Joe Doakes from Como Park emails
Here’s the photo and the caption from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, March 6, 2013.
Rob Doar with the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance holds up a Ruger 10/22 Assault Rifle as a visual aid on day two of hearings on proposed new gun laws the House Public Safety Committee in the State Office Building in St. Paul, Minn., on Tuesday, February 5, 2013. He was arguing that the proposed law would make certain versions of gun illegal depending on what he called ‘cosmetic changes’. (Pioneer Press: Ben Garvin)
Read that again: “Ruger 10/22 Assault Rifle.” You realize it shoots ordinary .22’s, right? Yes, it has all the bells and whistles to look like a heavy-duty killing machine, but it’s still just a .22. And it’s semi-auto, meaning one-shot-per-trigger-pull. A true “assault rifle” is a machine gun: hold the trigger and it shoots until empty. This isn’t one of them. This is a baby wannabe. It’s good for shooting at tin cans but not much else.
It’s like the Asian guys who put mag wheels, spoilers and loud mufflers on their Honda Civics. Looks cool, yes; but it’s never going to win NASCAR. That tricked-out Honda is not a muscle car and this tricked-out .22 is not an assault rifle.
The fact the reporter believes this plinker needs to be as heavily regulated as the M-16’s that Marines carry in Afghanistan tells you all you need to know about the Media. The fact Democrats on the committee agree with him, that’s the really scary part.
They keep telling us there is no Liberal Bias in the Legacy Media. Ignorance, maybe. Stupidity, possibly. But definitely not Liberal Bias. It’s stuff like this keeps me from believing them.
Joe Doakes
Como Park
Joe is right, of course.
The hard part is turning low-information news consumers into informed voters. It’s also the mandatory part.
We condemn the low-wattage voter here, but you have to have some sympathies for them. It’s not that they don’t love our republic, it’s that they’re so busy with the constructs of hip-ness. In their minds, genuine patriotism begins, first, with a well-regulated photo-shoot. It’s not important what you stand for. What’s important is who you schtup.
I made this exact same point on Facebook and was told I was a gun lover neanderthal by some people who quite obviously had no idea, or inclination to learn, just how wimpy an ordinary .22 is. You need a 30 round magazine just to shoot out the eyes. OK, that’s an exaggeration, but still. . .
“Legacy Media” – Don’t watch or read them and they’ll dry out and die like a pulled noxious weed.
But 38 grains is almost 55, and 1200fps is almost 3400fps, so the .22LR has a full 8% of the impact energy of the truly deadly .223 round fired by our troops, and a full 5% of the impact energy of a round from a .308 or 30.06.
At least until you count air resistance and the slowing of the bullet. Liberal; ancient Latin word for “person who understands no physics.”
That the MSM in general and those who reported on this so-called 10/22 assault rifle are clueless (or lying) is given. Completely agree. But in “a situation”, while there are lots of weapon types I might prefer to have, I’ll take a 10/22 loaded with 10 hollow-points. The idea that it’s almost harmless (“It’s good for shooting at tin cans but not much else.”) is to go from one exaggeration to another.
What jdm said. A 10/22 is not an “assault rifle”. A 22 is not the first thing you would reach for as a defensive weapon. But anyone who thinks a 22 isn’t or can’t be lethal is welcome to volunteer to be shot by one.
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Perhaps they could check with Mark Kelley, Gabby Giffords’ husband. According to a recent Breitbart story, it was learned that Kelley recently bought an AR15 type rifle and 1911 style pistol. According to Kelly, after being asked, he was going to turn the AR15 over to the police.
Kelley’s story sounds more like an alibi than a logical explanation for the purchase. Hopefully there will be more to come of this. Perhaps Snopes will weigh-in. Time will tell …