Carolyn McCarthy is a victim. Her husband was tragically killed and her son paralyzed by a madman, Colin Ferguson, who opened fire on a crowded Long Island Railroad train killing six and injuring nineteen. McCarthy, who was a Republican, switched parties and ran for Congress on the gun control issue after her Congressman Dan Frisa voted against an assault weapons ban that she supported and she won the seat. She has been on a mission ever since to impose tighter and tighter restrictions on guns, believing that will make the world safer. She wants you to feel her pain, literally.
The assault weapon ban was part of a campaign to ban all guns. It was a starting point; the thin end of the wedge. Put that ban in place and work to expand it. But when you come right down to it, no one has really been able to define what an assault weapon is other than it looks more menacing than other guns. There was no legal definition of an assault weapon prior to the ban. Think about it. There was great urgency to enact a law to prevent something we can’t define but, don’t worry, we’ll come up with something. Isn’t that ass-backwards? Congress, in the most blatent political pandering, rushed to pass a law to ban something that they couldn’t even define. How did they know it was a bad thing if they couldn’t define it? It didn’t matter. What they were banning was something that included the term “assault weapon” and applied to guns. As long as one gun was affected, they considered it a success. Here are some of the critical components that differentiate an assault weapon from non-assault weapons:
- For rifles:
- Folding or telescoping stock
- Pistol grip
- Bayonet mount
- Flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
Can anyone seriously call this thoughtful legislation? These features somehow make a weapon, unreasonably dangerous? A pistol grip? a bayonet mount? a folding stock? Yet, when this ban was debated you would think that Congress was trying to prevent hand grenades being packed in the kiddie’s lunch boxes.
McCarthy Slips?
“I think when you think about just common sense here, large capacity clips [sic] that can basically, in my opinion, be weapons of mass destruction, should not be available to the average citizen,” McCarthy said in an NPR interview.
Finish the thought. It should only be availabe to criminals? Although I don’t believe that is what she meant, probably meaning law enforcement and the military, but that is what it means in practice. All of these gun laws that pertain to what people own, rather than what they do, only constrain law abiding people. A criminal will get whatever they want or feel they need for their situation. A criminal who wants a gun, will get a gun.
Also, a criminal intent on causing mayhem will take the time to prepare for his attack. Colin Ferguson carried with him on that train 106 rounds of ammunition and he was re-loading for the third time when he was finally tackled. Consider the homeowner who hears glass breaking in the middle of the night and his child call out, because four armed men have broken in. The homeowner doesn’t have time to go rummaging for all the necessary equipment. Pants, check; gun, check, holster? extra magazines because Carolyn McCarthy says my magazine can only carry ten bullets… On the other hand if the homeowner could grab his gun that already had fifteen or twenty rounds or more, he could focus on protecting his family immediately.
The average gunfight between armed fighters lasts around three to five seconds. On the Long Island Railroad that fateful day, Colin Ferguson methodically shot his victims for three minutes or thirty-six to sixty times longer than an average gunfight. Why was he able to do that? Because he was armed with a gun and everyone else was not. The only hope for those passengers in New York was to have a plainclothes or off duty cop in that particular car on that particular train at that particular time. They had no such luck.
Carolyn McCarthy wants to make sure that you are similarly defenseless at home, at work, or on your way to work as her husband and son were. The tragedy is, that if New York didn’t have such strict gun laws, her husband might be alive today and her son not paralyzed. But Carolyn McCarthy wants you and your family, not just in New York, but everywhere in America to be as defenseless as her family was that infamous day. No thank you. When confronted with a deadly foe, it is not enough to dial 911 and wait. Dial 911 by all means if you can, but once you have done that, you need to protect yourself and your loved ones. That’s what the Second Amendment is really all about.
That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.
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