The Patriot Post® · Cooke on AR-15 Obsession

National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke: “So sure were the horrified darlings of the gun-control salon that an AR-15 had played a part in the abomination at Navy Yard that many felt compelled to insert one into the story, front and center. … Wishcasting in public that a firearm you dislike has been used to murder people is not a good look. … To progressives, the very idea of a citizenry that is armed so that it might protect itself is nothing short of a dangerous Red Dawn fantasy – a recipe for ‘anarchy’ or ‘vigilantism,’ and a serving of unlovely catnip to an ‘insurrectionist’ movement (which never quite materializes but is always lurking). For their part, progressives do not believe that it is constitutionally and philosophically irrational for the representatives of a free people to be able to disarm them, because History always moves forward and we have outgrown all that. Instead, they believe that it is the job of the government to institute what it considers to be reasonable restrictions on weaponry in order to protect the people from themselves and from others. In this view, only the police and the military should have ‘serious’ weapons, and the people should submit to their protection. Anything that even hints at military weaponry should, therefore, not be in the hands of the people. And, quite deliberately, the AR-15 looks like a military weapon.”