So, the Washington Post, whose readership is certainly not a major slice of the people in this country who own guns, has now published a study of the AR-15, which they claim is based on a seven-month research project that involved interviewing more than 200 people with relevant firsthand experience, including “firearms industry executives and lobbyists, gun owners, shooting survivors and victims’ families, lawmakers, trauma surgeons, first responders, activists, armed militants, academics and ballistics experts, among others.”

              This research was then combined with a national survey of hundreds of AR-15 owners, along with reviewing more than 1,000 pages of documents, including “internal company records, court and regulatory filings, and autopsy reports.” Together, the three articles which comprise this study engaged 14 reporters, 11 video and pictorial staff and 20 others who are identified as having supplied ‘additional support,’ whatever that means.

              I hate to break it to the WaPo, so I’ll do it gently. One person could have walked into a gun shop just about anywhere in the United States, plunked a tape recorder down on the counter, spent an hour talking to the shop owner about the AR-15, and would have learned as much as these 45 people claim to have learned working on this issue for six months.

              Notice incidentally, that the lengthy list of people with ‘relevant experience’ didn’t include one, single individual who earns his living by selling AR-15 rifles to anyone at all. How do you do a serious study of any consumer product and not spend one minute talking to the people who are ultimately responsible for getting that product into the consumer market? You don’t.

              You get away with such shoddy and shabby journalism when you publish an article for a reading audience which knows as much about guns as you know about guns, which to quote Grandpa, is ‘gurnisht helfen’ (read: not a goddamn thing.)

              To show you how far away from anything even remotely close to reality this article ends up, take a quick look at the demographics of the Ipsos poll, which was allegedly answered by hundreds of AR-15 owners. Now take a look at the demographics of gun owners in a survey published by Pew in 2021.

              Guess what? Know how much of a difference there is between the demographics of the general gun-owning population as opposed to the population which owns AR-15’s?  There’s no difference. And the reason for this is very simple. Most gun owners own multiple guns because they like guns.

              This is the same population which ran out and bought polymer-based, bottom-loading handguns when those types of weapons began to appear and quickly replaced steel revolvers in the 1980’s. This was the same population which ran to the gun shows and bought up all the ‘sporterized’ M-1 rifles after World War II.

              Of course if the Washington Post, which every gun nut knows is anti-gun, asks gun owners how come they went out and plunked down six or eight hundred dollars to buy a new ‘type’ of gun, the AR-15 owner isn’t about to say something like ‘I wanted to buy another gun,’ or ‘I had some cash in my pocket from plowing last week so I walked into the gun shop while the wife was doing grocery shopping down the street.’

              No, he’s going to give the WaPo pollster some answer to make it appear that the decision to add an AR-15 to his collection is based on some real thought, like the importance of the 2^nd Amendment or maybe the need to be more serious about armed, self-defense.

              I notice, by the way, that the Ipsos/WaPo poll does not include a single question which would give us any idea about how many guns the respondents own, or what kinds of guns they own, or anything else which might actually inform us about the motives or reasons why people bought an AR-15. And the whole point of this story, or course, is to continue building the argument that we need to find some way to regulate this gun more strictly because it is the weapon of choice for those shitheads who charge into a public space and try to shoot the whole place up.

              I have been saying for years that the AR-15 is too dangerous to be sold just like any other sporting gun, so don’t get the idea that I’m being critical of the WaPo because they have published an article which is clearly aimed (pardon the pun) at advancing the idea that a ban on the AR-15 would be a good thing.

              My issue with the WaPo is simply this. Here is one of America’s most respected and respectable sources for informing us about important issues which has dressed up a discussion of this issue with all kinds of falderal derived from interviews with all kinds of experts, supplemented by a national survey which makes absolutely no sense.

              Gun-control Nation gets it wrong again. Gee – what a surprise!

Thanks ToJo.

              Back in 2008, I played around with the idea of importing a modern sporting gun. It was a 22-caliber, bolt-action target rifle with Olympic-grade accuracy but a moderate price. So, the first thing I did was to try and get some internet presence for my product by applying for a trademark like the trademark I own for Mike the Gun Guy™.  

