PHOTO COURTESY | WIKIPEDIA
Assault rifle is a broad term, which encompasses a large range of capacity.
With the recent March for Our Lives and national school walkout that took place the other week, spearheaded by the rather annoying and blatantly lying gun control advocates David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez, I thought it’s a crucial time to follow up on my previous article by listing even more fallacious arguments and falsehoods many on the political left use when talking about firearms and the Second Amendment.
These fallacies are so great in number that one article could not contain them all. I don’t even know if this entire article is large enough to list them all, but let’s give it a try.
The first fallacy on this second list is the misuse of the term “assault rifle” by gun control advocates and those in the mainstream media.
The term assault rifle refers not exclusively to a military-grade machine gun, but to any intermediate-ranged rifle that can be set to either fully or semi-automatic fire and has a detachable magazine. Under this broad definition, a Ruger 10/22 rifle chambered in .22LR (that’s the lowest caliber a real rifle can be chambered in for those who are firearm illiterate) is an assault rifle.
Rifles ranging from a Ruger 10/22 to a Thompson submachine gun are classified as assault rifles. So, no, assault rifles are not just the scary looking black tactical rifles you saw in “John Wick”. This category of firearm is so broad in its definition that virtually all semi-automatic rifles fall under it.
Hell, the Remington .22 that I used to use to shoot squirrels is technically an assault rifle, despite the fact that the only thing it’s efficient at is plinking Coke cans and killing the occasional vole. If you’re a gun control advocate who’s reading this, please keep in mind that when you’re calling for a ban on “assault rifles,” you’re not just talking about those spooky looking black machine guns you saw in “Heat”, but a much broader category of firearms.
I guess David Hogg just really hates those of us who enjoy keeping our gardens clear of pocket gophers.
The second fallacy is much more expansive in scope, and that is the argument that America should adopt the gun laws implemented by Europe and Australia. Gun-grabbers such as Piers Morgan and Michael Moore have ridiculed the American gun culture, claiming that the U.S. is behind the times and should adopt the firearm laws practiced by our Western neighbors.
The issue with this argument is two-fold. First, the United States and her gun culture are incredibly different from those belonging to the rest of the Western world. The reason Americans care so much about firearms and the right to bear them is because of how this country was founded in the first place.
American colonists had to fight the British by forming militias and using their own firearms. Because of our history of resisting tyranny, firearms are a right of the people in the United States, as opposed to places such as Australia or Germany where they’ve never been a right, but a privilege. This fundamental difference between cultures will not allow any European or Australian-style gun laws to have a similar effect on society.
The third fallacy is the idea that the Second Amendment needs to be changed because it’s somehow “outdated” in its scope. The Founding Fathers only had muskets and other black powder weapons in their time and therefore were completely oblivious to how advanced firearms would become, gun control advocates reason.
Because of this gap in technology, it’s perfectly reasonable to restrict the Second Amendment so people can’t buy those scary looking tactical rifles. This line of logic is unbelievably flawed. First, the idea that people in the late 18th and early 19th century only ever had access to muskets is historically inaccurate.
Firearms such as the Girandoni air rifle, which was a magazine-fed .46 caliber rifle, were invented during the same time as the founding of this country. American citizens were even allowed to own firearms as powerful as navy cannons during the inception of this country.
Second, this line of logic falls completely apart when used on other Constitutional amendments. Does the freedom of the press apply to news media published on the internet? After all, the founders would never have imagined something as complicated and technologically-advanced as the internet ever being created.
I guess since we’re only adhering to technology from the 18th century, the freedom of the press only applies to manually-printed pamphlets and papers. What about the Fourth Amendment? Does it apply to email and other internet information, since the founders didn’t have the internet in 1787?
Oh well, I guess President Trump doesn’t need a warrant to go through your private emails and phone calls since John Adams didn’t know that iPhones were going to be invented. See how faulty this line of reasoning is? The Founding Fathers would not have written the amendments the way they did if they were supposed to be changed based on the technology of the time.
The fourth and final fallacy is the fundamental misunderstanding many modern liberals like Emma Gonzalez and Bill Maher have about the purpose of the Second Amendment. Whenever I listen to gun control activists like Emma Gonzalez speak on restricting firearms, they’ll claim that a person doesn’t need a “weapon of war” to hunt.
I’ve heard many other gun-grabbers use this same erroneous argument, so let me be clear, the Second Amendment is not about hunting. It’s not even about defending your home from potential burglars. The right to bear arms was created so that if the American government were to ever turn tyrannical and strip the American populace of their constitutional rights, the people could defend themselves.
Now, I know what a gun control advocate will say next: “But Ezra, a citizen militia would never have a chance of fighting the American military machine, so wanting firearms to defend your life and liberty is just ridiculous.”
This argument, like the previous fallacy, is flawed, both historically and logically. Let’s assume for a second that the entirety of the U.S. military would take up arms against the populace (which is extremely unlikely). Even then, citizen armies that use guerrilla warfare have fought and defeated far superior militaries throughout history.
The Viet Cong, the Afghan rebels, American rebels, even the revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro all used guerrilla warfare to effectively battle against an organized military force far more powerful than they were. The prospect of a tyrannical U.S. government to use massive firepower such as massive ordinance air blasts and carpet-bombing tactics is also historically inaccurate.
When tyrants strip their people of their firearms and rights, such as with Mao Zedong’s rise to power, they don’t just turn their land into scorched earth whenever there’s resistance. Hitler didn’t just rain bombs on French resistance fighters when they fought against his cruelty.
King George III didn’t just bombard Boston with cannon fire after the Declaration of Independence was drafted. A tyrant always seeks control over his people and country, not to directly destroy millions of people and resources with high-powered artillery. A historically accurate scenario would involve the same tactics dictators as Stalin and Hitler utilized: door-to-door searches and secret police. So yes, militias can win and, no, the government wouldn’t just drop a nuke on Texas if they resisted.
Sorry that this article ran a little long, but I’ll re-state the point I made in my last gun control article: people should be at least a little bit informed and knowledgeable about firearms when they throw their hat into the political ring (here’s looking at you David Hogg).
If you still want to restrict American citizens from their right to bear arms, let’s talk about it. Let’s engage in a discussion of ideas instead of resorting to childish name-calling and virtue signaling tactics that so many have resorted to. As university students and American citizens, we should be open to the plethora of beliefs and ideologies throughout the world, lest we slip into a bubble of ignorance and laziness.