I still remember the original article, and then the article he wrote after he got deluged with e-mails which was one fourth apology, three-fourths "F you" - at least I think that's the guy.  I think we should e-mail him and tell him that his phrase has become a cult classic.

Paul Vitello

I still wonder (or perhaps I know and don't want to think about it) about what he was thinking when he wrote that.  What's it supposed to mean to a normal person?

Quoted: I still wonder (or perhaps I know and don't want to think about it) about what he was thinking when he wrote that.  What's it supposed to mean to a normal person?

I suspect he was trying to imply that "assault weapons" are somehow more powerful than guns that don't have flash suppressors or bayonet lugs.  The "thrust" refers to recoil and/or the energy of the projectile.  I guess.  Poor guy... he had no idea he was creating a cultural icon with writing that.

--Mike

Paul Vitello  
New round in gun issue
March 4, 2004

Pick up the Yellow Pages and go to "Guns." Call the first gun store you find. Ask what you'll need to purchase a semi-automatic military-style sniper rifle like the one used by John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo to kill 10 people during their 2002 Washington, D.C.-area murder spree.

"You have a driver's license?" said the man at the Long Island store I called yesterday to ask about buying the assault rifle known as the Bushmaster XM-15.

"Sure," I said, "but what else do I need to bring?"

I was thinking paperwork - perhaps to verify my clean criminal record, my relative sanity, the lack of any documented connections between myself and al-Qaida.

"Nothing else," said the man. "Just money."

Whether you find this surprising or not depends on how closely you have followed the gun-control debate of the past 10 years. In the midst of a series of mass murders in workplaces, Congress in 1994 imposed a 10-year ban on the sale of military style weapons under production at that time.

The Bushmaster, a version of the military's standard AK-47 rifle, was the kind of gun they had in mind: highly accurate, extremely deadly from almost a half-mile away.

But with a few modifications - a change of barrel size, a different bolt - the maker was able to legalize its product and keep selling it, despite the ban.

Richard Dyke, chairman of Bushmaster Firearms, the maker of this gun, did so well in fact that he had money left over to contribute to political campaigns. He has long been a big Republican fund-raiser in Maine, his home state. And in the 2000 presidential campaign, he was appointed as George W. Bush's state finance director.

(Knowing this much helps to understand why, when Malvo and Muhammad were killing people from 500 yards during that summer and fall, then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush saw the shootings not as a gun problem so much as a problem of "values.")

Now, the so-called assault weapons ban - weak and evadable as it is - is due to expire. This will make it possible for gunmakers to return their products to their full monty of killing power: more bullets per clip, more thrust per squeeze. The National Rifle Association has made the end of the ban one of its top priorities.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola), who is known among NRA-backers as that woman from Long Island who just won't shut up - just because her husband was killed and her son was wounded by a madman in 1993 with a legally purchased gun, she blames the NRA - has been working the hallways of Congress this week in an effort to bring to a vote a bill that would make the temporary ban permanent. Her bill would also tighten some of the restrictions on fire power. "The majority of people don't even know it's expiring," she said.

Her opponents include not only Bushmaster's maker and Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), the majority leader of the House, but the formidable lobbying apparatus of the NRA, which flexed its muscle Tuesday when it pulled its support from a Senate bill that would have attached McCarthy's ban to another measure.

The other measure, shamelessly named the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, would have protected the gun industry from lawsuits filed by shooting victims or their families. Several such suits have been brought already by families of the 10 D.C.-area sniper victims.

The NRA was so opposed to McCarthy's weapons ban, it was willing to scuttle the Lawful Commerce bill for now, and wait for another shot.

"The president himself says there are terrorist cells at work in this country," she said. "Do we want these people to be able to walk into any gun store?"

Bush, during his 2000 presidential campaign, said he would support extending the assault weapons ban. But he hasn't lifted a finger to help bring it to a vote in the House or the Senate.

So, to review just this much: A weak ban on assault weapons is passed in 1994, despite which assault weapons sales flourish. Bush says he will support the ban's extension, but doesn't seem to really mean it. Members of the Republican-controlled House and Senate keep the extension from coming up for a vote; in an election year, no one wants it on record that he or she voted for every American's right to shoot people's heads off from 500 yards.

As Marie Antoinette or someone similar once said, let them eat values.

I yell it out when I am about ready to bust a nut.

Nobody remembers "full monty of killing power", which is equally stupid.

Malvo and Mohammad, truth be told, picked a very poor weapon for their purpose, nor did they need more than a single bullet in each case.

But assholes like Vitello don't give a shit about the truth.

Quoted: I yell it out when I am about ready to bust a nut.

     

My god.  I've never read that.  What an ass...an uninformed, ignorant ass.  I wonder how often he write editorials about things he knows nothing about.  

Total idiot.  

Tagged

"You have a driver's license?" said the man at the Long Island store I called yesterday to ask about buying the assault rifle known as the Bushmaster XM-15. "Sure," I said, "but what else do I need to bring?" I was thinking paperwork - perhaps to verify my clean criminal record, my relative sanity, the lack of any documented connections between myself and al-Qaida. "Nothing else," said the man. "Just money."

Had this guy actually ever bought a gun, he would understand that the driver license is used to gain every piece of the other information he is bitching about! I mean, we can forge documents. But a background check is totally out of our hands and in most cases, instant.

It's extremely obvious that ignorance is to blame for gun laws to start with. And this guy (as well as everyone else I know who supports anti-gun measures) is completely without a clue when it comes to the subject.