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I spent some time in Australia in the company of some extremely gregarious Sheilas. Perth was like the best bits of California without the Californians. But I wouldn’t live there on a bet. The country founded by English convicts—people with a profound grudge against tyrannical government—has regressed into a proto-police state. As always, civilian disarmament is the slippery slope down which the citizens’ natural and civil rights are sliding. Key to this de-evolution (are we not men?): demonizing guns. And the easiest way to do that is to point to the U.S. and say “You don’t want to become like that, do ya mate?” More specifically this from news.com.au: “It’s designed as a military killing machine and instead it’s doing its job slaughtering the innocent in shopping malls, schools and cinemas across America.” Anthropomorphize much? It gets better/worse . . .

The gun that’s killing America is a lightweight, easy to handle assault rifle that has become a lethal weapon in the hands of losers, misfits and people with a grudge.

Gun enthusiasts call it the “iPhone” of gun shops.

I think they means “iPhone of guns.” (It’s hard to write clearly when your hair’s on fire.) Besides, we all know the AR-15 is the Barbie of guns. Back to the Reefer Madness of firearms-related reportage.

From the Sandy Hook school massacre, to the Dark Knight Cinema slayings and now the Los Angeles Airport shootings last weekend, the AR-15 is the firearm of choice for people who want to wreak maximum havoc . . .

“Designed specifically for lightweight mobility, speed of target acquisition, and potent firepower capability – the Colt Law Enforcement Carbine delivers,” Colt advertises on its website. “This specially designed law enforcement weapon system features many of the combat proven advantages of the military Colt M4.”

Its popularity has spawned dozens of YouTube videos on how to choose your AR-15, how to fire it, and with demonstrations of young women in short shorts giggling and loosing off round after round in target practice.

The fully automatic version can fire up to 800 rounds per minute, and instructive videos explain how to “bump fire”, or repeat fire, a semiautomatic version to give the spray effect.

Far from discouraging Americans, the Sandy Hook massacre saw in its wake an escalation of sales with AR-15s “flying off the shelves” of gun shops.

Around 47 per cent of Americans own firearms, and they bought weapons in record numbers in 2012.

Here’s how the AR-15 is killing Americans:

The rest of the article is a potted history of recent spree killers wielding AR-15s. About the only good thing that can be said about this AR-15 hit piece: the accompanying video shows a wonderful clip (not magazine) of Erica (of Corey and Erica YouTube fame) shooting an AR. The really scary part: this article is not a million miles away from America’s mainstream coverage of the AR-15. There but for the grace of the Second Amendment, and your vigilance, go we. Or something like that. [h/t JA]

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61 COMMENTS

  1. I keep hearing this wild west, shoot outs in every street at the drop of every hat stuff from all the supposed smart people. Pass a concealed carry law, bullets will black out the sky. Pass castle doctrine, all mail men will be shot dead on every other porch (especially if you Joe Biden carrier). Don’t pass a ban on AR15, every city will look like the Mexican drug wars (whoops, sorry Eric). All these promises and I have yet to be grazed by a bullet.

    But hey, I was also told “if you like your health insurance plan, you can keep your health insurance plan. Period.”

  3. Aw damnit, Australia seemed like a pretty cool place until you guys mentioned this…maybe New Zealand?

    • If New Zealand had the RKBA in their Constitution, I’d flee the US for New Zealand so fast Obama wouldn’t even have time to raise my taxes again.

    • Roll,

      Australia is lost and New zealand is not far behind, stay here in the US and fight, take this from a Kiwi who was able to flee both Australia and NZ and now can proudly call himself an American.

      • Didnt New Zealand defund and cancel their gun registration, yeah they did, so not all is lost!

        About 230,000 licensed firearms owners own and use New Zealand’s estimated 1.1 million firearms.[1] Like in Australia, but unlike in the US and Canada, gun laws usually gain the support of both major parties before they are passed. Guns are not currently a major political issue, but have been immediately after the Aramoana massacre in 1990, and the Scottish Dunblane and Australian Port Arthur massacres in 1996.
        Various governments, groups behind the Thorp report, and the New Zealand Police[2] have pushed for various forms of universal firearm registration. This has currently not succeeded but current manoeuvrings by the New Zealand Police are attempting to reclassify large numbers of ‘A’ category firearms as ‘E’ category (MSSA), which requires them to be registered. This has been done though even by their own admission[3] the New Zealand Police cannot reliably register the current MSSA firearms.
        In March 2009 the New Zealand police bid to reclassify certain types of civilian semi-automatic firearms was overturned by the New Zealand High Court as a result of a legal challenge mounted by the New Zealand National Shooters Association (NSA) president Richard Lincoln.

    • Well, New Zeland did abolish a long gun registry at some point, so there’s a brownie point for that place.

      • And Kiwis make some great beer. Not that they ever export it. Extra Strength Double Brown. Like their old add says, “DB for me every time” “Double or nothing, mate”

  4. Gee you don’t think it has something to do with it being the most popular rifle in America? You’ll notice more Toyota Camry’s are used in drunk driving incidents than Tesla roadsters. And ALL civilian rifles are derived from their military counterparts.

