When is something a lie and when is it wrong?
For me, a lie is when you know it’s not true and say it anyway with an intention to deceive. The intent to mislead people is absolutely a key.
If someone says that people need something for a given purpose and you disagree, are they lying? Again, are they intentionally misleading people or are they just wrong? Are you the one who’s wrong?
These questions came to mind when I came across this piece slamming the NRA for supposedly lying to Hawaiian lawmakers about AR-15s.
Prepare yourself, because this will shock almost no one: the gun lobby is blatantly lying to Hawaii legislators.
People who make money off the sales of firearms are trying to sell our elected leaders on the idea that hunters in the state need military-style assault weapons to hunt and control the feral pig population. They might be selling, but as a combat veteran, I am not buying, and neither should our lawmakers.
The debate is over Senate Bill 3196, which would close the assault rifle loophole in the state.
In Hawaii, we have banned assault pistols for decades, a law pre-dating the 1994 federal ban on assault weapons. However, our law stopped short of banning assault rifles.
Perhaps that was because when the law was made, mass shootings were rare. This was before the shooting at Columbine, which was one of the first to garner national headlines. Perhaps it has remained on the books in this way because the last major mass shooting in Hawaii was the infamous Xerox shooting in 1999.
But things are changing.
The author, a self-described combat veteran who says he was wounded in action, goes on to talk all about how bad the AR-15 and similar rifles are, but he neglects to mention a few things.
For one, he calls the NRA liars yet never actually illustrates how they’re lying, for one thing.
See, feral hogs are dangerous creatures. If you wound one, it’s likely to turn and come after you. Sit around listening to hog hunters and more than a few will have some hair-raising stories about just such a thing happening.
This is why a weapon like an AR-type rifle is handy. Not only does it carry a decent number of rounds, but it also can be reloaded quickly if a feral Porky decides that meat’s back on the menu.
See, it’s fair to disagree with what lobbyists are supposedly telling lawmakers–though without even a link to someone having said such a thing, I’m skeptical–but it’s quite another to claim they’re lying.
Yet even if it is a lie, it shouldn’t matter all that much.
It shouldn’t matter because despite the Hawaii State Supreme Court’s opinion, the Bruen decision has laid down that it takes more than just “but we really want it” to justify such restrictions.
For the record, demonstrating a need for a category of weapon isn’t required; not for the individual and not for society as a whole. We have a right to keep and bear arms. Not hunting rifles or target guns, but arms as an entire category.
The author never touches on that. Does he not understand that or was it a lie of omission?
