More "scary gun" BS

With the debate currently underway on strengthening the Massachusetts ban on certain (scary-looking) semiautomatic rifles, State Senator Jarrett T. Barrios has an op-ed piece in today's Boston Globe. Too much garbage to bother copying the entire text here, but here's the money quote:

Let's be clear. Semiautomatic assault weapons have no self-protection purpose. Unlike rifles and other recreational firearms, they have no sporting purpose. The constitutional right to own guns has never been found to extend to military-designed weapons of mass destruction.

Let's be clear. You are an ignoramus, Senator.

I'm not holding my breath waiting for the Globe to print my reply, but here it is. I had to get it down to close to 200 words from the original 500 or so it started as.

After reading Senator Barrios' op-ed piece on the proposed state “assault weapons” ban (Assault weapons must be banned - again, May 4, 2004), I have just one question. Would Senator Barrios have felt better if the victims of the Wakefield shooting had been shot with the shotgun or handgun Michael McDermott was carrying that day?

Senator Barrios is trying to differentiate between semiautomatic rifles that look scary and semiautomatic rifles that are used for hunting and sporting purposes. The fact is that the difference between the two is largely one of cosmetics, not of functionality. He is doing a great disservice to his constituency with this deliberate distortion of the truth, and by employing phrases such as "military-designed weapons of mass destruction". This ban has nothing to do with fully automatic machine guns, which he would very much like the uneducated public to believe.

We could engage in a "my statistics can beat up your statistics" debate, but the bottom line is: Criminals don't obey laws, it's part of their job description. To pretend that just a few more "common-sense" gun control laws could have prevented the shooting in Wakefield, or make us all immune to gun violence, is to dismiss logic and embrace ignorance.

UPDATE: Raging Dave has this post up from Sen. Barrios' counterpart at the Seattle Times...and nicely tears him a new one over it.