NRA Needs to Do Better Job Educating

The NRA needs to do a better job of educating pro-gun politicians and other pro-2A people that go on talk shows.

I watched the Sunday Morning This Week program which was a roundtable forum on gun control:

It was actually somewhat more balanced and less hysterical than other news programs on the issue. At one point, the conversation of course turned to "assault weapons" with George Will (who is awesome) correctly noting that the former AWB really didn't do anything to lessen violence and that these mass killings have occurred in Norway, Scotland, China and other places with very strict gun control laws. Joe Klein responded that Lanza specifically chose an assault rifle and semi-automatic pistols and left "deer rifles" behind and made the usual reference to hunters not needing assault weapons.. George Stephanopolous asked Jason Chefez, as Republican pro-2A congressman from Utah, whether there were any lines that should be drawn. That should be a soft-ball question, but Chefez gave some lame response to the effect that he is a ccw holder and owns a glock and made some vague reference to laws on the books. Very, very weak and the WRONG ANSWER. There is a very specific, informed, fact based answer to these types of questions concerning line drawing and assault weapons and the NRA needs to get this simple message out:

1. Yes we do draw a line as to which guns fall under the Second Amendment protection. The Supreme Court has told us where to draw that line: firearms in common use for lawful purposes, specifically and centrally self-defense, are protected by the 2A. The 2A is not about hunting (that needs to be repeated over, and over and over). People may not like that, and continue to make bs arguments about what "well regulated" and "milita" mean, but that is now IRRELEVANT to a policy debate.

2. It is pretty clear that howitzers, bazookas, machine guns, grenade launchers, etc. are not protected by the 2A. (Perhaps the NRA doesn't make this point because they don't want to make the admission, but from a tactical perspective they ought to acknowledge the legal reality.) Machine guns are already heavily regulated and effectively banned in most of the country and have never been used in a mass killing (at least since the Valentine's Day massacre). THAT is where the line can be and in fact has already been drawn.

3. Semi-automatic firearms, of which AR-15s are just one type, clearly fall under the 2A protection under both prongs of the test as described by the Supreme Court: they are in common usage and widely owned in the millions and have numerous lawful legitimate uses, including primarily self-defense. There is a reason virtually every law enforcement agency in the country has switched to semi-autos. They are more effective defensive tools than revolvers.

4. Finally, Ar-15s and other military "style" rifles are simply one subset of this class of 2A protected firearms. They are not any more or less dangerous than any other firearm and are put up as a boogey man target for feel good, expedient legislation that will do nothing to mitigate violence. And yes, people do "need them" and routinely use them for hunting, target shooting and self-defense. If Joe Klein or anyone else wants to ban all semi-autos, then come out and say that explicitly. Don't propose some meaningless ban of a class of semi-autos that in fact are rarely used in the commission of crime.

Those need to be the talking points that the NRA makes and that pro-2A politicians and spokespeople make consistently, and clearly.