On Feb. 5 Boston.com published a report of a man being arrested after crashing his car into a telephone pole in Arlington, Mass. 28-year-old Kyle Laidman was driving under the influence of alcohol and texting while driving.
Police also seized what they called, according to Boston.com, “six thirty-round machine gun ammunition magazines” and one 9mm 15-round magazine labeled “law enforcement and government use only.” The report again stated that Arlington Police Captain Robert Flynn said that the magazines “appear to [be] for a machine gun, but no rifle was found in the vehicle.”
Although Laidman certainly posed a danger to himself and others by driving under the influence of alcohol, the “machine gun ammunition magazines” are the big story that’s topping headlines.
There’s only one problem with this story, which has also been reported by WCVB and Arlington Patch, among others. The problem being is that the magazines were not “machine gun ammunition magazines.” Hence, this story becomes another example of deliberate confusion caused by media in an attempt to further a political agenda.
Machine guns are not “assault rifles”. An AR-15 is not a machine gun. A Bushmaster .223 is not a machine gun. A machine gun does not have a magazine. A machine gun is fully automatic, has belt-fed ammunition and with a single squeeze of the trigger will spray a continuous line of bullets until the belt runs empty. An AR-15 or other “assault rifle” is semi-automatic and will only fire one bullet with one squeeze of the trigger. The two are very different; although gun-grabbers would have the general population believing that the two are the same.
By using words like “assault weapon” and “machine gun”, the anti-gun agenda stirs horrid, violent images of entire villages of men, women and children being slaughtered in a matter of seconds, encouraging the general population to consider these “weapons of war” evil devices that do not belong in the hands of common citizens. It is propaganda, no different than the commercials aired during the Super Bowl.
While Kyle Laidman may have been guilty of driving under the influence of alcohol, he was not guilty of possessing “large-capacity machine gun ammunition magazines”. The magazines he had in his possession were, in fact, standard-size capacity magazines made for semi-automatic rifles, and although they are illegal to possess in the state of Massachusetts without a proper license, they certainly have nothing to with machine guns.
Other articles of interest:
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American hero becomes 'gun control's' latest exploitee
Remaining jailed New Mexico gun dealers finally freed after bureaucratic delay
Victory in Oak Harbor could fuel push to destroy state preemption
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
©2013 Jennifer L. Cruz. All Rights Reserved.
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