Publish an anti-gun article in an Indiana publication, and you are most likely to take a serious public beating.
Honestly though, I’m surprised by the fact that pretty much all the responses are pro-gun, seeing as the original article comes from the student newrag at Indiana University, which isn’t exactly known for their conservative leanings. Honestly, the author has taken a pretty severe beating in the comments, so I’ll just address the most salient “points” brought up in the original.
For one, Indiana has no restrictions on the sale of assault weapons or military-style semiautomatic firearms.
Well, yes we do. Assault rifles, which are fully automatic military weapons are outlawed under the terms of the National Firearms Act, and further controls put in place by the Gun Control Act of ’68. That’s federal legislation, which Indiana is required to obey. Although you are correct that Indiana doesn’t restrict “military-style semiautomatic firearms”, primarily because those firearms are no more or less lethal than “non-military style semi-auto guns”, like about a zillion hunting rifles.
According to law enforcement officials, such firearms are the “weapon of choice” for drug traffickers, gangs and paramilitary extremist groups.
What law enforcement officials? You can’t just say something like that and then not back it up with actual facts or statistics, it doesn’t work that way. If you checked the ATF or the FBI’s crime stats, you’d see that semi-automatic rifles are rarely used in crime in the US.
Recognizing the dangers posed by assault weapons, Congress in 1994 passed the Federal Assault Weapons Act, which restricted the sale of assault weapons in the United States.
Well, not really. It only restricted “assault weapons” if they had certain cosmetic features; you could still buy perfectly legal AR-15s and AK47 clones and then not use them to commit crimes, which is what a lot of people did. All those guns legally bought during the ban, and no crimes.
Additionally, Indiana does not require universal background checks on gun sales. As a result, residents who purchase guns over the Internet or at gun shows are not subjected to any checks or verification.
I’d like to write this one off to ignorance, because I find it somewhat unlikely that the sheltered author has ever purchased a gun “off the internet” or from a gun show. Federal law mandates background checks on all purchasers of firearms through the NICS system. That means that if you buy a gun from a dealer, you have to get a background check, even if that dealer is at a gun show. He is required to run a background check on you by federal law.
Let’s talk for a second about buying guns on the internet. It seems that people are under the mistaken impression that you can buy a gun from gunbroker.com and having it shipped to your house. That’s illegal. Online firearms purchases still have to be vetted through someone with a Federal Firearms License, which means that you have to get a background check done.
This radical organization (the NRA – ed) has actively campaigned against any form of gun control, despite the fact that two-thirds of Americans support such efforts.
Which two-thirds of Americans would that be? Once again, you don’t just get to say stuff without providing sources, blogs don’t even do that.
The good people over at NRA deserve special recognition, though. They have been successful in framing gun-ownership as an individual right, even though the Constitution doesn’t explicitly state this.
Well, it does, actually. But then to you, the “people” referenced in the 2nd Amendment means collective rights, but the “people” in all the other amendments means an individual right.
I do have a confession guys, I really enjoyed this. I haven’t fisked an anti-gun editorial in a while, and this was double the fun since I not only got to fisk, but I got to pound on IU a little bit as well. If you were applying a motto to this post, it would have to be both Molon Labe and BOILER UP!
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