special standing. This is a self-governing republic, in which the preferences and eccentricities of military men do not by virtue of their wearing a uniform acquire the force of law. Indeed, one of the reasons we have a Second Amendment is to ensure that that remains the case.
The Second Amendment is the law, and it says what it says, a fact that has been affirmed by our Supreme Court many times…The only honest people on the anti-gun side are those forthrightly making the case that we should repeal the Second Amendment. If that’s your case — that Americans simply cannot be entrusted with the wide ballistic latitude enshrined in the Bill of Rights — fine, make that case. We’ll see you at the ballot box. That view is the wrong one, but it’s a respectable one.
Boom. Well put, Mr. Williamson. Well put.
