Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Lautenberg Misfires

The DSCC is running a new ad in favor of Lautenberg, in which they attack Forrester’s position on gun control. After mentioning that 51 New Jersey children die every year from gun violence, the ad offers the following:

"Forrester actually said ’It isn’t any of my business whether my neighbor likes to shoot semi-automatic weapons or not.’Really? tell Doug Forrester his opposition to sensible gun laws is dangerous for New Jersey"

This statement seems to play on the common confusion among Americans between what is a semi-automatic and what is an automatic weapon. Of course, a semi-automatic is just a gun with a clip which can only fire one bullet per pull of the trigger. While such guns ordinarily can hold more bullets than a revolver, they are similar in the rate of fire (once again, one bullet per trigger pull). Automatic weapons, by contrast, are capable of firing multiple bullets per pull of the trigger, and, this is the important part, have been illegal since the 30s.

When taken in perspective, Forrester’s comment is not terribly remarkable--semi-automatics are perfectly legal. What is more remarkable is that the DSCC seems to think that it should be politicians’ business whether Americans own legal weapons.

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