  5. NZ is only slightly better, still a socialist government with an island mentality. Anytime a government has total control over all land without variety of leadership you get this result.
    At least in the US we have 4 time zones and 50 different state governments so it’s a bit harder to lock it all down.
    In AU Queensland has a reputation for giving the federals the finger. Not that they are truly free, they just ignored NSW calls for gun surrender.

  6. Spree killings are like plane crashes and induce the same illogical phobias. Air travel is significantly safer than car travel by orders of magnitude, just as your chance of being a spree killing victim is negligible. However, people are still afraid of flying because when a 747 goes down everyone dies and it’s on the news for weeks. Same thing in a spree killing, high body count and big news cycle. The AR for several good reasons is the choice of spree killers, and therefore it invokes the same phobia as climbing aboard that commercial jet. It doesn’t matter that you are about a thousand times more likely to die in your car than in a commercial jetliner, or that you are far more likely to be stabbed or beaten to death than shot by an AR, and when it comes to gun homicide your likelihood of being killed by a handgun is over 1,000X that of being shot by an AR. It doesn’t matter, the emotions are everything.

    • Don’t ask the grabbers to do math. Remember they’re the ones who came up with common core.

      It doesn’t matter if they get the answer right as long as it makes them happy.

  7. Its a numbers game. The AR platform is probably the most popular rifle sold these days. It like saying honda civics should be banned because more people wreck them than any other vehicle.

    The antis lack the brainpower to see through the numbers and realize that its not the specific rifle that is the issue, its the idiot behind the trigger. If that idiot is intent on killing, they will do so with any gun they can get their hands on, or a knife, sword, ball peen hammer etc.

  8. Here’s what we need to do.

    The gun manufacturers need to make a gun that works exactly like the AR, has a slightly different silhouette, comes in pretty colors and is called the “Fluffy Bunny.”

    Then, abominable Aussies, belligerent Brits, foreign farts and fatuous Feinstein (I’m going for alliteration here) will pound the table about “The Fluffy Bunny — The Gun That’s Killing America,” and we will have a good laugh.

    Okay, I meant another good laugh.

    • “MY GOD! THEY’RE MARKETING GUNS TO CHILDREN NOW! WE REGULATED THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY’S ADS, LET’S REGULATE THE GUN INDUSTRY’S!”

    • Mindful of the Rabbit of Caerbannog, the MSM will be calling it an Assault Fluffy in no time. It sounds vaguely obscene, but in the contemporary press that’s a plus. There was a notorious Lower Manhattan gang called the Dead Bunnies, so I can see Guns & Ammo macho-ing up their Fluffy Bunny review to boost sales… right before they decide owning one should require a two-month Fluffy Bunny course just to make sure we’re well regulated.

  9. The anti’s understand exactly what they are doing. They go after the popular firearms first to reducing the shooting population.

    The FUDD’s with their deer rifles don’t add much to the popularity of shooting or the cause. They just exist. Lots of young people playing video games, buying cool looking military rifles, shooting them, and getting involved is the future of 2A in the US. Take that away and its only a matter of time.

    This is why state specific bans are so dangerous, CT for example my state is done. Put a fork in us. No new people are going to get into shooting really now, to hard, to many permits, to few ranges, and you can’t buy anything cool.

    • There needs to be a Ku Klux Klan for liberals. KKK ought to forget about blacks and other minorities. It’s liberals who are the danger, and who are destroying everything.

  10. All these lefties are so hot and heavy about the AR, they blog about, they legislate (and lose) about it, dream about confiscation, climb over dead bodies to scream about it, but honestly what are they going to do about it? They don’t have the b@lls to do anything about it, quit pussy-footing about and come get them if you want them so bad, we’ll see who wins.

    • “…quit pussy-footing about and come get them if you want them so bad, we’ll see who wins.”

      I really don’t feel like you’re helping.

      • I don’t think he was trying to be helpful. TTAG doesn’t have “helpful” in it, or it would The Helpful Truth About Guns.

  11. I understand why AU and NZ do not need guns in their countires. They do not have illegal-Mexican-Cartel-War-On-Drugs-Etc violence like we do. They do not have general gang vilence like we do. They do not have poverty issues like we do. They do not have… You know what? No, I am not going to rationalize this. FU AU & NZ.

  13. So the term “AR-15” is the equivalent in definition to the word “automobile” in its respective category. There are many makes, and models, from different manufacturers. All of these have similar features, but personal preferences dictate the exact nature, color, and options that get included on them. And yes, they are involved in a lot of death. But once again, no one is proclaiming the “Automobile” as the transportation choice that is killing America.

    For God’s Sake! the Founders never envisioned horseless carriages that can travel over 20 MPH!

    …SHATTTTAPPP!

    Fuck these people! …and fuck their obtuse, highly biased, incoherent, fallacy laden, little brains.

  14. I’ll continue my broken-record impression:

    Bump/slide-fire stocks are the worst idea EVER when it comes to public perception of gun owners.

