I recall a Michael McIntosh column in SS or Sporting Classics perhaps 20 years ago that offered up the graceless "ugly machinery" of semi-auto so-call assault rifles as a reasonable restriction to appease the gun contollers, but shined a halo of protective light around users of graceful sporting guns. It was corrosive reasoning.
Larry has it right. Images of scruffy-looking men bearing purely utilitarian weapons are used to push on-the-fence voters to the other side, and I cringe at some of the vulgar name-calling directed at Zumbo (elsewhere) that likewise will be used to persuade voters that gun-bearing folks are a threat to peaceful community. But selling off one another's rights based on differences in taste is hypocritical and the more distasteful. Divide and conquer tactics have eroded firearms freedom elsewhere, and will eventually erode ours too. Either way it comes down to losing at the ballot box, but we lose the most when petty differences undermine the power we have standing together as a "diverse" group with at least one common core value.
Last edited by Gunflint Charlie; 02/23/07 09:39 PM.
