#58

                        Rifle Orientation
                        Wall Street Journal
                        March 24, 1989

Amid the guffawing about the National Rifle Association opposing bans
on semi-automatic rifles, we were bothered by an atavistic memory of
trying out hand at skeet shooting, as well as breaking three Coke bottles
in a few seconds with a .22. Somehow we couldn't remember stopping to
reload between shots, so we've spent the week trying to find out what
are these "assault rifles" we keep reading about.

All the guffawers understand, of course, that these terrible "assault
rifles" are semiautomatic, firing a round every time the trigger is
squeezed. And that they are military weapons, designed for the sole
purpose of killing people. And that notion that anyone wants to take
weapons away from sportsman is a figment of the National Rifle
Association's imagination. Only trouble is, the guffawers don't know
what they're talking about.

In bedrock America, semiautomatic rifles are as common as grass. The
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has testified that Americans
own some 20 million to 30 million semiautomatic weapons, including .22s
and shotguns. Such traditional big-game weapons such as the .44 Magnum
Carbine and the Browning .30-06 are semiautomatic. Semiautomatics that
were originally military weapons are widely used for hunting and target
shooting; the NRA says five million M-1 Carbines have been bought for
public since World War II. If "assault weapons" means anything semiauto-
matic, these guns would be subject to any new legislation.

So what's an assault weapon? It turns out that the authoritative Jane's
Infantry Weapons has no listing under "assault weapons." However, the
Pentagon's Small Arms Identification Guide does define "assault rifle":
a selective-fire military rifle, capable of firing on fully automatic,
burst, or semiautomatic at the option of the shooter. In other words,
true assault rifles have machine-gun capability, and already subject
to gun-control laws dating back to 1934.

The current fuss seems to be about weapons that are semiautomatic like
bardyard .22s, but that *look* like true military assault rifles. As
best we can make out, this is the class of weapons to which the Bush
Administration just applied import controls. Similarly, Colt Firearms
suspended sales of its AR-15, a semiautomatic version of the M-16 military
rifle. If we are talking about new restrictions, in other words, they
would fall on rifles that *look* like military weapons but *perform*
like millions of legal rifles.

The public purpose of this is, well, less than clear. Such a restriction
wouldn't do a lot of harm, but it certainly wouldn't do much good --
even on the heroic assumption that outlawing weapons somehow keeps them
out of the hands of drug smugglers. Even someone who wants to make a
case for further gun control needs to start by admitting that the NRA
has a legitimate complaint. The current rhetoric seems to be heading
in the direction of banning a lot of sporting weapons.

The proponents and their supporters need to do one of two things; Either,
come up with a working definition that protects sporting weapons. Or,
make the difficult but straightforward case that the urgency of the
restrictions outweights the interests of sportsmen in owning guns that
are already common. The NRA can't be answered with guffaws.

The "assault rifle" issue, it seems to us, is less a public-policy debate
than a cultural clash. The cosmopolitian culture doesn't know one kind
of weapon from another and doesn't much care. Basically, it believes
that guns are nasty and duck hunting barbaric. The bedrock culture may
not like white wine and Brie, but it is plenty smart enough to recognize
when it is under attack. It fights back in tones that may be inelegant,
but it does know what it's talking about here.

If the cosmopolitan culture believes that the answer to the crime problem
is gun control, the bedrock culture also has ideas of its own. In the
midst of the "assault rifle" furor, we note, Governor Mario Cuomo issued
his seventh veto of a New York bill to restore the death penalty.

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