QOTD -- The Mythical AR-15

 

Washington Post writer Greg Sargent interviews former firearms executive Ryan Busse on the intersection between the AR-15 and right- wing conspiracists: 

Busse: Nothing conveys dominance and intimidation like a loaded AR-15. It was designed to be offensive in war. It was designed to take people’s lives.

Sargent: You’re positioning the cultural mania around the AR-15 as an aberration or a malignancy, relative to what surely are millions upon millions of gun owners who have a much healthier attitude toward their hobby.

Busse: It’s how people are using the rifle. It’s what the rifle has become.

I think the authoritarian forces in this country view the AR-15 as a central organizing symbol.

Sargent: You often see advocacy for the AR-15 from the same right wing influencers — Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump Jr., Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), etc. — who regularly traffic in versions of the “great replacement theory” or relentlessly fearmonger about leftist terrorism driving the country into civil collapse.

Why is it that those who traffic in apocalyptic fantasies about demographic doom also tend to treat the AR-15 as something with almost mythical symbolic importance?

Busse: The idea of civil war/race war with heavily-armed citizen-patriots as your warriors is hardly under the surface anymore.

I won’t go so far as to say they actually want people to die in a race war. It’s a political tool for them. They think they can use it to motivate — and make people angry and fearful and hateful.

"Motiviate" and intimidate, we'd say.  The entire interview is well worth a read.

 

It Wasn't Always Like This

Remember when this happened in 1994?

... a United States federal law [was enacted] that included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms it defined as assault weapons, as well as certain ammunition magazines it defined as "large capacity."

The ten-year ban was passed by the U.S. Congress on September 13, 1994, and signed into law by President Bill Clinton the same day. The ban only applied to weapons manufactured after the date of the ban's enactment, and it expired on September 13, 2004, in accordance with its sunset provision.

Several constitutional challenges were filed against provisions of the ban, but all were rejected by reviewing courts. There were multiple attempts to renew the ban, but none succeeded.

During the decade since the ban expired, Congress has become all the more beholden to/ afraid of the National Rifle Gun Manufacturers Association, perhaps the single most evil advocacy organization in the world.  The N.R.A.'s Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/ Shooter's Party has a lock on the House of Representatives that may last another generation.  So what are the odds even the most minimal, common sense legislation -- on background checks or limiting assault weapons or magazine capacity -- will emerge from Congress?

It's all the more frustrating and bittersweet knowing we had something reasonable and good, and it slipped away.