Point-Counterpoint on SHARE

It’s a disappointment that we don’t have too many articles in the media anymore that are just chock full of good old fashioned disdain for shooters combined with an unbelievable ignorance of the hobby. As a citizen, that’s probably a good thing. But as a blogger, I weep. Dana Milbank in the WaPo last week has in spades what I’ve been missing.

It’s not the same with most stories. As Obama’s foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes once said “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.” That’s right there is what’s taken the fun out of it. Your average reporter spouting Bloomberg talking points is a nobody. And what fun is it going after a know-nothing nobody? But Dana Milbank is not a nobody.

Consider Title XV of the sportsmen’s bill, also known as the “Hearing Protection Act,” which makes it easier for gun owners to buy silencers for their weapons. The uninformed might suspect that silencers are used by people who want to fire weapons without being caught by cops or observed by witnesses. But more and more hunters are finding that conventional earplugs and muffs are not adequate for today’s weapons — for example, quail hunting with an M777 howitzer or grouse hunting with an FIM-92 Stinger missile launcher.

People who’ve never been around gunfire often do not really grasp how loud it is. I expect a 27 year old millennial with a journalism degree to be mostly clueless about the world. The reason going after people like Milbank is so much more fun is they are respected, but often times they don’t know any more than Ben Rhodes’ 27 year old ignoramus.

Chris Cox notes in the Daily Caller:

Milbank’s article, about a new piece of pro-sportsmen legislation, the SHARE Act, is littered with misleading and incorrect terminology to describe even the most basic firearms classifications, revealing how little he actually knows about guns.  His contempt for hunters, NRA members and gun owners in general is made clear through his condescending tone and misrepresentation of the facts.

Back to Milbank:

Among these recreational enhancements: […] Allowing people to bring assault guns and other weapons through jurisdictions where they are banned.

I think most everyone can agree that there’s no public good created by locking up generally law-abiding people in prison, ruining lives and families. I am particularly tuned to these concerns because I live in a gun friendly state that’s surrounded by states that are very hostile to shooters. I literally have the scour my car before I go into New Jersey because a single hollow nose .22 that’s escaped from my range bag can get me 5 years. I’ve had this happen.

Whether Dana Milbank wants to accept it or not, ownership of “assault weapons,” is very common outside of the jurisdictions that ban them. Even in those jurisdictions, in New Jersey, this is an assault weapon. There are still thousands, possibly tens of thousands of these in closets and safes throughout the Garden State, their owners completely unaware they are a heart attack and a 911 call away from possibly spending 5 to 10 years in New Jersey State Prison. This is not some fanciful hypothetical: it has happened.

People have been arrested and jailed for transporting ordinary firearms through New Jersey and New York. Again, not some fanciful hypothetical: it’s happened, multiple times to multiple people. We’re not talking gang members or drug dealers here. These are people much like Dana Milbank, but who happen to enjoy shooting, and are not trained lawyers who understand all the ins and outs of legally owning firearms in this country.

People like Milbank should explain why they think it’s a public good for good people to rot in prison and suffer felony raps for technical violations of laws that have very little effect on people who engaged in other criminal activity.