By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
The New Year’s Day headline in The Guardian shows nothing has changed as the establishment media continues to utilize the gun prohibition lobby’s vocabulary, referring to new gun control laws taking effect as “gun safety” measures.
It is what some in the firearms community have come to nickname “camo speak,” disguise what is really going on to make it seem more acceptable.
As detailed by The Guardian, new laws taking effect Jan. 1 include:
Washington State’s new 10-day waiting period on all firearm sales. The new law requires gun owners to show proof they have completed a gun safety course sometime during the past five years. A gun shop in Vancouver has been offering a user-friendly online course, and recently reported lots of activity. Expect a lawsuit.
California has a new law prohibiting legal concealed carry in many places, including playgrounds and parks, banks, places of worship and zoos. The law is already being challenged in court.
The ban on so-called “assault weapons” became effective in Illinois. The ban also covers ammunition magazines capable of holding more than ten cartridges.
As an aside, Illinois gun owners do not appear to have been in a cooperative mood regarding Monday’s deadline for registering so-called “assault weapons.” According to CBS News, “As of last week, only 15,000 people completed the disclosures, according to Illinois State Police. There are nearly 2.5 million firearm owner’s IDs in the state.”
A new Colorado law bans so-called “ghost guns”—firearms which may be assembled by home gunsmiths using kits which do not put serial numbers on the parts—and the law is already being challenged.
These laws are not about “safety,” critics argue, but about “control.” Early Tuesday morning, a Seattle talk host criticized Washington’s law, asserting there is no evidence that a 10-day “cooling off” period has been useful in reducing violent crime.
The number 10 seems to be popular among gun control proponents. It’s the same number essentially picked out of the air as the maximum allowable magazine capacity for rifles and pistols in many of the gun control laws proposed, or enacted, around the country.
Also found in The Guardian report is the repeated use of the term “gun violence.” It is a term allegedly manufactured by the gun prohibition lobby to demonize guns, shifting responsibility away from criminals and onto the firearm. There is no similar demonization of knives, blunt instruments or hands and feet. One never reads or hears about “knife violence” amid increasing reports of stabbings, both fatal and non-fatal.
Contrasting The Guardian’s story, Newsweek—while still referring to “gun violence”—calls these laws what they are: gun control.
The Newsweek story also resurrected the long-refuted description of a modern semi-automatic rifle as “high-powered,” when ballistically, more popular deer and elk hunting cartridges are far more powerful than the 5.56mm/.223 Remington round for which typical AR-type rifles are chambered.