The Patent & Trademark Office turned me down. They said the phrase, ‘modern sporting gun’ had been in public parlance for too long and therefore couldn’t be consigned to a particular individual like me.

              So, then I did the next best thing and purchased modernsportingrifle.com. I figured that if I decided to import the rifle without the trademark, the URL was the next, best thing.

              The following year, 2009, I had a booth at the big gun trade show, the SHOT show, because I was importing a pistol but had decided that I wouldn’t bring in a target rifle the following year.

              At some point during the show, a gentleman came up to my booth and said he was a counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) which owns and runs the SHOT show. He asked if I would be willing to sell the modernsportingrifle.com to the NSSF, but instead of selling the URL, I just gave it to the NSSF in return for a better booth location at the 2010 SHOT show.

              Why did the NSSF want to own modernsportingrifle.com? Because they were going to start a campaign to promote the idea that the AR-15 wasn’t an assault rifle but was just another sporting gun.

              Why did they want to start this campaign? Because, according to their counsel, the NSSF was getting reports that big-box stores like Cabela’s were concerned about stocking the AR-15 because their stores were family destinations and mothers wouldn’t want their kids to go into a location that sold military guns. You can see NSSF’s description of the AT-15 as a ‘modern sporting rifle’ right here.

              That was then, this is now. And now we have a member of the U.S. Congress, Tom Massie from Kentucky, sending out a holiday greetings tweet surrounded by his family, three of whom are women gleefully holding up their AR-15’s.

              On the other hand, when it comes to using an assault rifle to score some political points, Massie’s a rank amateur compared to Mark McCloskey, who brandished his AR-15 at a group of BLM protestors marching peacefully by his house. He’s now running for Senate and his campaign website seems to be less a promotion for his candidacy and more an advertisement for his gun.

              Back in June, McCloskey held a political rally to mark the one-year anniversary of his stand against the forces of Socialism, Communism, Soros-ism and all the other isms that marched past his house. Want to read a great piece of journalism? Try a description of the rally in a local paper which drew a crowd so small that the reporter almost missed the event entirely because almost nobody showed up.

I bought my first AR-15, a Colt Sporter, back in 1978. The dealer gave me a $30-dollar discount to move the gun off the shelf. In those days, people didn’t walk around a state capital building in Madison, WI or march down a street in Charlottesville, VA carrying their AR-15’s, and no candidate would ever have used a positive comment about assault rifles as a verbal prop in a national campaign.

What did Trump say when asked if he would ban assault rifles in the wake of the massacre at The Pulse? He claimed that AR-15’s were necessary because people needed protection, a stance which directly reversed an assault-rifle ban that he supported in his 2000 book, The America We Deserve.

By pretending to be in favor of using assault rifles for personal defense, Trump was cynically trying to take advantage of what he perceived to be the mood of voters whose support he needed to win the 2016 campaign.

Except it turned out that even if Trump grabbed a few extra votes in 2016 by stoking the belligerent mood, the mood hasn’t lasted vey long. I have sold a lot of assault rifles and I can tell you that I don’t think a single AR-15 purchaser walked out of my gun shop ready to go into battle against the forces of international terrorism or the shock troops of ANTIFA and BLM.

Customers bought an assault rifle because someone else had bought one, and they didn’t want to be the only guy without this newest adult toy when they showed up at the range.

For the first time since Charlton Heston raised a flintlock over his head at the annual meeting of the NRA, the gun industry has come up with a product that tells everyone which way you plan to vote.

Back in 2016, Jason Kander, a Democrat, ran for Senate in Missouri against the GOP incumbent, Roy Blunt. He put out an ad showing him assembling an AR-15 while he explained why he supported expanding background checks. Kander lost to Blunt by less than 3 points.

Let’s face it. Assault rifles have become as much a partisan issue as mandating masks or getting the vaccine. Which is fine with me because every week the number of people who have gotten their vaccinations keeps going up.

