OPINION:
I expect better of The Washington Times than to blindly repeat the liberal myth that stores are selling “assault weapons” (“Outdoors stores quietly continue to sell assault weapons,” Web, March 13). Military select-fire assault weapons such as the M16, and M4 are by definition capable of firing “fully automatic” (i.e., emptying the entire clip with one press of the trigger). Virtually no gun stores sell these; the few “Class III” dealers who are allowed to do so require a special federal license and a personal recommendation from the local chief of police.
The rifles sold by the outdoor stores named in the article (and almost all local gun shops) are just semi-automatic rifles, such as the AR15. While externally these resemble military rifles, they only fire one bullet per trigger press. “Bump stocks,” etc., are just mechanical devices that permit pressing the trigger many times per minute. I agree these should be illegal because indiscriminate/uncontrolled firing is never justified.
But to call legal, semi-automatic rifles “assault rifles” is at best profoundly ignorant, and at worst — in the case of most liberal media — a classic “big lie.”
WILLIAM D. BRICKENSTEIN
Spring Valley, Tenn.
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