The rifle that killed five Wisconsin hunters and wounded three more on Sunday was an SKS 7.62-millimeter semiautomatic assault weapon not normally used in hunting animals.
DAMN those rifles. Just running loose, looking to kill and wound people indiscriminately. They must be stopped.
And please define "normal." Hair dryers aren't "normally" used to degrease rifle stocks, but I daresay a lot of us have used them that way. So...?
"This is not a gun you go deer hunting with," said Lawrence Keane,
No, this is not a gun YOU go deer hunting with. Do you even hunt, Mr. Keane? (I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that NYT edited out anything remotely intelligent or helpful you might have said.)
senior vice president and general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry trade association.
OK, NOW we're balanced, right? We've quoted someone on the "pro" side of the issue; therefore we now have carte blanche on the "con" side. Ramming speed!
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.
Because we want to have to use many, many shots to kill humans in combat. And I think one-shot kills are the goal of ALL hunters, not just "good" ones.
"The ethics of hunting are you don't want the animal to suffer needlessly," Mr. Keane said.
Enemy combatants are another story altogether, I guess.
Mr. Keane said he suspected that the man accused of the Wisconsin killings was not a trained hunter, since with the SKS he was carrying, he would have had to shoot a deer several times to kill it.
Speculation and spectacular ignorance. "If I don't know it, it must not be true." And thank God they don't mention the suspect's name; otherwise we'd assume he is of minority descent.
The best part: this untrained hunter, armed with an SKS that would require "several" shots to kill a deer, nevertheless managed to kill five people and wound three others (and if I'm not mistaken, another died last night).
The SKS is a precursor of the AK-47 assault rifle. Though it has a longer barrel, it otherwise looks much like the AK-47. It has become popular in the United States among gun collectors, target shooters and some criminals,
Yes, let's not forget the obligatory "criminals" reference, facts be damned.
because it sells for less than $200, or more than $100 less than an AK-47,
And we all know how cost-conscious those criminals are, don't we? Always checking the papers for the big sales...
said Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, a gun control group.
"A gun control group." —The very definition of "understatement." Oh, a "gun control group." How reasonable. How sensible. Not "a group dedicated to a total ban on all weapons not held by the police, military or UN"? Of course not.
By executive order, President Bill Clinton barred the importing of Chinese- and Russian-made SKS rifles.
Our hero! Ruling the land with common sense and restraint, using his power of fiat (the famous "stroke of a pen, law of the land") only for good.
But the Bush administration, Ms. Rand said, has specifically authorized the importing of SKS's from Yugoslavia and Albania.
Therefore, it's obviously Bush's fault. More blood on his hands, the murderous Nazi bastard.
It is not known where the SKS used in the Wisconsin shootings was manufactured.
Uhh...so?
Sheesh.
