President* Biden has declared that he is ‘going to try to get rid of assault weapons.’
Of course, there isn’t really any such thing as an ‘assault weapon.’ There are assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons, but the term assault weapon doesn’t really mean anything other than a weapon that certain people find frightening for reasons they can’t clearly articulate.
But what he really means is that he wants to get rid of semi-automatic weapons. You know, the ones that — like revolvers — fire one shot with each pull of the trigger.
These have, he says, ‘no socially redeeming value.’
In which case, the police should be the first to stop carrying them, right?
Because the police use them in the same way as nearly everyone else: If you point a gun at someone who is doing something bad, he’ll either stop, or you can make him stop.
That is, a firearm of any kind is a Virtue Compelling Device. Or, to use a simpler term, a Crime Extinguisher.
If that’s not a socially redeeming value, what is?
A common topic for articles in gun-related magazines is that one of the best ways for a citizen who is involved in a self-defense shooting to avoid being demonized by the prosecution is to carry the same equipment — the same kind of firearm, loaded with the same kind of ammunition — that is used by his local police department. In most jurisdictions, that means a semi-automatic pistol loaded with hollow-point rounds.
When the police (and the Secret Service) announce that they’re giving up semi-automatic (and automatic) firearms, then you’ll know that the left actually believes its own rhetoric. Until then, it’s clearly just a smoke screen for yet another power grab.