29 May—Carolyn Maloney has been a New York City Democratic congresswoman since 1993. Following the grocery massacre in Buffalo and the school massacre in Uvalde, she contacted five gunmakers last week, requesting information on the manufacturing, marketing, and sale of the AR-15-style rifles used. Bushmaster made the rifle used in Buffalo, Daniel Defense made the one used in Uvalde. She also contacted Sig Sauer, Smith & Wesson, and Sturm Ruger.

AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles, out of the box or modified, are the favored weapon of homicidal-suicidal nut cases, as in Sandy Hook and Las Vegas, as well as millions of law-abiding non-crazies. I don’t know what Mrs. Maloney expects to get out of the gunmakers other than publicity for herself and fodder for ambulance chasers. But I have no serious problem with her requests, even though they’re clearly invasive and intended to be intimidating as well as heuristic.

I do have a problem, however, with her referring to the rifles as “your company’s own weapons of war.” At least Carolyn doesn’t call them assault rifles or even assault-style rifles. Her letter-writer simply is using hyperbole for effect. Who doesn’t? But the rifles in question just aren’t weapons of war, any more than other semiautomatic rifles or single-shot rifles or kitchen knives or stones.

On the other hand, firearms marketing is a sick joke, even sicker than marketing in general. I’ve never even held a modern civilian-market AR, though I do recall its old real weapon-of-war ancestor, the M16. I can well understand the attraction of the versatile and lethal non-military AR platform for non-crazies as well as crazies. To me, it’s overkill—no pun intended—but what the hell. It’s also the Constitution and capitalism in action.

But lots of gun advertising—including the ads for the latest AR variants that seem to come out every month—that I see in the American Rifleman (an NRA magazine) is obviously aimed at simpletons, fools, and fantasists. Then again, isn’t most advertising?

While I’m on it, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, speaking to the group’s convention in Houston right after the school slaughter, owned that, while the Uvalde shooting “should never happen again,” nevertheless called gun ownership a “fundamental human right.” It was nice of Wayne to say the slaughter should never happen again, but we all know it will—no matter what’s done about firearms and arms in general.

And with all due respect for Wayne, who’s without doubt a superb lobbyist although an exceptionally lousy marksman (he couldn’t even get a clean kill, at point-blank range, on an elephant that he had wounded), is he crazy or stupid? Even given the gun-crazy predisposition of NRA conventioneers who are always ready to cheer at anything not anti-gun, does he really believe that gun ownership is a fundamental human right? Like breathing, eating, and sleeping?

Or did Wayne really mean to call gun ownership a fundamental Constitutional right? It certainly is that. In all events, Wayne should learn to aim his words (and guns) more carefully . . .