              The same day the Rittenhouse jury began trying to figure out how to come up with a verdict in this case, The (failing) New York Times gave its readers an interesting perspective on in the form of an op-ed by a guy who usually writes about technology, but this time wants to inform the paper’s readership about the AR-15.

              In case you didn’t know it, the gun that Kyle Rittenhouse used to kill two people and injure a third, happens to be the same kind of gun, in terms of design and function, that our troops use out in the field. Except in this case the gun was carried and used by a 17-year old who had never undergone the slightest military training at all.

              For that matter, the op-ed columnist, Farhad Manjoo, also has no practical experience with assault rifles – I can tell that from how he talked about the AR-15.

              Actually, he didn’t really talk about the AR-15, even though his op-ed says that he’s going to give his readers “the truth about Kyle Rittenhouse’s gun.” Instead, what we get is the standard, liberal response to the narrative promoted by the gun industry, namely, that owning this kind of gun doesn’t give you an ‘effective’ and ‘necessary’ weapon of self-defense, nor does it help you shield yourself from the ‘tyranny’ of the state.

              These arguments are what Manjoo refers to as the “foundational tenets of gun advocacy,” and they are all wrong. The AR-15, in the hands of someone like Kyle Rittenhouse, actually engenders violence and loss of human life, rather than keeping society safe and secure.

              I’ve been listening to this argument from Gun-control Nation for years and on occasion I have indulged in it myself. But enough is enough. Want to know the real reason dopey kids like Rittenhouse show up at a pitched battle between the cops and the demonstrators with their AR-15?

              I’ll tell you why. And I’ll tell you based on my own thoughts and reasons which have led me to buy and own more than one AR-15.

              I bought my first AR-15, the Colt Sporter model, back in 1978. I bought a second Colt AR, the heavy-barreled ‘target’ model in 1993, or maybe it was 1998. I also bought a Bushmaster in the 90’s, and at some point, I traded a Browning semi-auto, 7mm Rem Magnum for a Stag Arms AR-15.

              Why did I own four AR rifles over the last forty-some odd years? Because I’m a gun nut, and gun nuts always buy more guns than they would ever need.

              In fact, I never really ‘needed’ any of these guns. For that matter, I had no real ‘need’ for the several hundred guns that I have bought, sold, and traded since I paid some old guy fifty bucks for a Smith & Wesson 22-caliber handgun at a tag sale on Highway 441 in the Florida Glades back in 1956.

              The difference between me and a pea-brain like Kyle Rittenhouse is that I never, ever thought that I might use an AR-15 or, for that matter, any of my other guns to shoot someone else. But here’s the dirty little secret about the gun business which someone like Farhad Manjoo would never know. And he would never know this little secret because he doesn’t really know anything about guns.

              Kids like Rittenhouse want to own and walk around with an AR-15 because they enjoy fantasizing about the idea that maybe, just maybe, they’ll get a chance to shoot someone else with their gun. Of course, they never, ever imagine that such behavior is wrong. They will only shoot someone who is threatening them or someone else. After all, let’s not forget that we have a ‘right’ defend ourselves with a gun. That’s what the 2^nd Amendment says we can do.

              Except the 2^nd Amendment doesn’t say that at all. What It says is that you can keep a gun in your home in case someone tries to break in and do you harm.

              Rittenhouse claimed that he took his AR-15 with him to Kenosha to help some car dealer protect his cars. But the real reason he showed up in Kenosha with his AR-15 is that he was hoping he would get a chance to defend himself with his gun. And how do you defend yourself with an AR-15? You aim the gun not at some paper target on the range, but at a living human being, pull the trigger and the guy you hit goes down.

              Guns like the AR-15 don’t get bought because someone wants to go into the woods and take a shot at Bambi or Smokey the Bear. They get bought because some of the people who buy them want to believe that walking around with that kind of gun makes you a big, tough guy.

              Actually, all it really does is show everyone that you’re a self-proclaimed jerk. Unfortunately, being a jerk has never disqualified anyone from owning a gun.