Brady/MMM: Will the NRA Tell the Truth about Military-Style Assault Weapons?

Join Together ^ | 12/3/2004 | Brady Campaign

[TERMINATTOR]

"This is not a gun you go deer hunting with."
Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel National Shooting Sports Foundation New York Times, 11-23-04

"They can be used for hunting. They are not any more
powerful, and they're not... you can hunt anything. People
hunt everything from deer to any type of game."
Wayne LaPierre, President
National Rifle Association
Hardball with Chris Matthews, 9-8-04

Washington, DC - The SKS rifle apparently used by the hunter to kill six other hunters in Wisconsin wasn't banned under the Federal assault weapons ban that expired September 13, but it should be banned for civilian use. Designed for use in war, even the gun industry admitted yesterday that it's not intended for hunting.

It may, in fact, be the first time the official spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation has admitted that any military-style semiautomatic assault rifle is inappropriate for hunting. Lawrence Keane, senior vice president of the group, went further, and even told the New York Times that the SKS isn't a humane weapon for hunting deer. "The reason the SKS is not used by hunters, Mr. Keane said, is that it is designed for combat soldiers and is therefore underpowered for killing an animal like a deer with a single shot, the goal of good hunters," The Times wrote. "'The ethics of hunting are you don't want the animal to suffer needlessly,' Mr. Keane said."

Prior to the expiration of the assault weapons ban, the industry's spokespersons were unified in describing these types of weapons as perfectly normal for use by hunters. It was one of the industry's main arguments for letting the ban expire.

Since the ban's expiration, high-profile crimes involving assault weapons have already become more commonplace. Plano, Texas police are searching for members of a bank robbery gang that have opened fire on police with AK-47s, and that same weapon is believed to be the weapon of choice of a killer or killers who have shot eight people in West Palm Beach, Florida.

[SASsySIGster]

Thanks for re-posting and embedding the link, Terminator. I obviously need some sort of course in HTML 101 Freepstyle, since I have no idea how to do anything but straight typing in this forum...

Anyhow, I saw that time stamp, too, but that's when the guy at the AR15.com posted the e-mail from keane to the group, not when keane wrote the e-mail.

Aren't you SUPPOSED to have Wild Turkey on Thanksgiving? The pilgrims did, and I am a stickler for New England tradidion :P

[El Gran Salseron]

Actually, you bring up a good point.

I didn't think about that.

I'll have to check into it.

Thank you! :-)