The Kerry campaign seems to get off on calling people “liars”. Witness their response to the accusation that Kerry would have banned the shotgun he used in his recent photo-op:
FACTS SHOW ANOTHER REPUBLICAN LIE
Charleston, WV-John Kerry West Virginia Communications Director Amy Goodwin made the following statement today in response to misleading claims made by the West Virginia Republican Party and Bush campaign.
“Let’s do some straight shooting on the gun issue. John Kerry’s opponents are worried because he’s the first Democratic candidate to support Second Amendment gun rights and to be an avid hunter.
“The facts are clear. John Kerry opposes banning this gun and always will. John Kerry was proud to receive this union-made gun at the United Mine Workers Labor Day picnic in Racine, West Virginia.
“The Republican Party and George Bush’s campaign will stop at nothing to mislead voters about John Kerry’s record. We challenge Bush to engage in honest debates–West Virginians deserve to hear the truth.”
Well, Dave Kopel of National Review actually looked at the bill that Kerry sponsored and found this:
S. 1431, co-sponsored by Sen. John Kerry, says that an “assault weapon” is any semi-automatic rifle or shotgun with a “pistol grip.” According to the bill, “(42) PISTOL GRIP- The term ‘pistol grip’ means a grip, a thumbhole stock, or any other characteristic that can function as a grip.” Kerry’s new semi-automatic gun has a protrusion below the stock, which a person could grip. The protrusion is not a “pistol grip” in the ordinary meaning of the term, but it is a “pistol grip” as defined by S. 1431.
Indeed, the Remington 1187 is indeed a semi-automatic shotgun, and indeed it has a grip. Under the terms of S. 1431, it would be an “assault weapon” and therefore banned.
So, while the Kerry campaign is accusing Republicans of being liars, they’re completely ignoring the very real truth that the gun Kerry recieved would be banned, and the NRA is correct in pointing this out.
Furthermore, Kerry has an atrocious record on gun rights, beyond just S. 1431.
Kerry is not only himself lying about his own record, but engaging in smears that 30 seconds of research can see right past? Does John Kerry think sportsmen are dumb enough to swallow this load of crap?
Kerry’s strategy seems to be to throw up enough lies and hope some of it works with enough people.
He has the gall to call himself a supporter of Second Amendment gun rights when the NRA calls him “the most anti-gun Presidential nominee in United States history.”
Again, Kerry just seems to think people will swallow anything from him…and if the media were doing their job, Kerry would have been exposed for the fraud he is long ago.
The most anti-gun presidential nominee in U.S. history? Based on what? Voting for assault weapons bans that were supported by the last several Democratic presidential nominees?
Is the NRA really reduced to this sort of hyperbole in a desperate attempt to keep working-class gun owners voting against their own financial interest?
It would help if you’d actually read the links. The NRA has a very, very long list of steps Kerry has taken to harm the Second Amendment.
The facts don’t lie. Under the language of S. 1431, the gun Kerry himself was given would be banned as an assault weapon. The language of that bill was impermissibly vague, and if Kerry’s rhetoric about being a supporter of the Second Amendment and a gun afficianado he would have known better than to support such a vague statute that would put millions of hunting rifles and shotguns in the same class as assault weapons.
I didn’t even realize there was a link.
It’s kind of entertaining how the NRA leadership equates the enactment of a waiting period to purchase hand guns as an infringement of the 2nd Amendment, and thus notable enough to discredit Kerry as “the most anti-gun candidate ever.”
I’ve never been a big supporter of gun control, due to my libertarian leanings on such issues more than personal interest in gun ownership, but concede that the urbanization of America will ultimately produce a less gun-friendly society than the one we currently live in. Combine this with the government’s uneasiness about a ready supply of firearms in the hands of angry peasants losing their jobs to outsourcing, losing their sons and daughters to “pre-emptive wars” and losing their wives to diseases brought on by inability to pay for medical care in light of our imploding health insurance system and the millions of new people left off the rolls each year, and it’s not hard to envision a scenario where the gov’t deems a “well-regulated militia” should in fact be limited to the National Guard instead of vigilante posses. Bottom line–we’re one modest-sized uprising away from sweeping anti-gun laws regardless of who’s in power.
It’s interesting that Mark takes one item and then distorts that as the only reason the NRA rates Kerry “the anti-gun presidential nominee in U.S. history.”
Read the long laundry list of items, Mark, and you’ll see why the NRA came to that conclusion. The NRA ought to know…they have no other agenda than gun rights.
Also, Mark, the rest of your argument is really Marxist class warfare, and a little disturbing. Basically, you buy into the Marxist concepts of class warfare, a large underclass, and the coming proletariat revolution. That’s scary, dude.