Salon:

But while the ostensible pitch is self-defense, it’s also hard to escape the sense that they (sic) marketing pitch is building on the fact that the nation just got a full eyeball of what the AR-15 is capable of doing: Mowing down dozens of people in the space of minutes.

After all, they know full well that their customer base is people like Stokes, who doesn’t even really bother to hide that he includes “mass shooting capabilities” in  his assessment of what makes this gun so cool.

“The rifle’s popularity is almost certainly the main reason why mass shooters increasingly reach for it when they go on a rampage,” Stokes writes. “Think about it: if you’re planning to shoot up a room full of people, are you going to reach for a rare, exotic weapon that you have little experience with, or will you select the familiar option that’s easy to train with and that you have plenty of practice time behind? The answer, for anybody who shoots, is the latter.”

It speaks volumes about how all sense of reason has escaped the pro-gun lobby that they think that “capable of destroying a room full of people in minutes” is a defense of a gun, instead of an obvious reason why the damn thing should be banned immediately.

Well, Amanda, let’s talk about this for a moment.  First of all, you don’t really believe what you’re saying, and you know it and we know it.  If you really believed your own propaganda, you’d advocate disarming the police.  But you don’t, and you won’t.  Because you believe in a monopoly of force, despite your undertones of pacifism.  You want the state to be armed as it sees fit, so you want some people to have access to the weapons of their choice, just not all people.  Because all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than other animals.

Second, your propaganda drips with hatred and sarcasm, as if you know all about when and why someone would need a certain kind of weapon.  But I’ll bet that you’ve never shot the weapon you criticize, have you?  If so, please tell us all about it.  Otherwise, get an education.  Start by searching on the words “home invasion” every day for a month on Google news or some other aggregator, and see how may home invasions are perpetrated with two, three, or four or more men at a time, and you’ll see why Mr. Stephen Bayezes needed his AR-15.

Finally, you focus on self defense, but we all know what the real issue is, don’t we Amanda?  You know the second amendment wasn’t written about hunting, or the shooting sports, or even individual self defense (although that would be included under the rubric of what it does include).  We all know, however uncomfortable it might be for you to admit, that the second amendment is all about amelioration of tyranny.

That’s right Amanda.  Are you shocked?  Are you stunned that I said it?  Weapons are the surest means of maintenance of our liberties.  But you don’t want people to have liberties, do you?  Like all good collectivists, you want the state to decide right from wrong, issue the necessary orders for social stability, and ensure cradle to grave sustenance and security.

Don’t you, Amanda?  That’s why only the state can have guns, isn’t it Amanda?