Is it a case in which a difference in degree is deeply, and with some reason, perceived as a difference in kind? I mean, here's a cartoon: If you take a gun that you have to load one shot at a time... ok. Then make it two... ok. Then six... ok. Then, let's say, twenty... then, say, the shots are still shots but each explodes in midair, creating shrapnel, then, say, the shots now become more like grenades and the gun shoots dozens of them... then
Well, you get the point. I'm saying I think that everyone, including you, presumably, has a point at which they would say that the Second Amendment didn't mean that. And to many, even among those who take the Second Amendment seriously, that visceral reaction sets in when when the gun doesn't go Bang Bang, but instead goes rat a tat tat tat tat tat tat tat tat tat tat tat tat tat tat tat. Because the perception may be that the potential for harm has, someplace between the third and thirty fifth tat, outweighed the pro-gun arguments of the NRA. In their viscera, they may feel this, I'm proposing. And if this is the case, the NRA may not be doing itself or gunowners a favor by not distinguishing between hand guns and machine guns. They may provoke the baby's being thrown out with the bath water. |
