By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
What many in the Second Amendment community have been predicting for decades has finally happened.
The U.S. edition of the British Daily Mail has called a scoped, bolt-action rifle—in this case the .30-06-caliber hunting rifle allegedly used to assassinate conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10 in Utah—a “high-powered sniper rifle.” Grassroots gun rights activists have expected this to eventually happen in the event someone used a commonly-owned bolt-action rifle with a telescopic sight to commit a high-profile attack.
In the Kirk murder, the suspected firearm is a sporting rifle built around the proven Mauser ’98 action. There have been indications the rifle belonged to the suspect’s grandfather.
Here’s what Daily Mail U.S. political reporter Phillip Nieto wrote about the rifle: “Kirk was shot in the throat by a high-powered sniper rifle while speaking to college students at Utah Valley University on September 10. Tyler Robinson, 22, was charged with the murder and now faces the death penalty if found guilty.”
Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, was quick to react to the Daily Mail report.
“The media couldn’t blame Kirk’s murder on a so-called ‘assault rifle,’ so they’re doing the next worst thing,” he said. “They’ve slapped a defamatory label on commonly-owned hunting rifles, hoping to make them the new bogeyman for the gun ban lobby. The Daily Mail has pulled a page out of the gun control playbook simply for the purpose of sensationalism. It doesn’t pass the smell test.”
Millions of American hunters own bolt-action rifles fitted with scopes. This time of year—fall hunting season—such rifles will be common sights at virtually every deer and elk hunting camp in the West, Upper Midwest and Northeast.
“Contrary to how the Daily Mail reporter described the terrible assassination of Charlie Kirk,” Gottlieb observed, “the rifle didn’t pull its own trigger, so it didn’t kill anyone. Only the individual who misused that rifle is responsible, but that has never made any difference before to the anti-gun media.”
Perhaps compounding the problem, ten days after the Kirk assassination, another killer opened fire on an ICE facility in Dallas, Texas. That suspect apparently also used a bolt-action Mauser chambered for the 8mm Mauser cartridge, according to the New York Post. In that attack, the shooter took his own life.
