This feature appears in the July ‘17 issue of NRA America’s 1st Freedom, one of the official journals of the National Rifle Association.
In case you haven’t noticed, gun ban advocates have their own code, using words in different ways than they were meant to be used in order to suit their purposes. For Second Amendment advocates, recognizing those words and phrases—and knowing what they really mean—is an important step in the battle to stop those who would kill the right to keep and bear arms.
While the list is long, here are five to know and recognize.
Gun Violence — Fact is, there is really no such thing. Anti-gun advocates like to lump any kind of misuse of a firearm—including suicides and accidents—under this term in order to make it sound like guns are inherently bad and people should not own them. They even call self-defense shootings “gun violence.” The term “criminal violence” better encompasses what they are describing, but gun-haters seldom blame anything on criminals when guns are such an easy scapegoat.
A high-capacity magazine to gun-banners is simply a magazine that holds more ammunition than they think you should be able to have.Loopholes — Antis like to talk about the “gun show loophole” or “private sales loophole.” In reality, they are referring to legal commerce in firearms that they haven’t been able to outlaw yet. The laws regulating gun sales are the exact same at gun shows as they are anywhere else. And the private transfer of firearms has been legal since the founding of our country.
High-Capacity Magazines — A high-capacity magazine to gun-banners is simply a magazine that holds more ammunition than they think you should be able to have. For AR-15s, a 30-round magazine is the standard capacity. If, in fact, a 10-round magazine were standard for that platform, gun haters would no doubt push for limiting magazines to five rounds.
Weak Gun Laws — Also sometimes referred to as “easy access to guns,” this is another code phrase for, “We haven’t been able to outlaw everything we want yet.” In a May op-ed, Slate.com blamed the San Bernardino, Calif., and Orlando, Fla., terror attacks on weak gun laws and easy access to guns. In truth, California has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country, and the killer in Orlando underwent a background check and even a waiting period to purchase his firearms.
Gun Safety Groups — This is one of the media’s favorite misdirections, referring to those who advocate for more restrictive gun laws as “gun safety groups.” Gun-ban billionaire Michael Bloomberg even named one of his anti-gun organizations Everytown For Gun Safety. In truth, these groups don’t really care about gun safety, and they don’t train anyone to be safer around firearms. They have simply co-opted the term since they know putting the words “ban” or “control” in their names reveals their true purpose. Remember how the Brady Campaign was once named Handgun Control Inc.? America’s true gun safety group is the National Rifle Association, and it has been for more than a century.Mark Chesnut has been the editor of America’s 1st Freedom magazine for 17 years and is an avid hunter, shooter and political observer.
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