    These devices are a workaround to get past the de facto ban on private ownership of full-auto firearms, plain and simple. They don’t pass the “say that with a straight face” test, and frankly, I wish these devices were ruled illegal.

    Why? Because then the focus would be on things that actually matter, like litigating against the 2A infringing laws passed in 1934, 1968, and 1986. THAT would be something worth spending money on.

    {/rant}

  15. If you want a good idea of what gun control laws are like in NZ, check out Kiwi Ted Ferny on youtube. He has a nice collection of firearms and war memorabilia.

  17. I wish the people would stop saying things like “The fully automatic version can fire up to 800 rounds per minute…” It would give a much better perspective of what the firearm is capable of if they said “The fully automatic version can fire an entire 30 round magazine dry in as little as 2-1/4 seconds.”

    I’d also like to hear where you can score one of these “fully automatic versions” without a tin star pinned to your booby.

  18. Even Australian firearm owners pity the firearm owners in Western Australia, as that state has the strictest and most draconian firearm laws of the entire country.

    Here are some articles which demonstrate how bad it is in WA:

    http://www.sportingshootermag.com.au/news/rick-mazza-takes-on-wa-bureaucrats-in-parliament

    http://www.sportingshootermag.com.au/news/call-for-hunting-on-wa-public-land

    In New South Wales there have been calls for a review of the firearms registry which is long overdue as copies of the database were spread throughout the police service and some copies have ended up in the hands of criminals who are using the data for targeted thefts.

    http://www.sportingshootermag.com.au/news/firearms-registry-review-welcomed

    You have to remember that the media in Australia is very anti-gun, moreso than anything you would see or believe stateside. So with regard to firearms, anything in the media is not taken with a grain of salt, but instead with a large measure of grain alcohol.

  19. Following the shooting, President Obama held a press conference.
    After Sandy Hook, the president had said: “Our tears are not enough … our words and our prayers are not enough. … We are going to have to change.
    “We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.”

    I can only conclude, after reading the news.com.au article, that the writer’s job is disappearing and he’s trying out for a slot on MSNBC. Only that could explain the willful failure to point out that Obama’s home town does a Sandy Hook Massacre every month, year in and year out, with cheap non-AR guns. No, we don’t have to change. Chicago has to change. But they won’t, and Obama can’t make them, cause it ain’t as easy as just passing a law to get the lawless to reform. We noticed. That’s one reason why we own (and train ourselves to use) effective tools for self-defense.

  20. The pussification of Ausralia was shocking. When the government called for the guns and they just piled them up, I couldn’t believe it.

    • They did use the threat of heavy fines and lengthy imprisonment, backed with fairly generous buyback rates. And where could you use the self-loading rifles? Any range would tell you to pack up and go home, at the very least. Remote country properties are an option but sound does travel a long way, so someone will find out eventually.

      I know the police are checking YouTube for firearms videos from Australian locations. I’ve heard of an ex-pat living in the USA in a gun friendly state posts his videos as from “Cobar” or “Mudgee” just to rankle the cops. He says he gets lots of queries about where he is shooting and can they have a go too.

      Caught between a rock and a hard-place, firearm owners were left with little choice.

    • Actually there was a reason.tv article about the Australia gun buyback and they sourced an article from the SSAS, which is sort of like the Australia gun group, and they found out that the vast majority of firearms were not turned in. It was about 600,000 firearms that were turned in, but the problem is that based on import data, there were a lot more of those firearms than were turned in. About 1.2 million ruger 10/22 rifles were estimated to be in the country, along with 800,000 SKS rifles, and that’s just two guns, there are still numerous semiauto guns that were not turned in and are collecting dust somewhere.

      • I think you are referring to the SSAA (Sporting Shooters Association of Australia). But it is known not all self-loading rifles were handed in. Some did end up in New Zealand, but that loophole has been closed for number of years.

        At the time of the buyback there was a shortage of plumbing supplies, notably short lengths of PVC piping and end-caps. I’ve heard of stories of firearms and ammunition being buried, but unless done properly you will only end up with rusty rubbish when recovered.

  22. U can have my guns when the last bullet is fired. Not sure how long it would take to get through 8k rounds

  23. The first lesson is that when they come for the rifles that are useful to a militia at war, form a militia and fight then.

    The second lesson is that if you would keep anything but military rifles, when they come for those rifles, join a militia and fight to keep them or next they will be along for yours and you’ll be short of both friends and rifles.

    The last lesson is that civilian disarmament, in the absence of internal or external threats to liberty, still results in massive increases in crime. If all you wish to do is stay alive and not be robbed and beaten in your own home by criminals then you must join a militia when they come for the rifles suited to military purpose (see above).

  24. What kind of spineless sissybitch would turn their guns in? Bullets first. I would make my city burn when night fell. Asymmetrical horror from the shadows.

  25. “spray effect” are you shitting me? Take these antis shooting to change their minds, or at least so they have an understanding of how these guns actually work. “Spray and pray” only applies to spraying disinfectant after going bareback (riding dirty), and is usually just as effective.

    I’d recommend a “take an anti shooting day” but there would follow several questions of whether we’re taking them to shoot or to shoot AT.

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