Chicken Little

Here's one you won't find in the New York Times op-ed pages. But then, when haven't they been scared to death of a Texas Woman, armed and skilled with both rifle and keyboard?

From Ms. J.R. Labbe of the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, comes this incredibly clear, concise and powerful refutation of the cries and squawks of chickens, everywhere.

Chicken Little arrives every four years in a feather-ruffled flurry squawking about some kind of impending doom. This year she is incited to a level of hen-ish hysteria by the encroaching expiration of the federal "assault weapons" ban.

Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry is all for extending the ban on 19 military-style firearms, coos Chicken Little. He suspended his campaign back in March so he could go to Washington and cast one of the few Senate votes he found time to make in the past year. No one should read anything political into that.

That's just for openers. She also, in one short paragraph, leaves the core of the AWB plucked and bleeding, awaiting the demise it so clearly merits.

These firearms were classified by how they looked and not by how they operate. Cosmetic and ergonomic features like telescoping stocks, bayonet lugs, pistol grips and flash suppressors that give the firearms a military-style appearance were banned even though they are mechanically indistinguishable from traditional sporting rifles.

This is one you'll want to print out and casually leave laying on some GFW's desks. But you'll have to go read it all, first.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've a sudden urge to go to KFC for lunch.

Comments

[Anne]

How funny -- I almost looked for a link to send you when I read this in Sunday's paper.

I suspect that people who worried a little less about the sky falling and a little more about facts would have questioned the absence of a renewal on the magazine ban . . . unless, of course, they were thinking news stands are harmless. ** snicker **