[The] gun lobby [has grown] more powerful and darker… The N.R.A. … has worked hard to leave the impression that the ideology of gun ownership has been constant, emphasizing a Second Amendment politics that flattens the distinction between the eighteenth century and the present, and marketing AR-15s as if they were made for hunting. [By] the time of Sandy Hook, the gun culture … was all new: the treatment of lobbyists as charismatic leaders, the black-rifle influencers, the military weapons in the stores, and the military imagery used to market them. [This is] the world that the N.R.A. built…
The allegations against [Wayne] LaPierre may weaken the N.R.A., but the tactical culture that consolidated under his watch appears more durable. The sort of people who, not long ago, [one] might have characterized as “couch commandos” are everywhere on the American right — in power, and also on the fringe. Kyle Rittenhouse, … at the age of seventeen, got an AR-15-style rifle from a friend and brought it to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he killed two men and wounded another … Representative Lauren Boebert, a Republican from Colorado, … owns a gun-themed restaurant in Rifle, Colorado; supported the storming of the Capitol; and has posed frequently with AR-15-style rifles.
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Adam Lanza was twenty.
November 17th, 2021 at 1:58PM
There’s a Milwaukee radio talker right now hosting a conversation on the Wisconsin law. If the point of the Wisconsin law is to protect deer hunting, there are ways to rewrite it to require that long guns be properly cased and transported to the shooting range or deer stand, and that openly carrying them in settled areas is illegal. He’s even suggesting that legislators of all parties could work something like that out!
Deer season begins in Wisconsin this weekend. I predict there will be more collateral damage from firearm use in Chicago than in the North Woods.
November 17th, 2021 at 2:53PM
Stephen: No question on carnage coming from Chicago vs. Wisconsin, of course; but I still find it amazing that ‘Wisconsin law did not bar [17 year old] Mr. Rittenhouse from carrying the military-style semiautomatic rifle.’
I really have to work on not finding amazing the things that states like Wisconsin do.
Indeed if this goes to the statehouse for consideration, I need to prepare for the legislature to lower the acceptable age to eleven, and to remove any and all restrictions on the type of gun permitted for use/carry/display. And to declare Kyle Rittenhouse person of the year.
November 17th, 2021 at 6:20PM
Not a good strategy, UD. The radio talker was having a serious discussion about modifying the legislation to make it more clear that 16 and 17 year olds could own long guns for hunting, but that such guns had to be properly secured and broken down everywhere but at the target range or in the field.
It might do correspondents at the Times to actually spend some time in the field or visiting a target range. “Military style” is a content-free virtue signal. As I understand it, the AR 15 and the like have some value for shooting game, including deer and wolves, although you wouldn’t want to tackle a bear with it.
Might also be wise for people who spout off about “reimagining” law enforcement to understand that people with far less range safety awareness than Kyle Rittenhouse are likely to be the consequence.
November 17th, 2021 at 6:53PM
Oh, I have even less time for people who talk about reimagining law enforcement.