Dear pedantic shits saying it's a Sig Sauer MCX, not an AR-15, and not an assault rifle: FUCK YOU

[Bucky]

Someone in another web forum got preachy with me when I referred to the Orlando killer's weapon as an assault weapon. Apparently there are some technical specs that distinguish this high volume murder machine from the the high volume murder machines that earn the designation "assault rifle". But please let me point out, Fuck you, over 100 people were fucking assaulted by a guy using that weapon and half of them are dead.

On Mediaite, a news-review website, there's a lengthy article taking the NY Times and WaPo to task for reporting the rifle used was an AR-15, not the "similar looking but significantly different" Sig Sauer MCX. And then, when they finally corrected their stories, they didn't really detail the differences in the operations of the two different non-assault rifles. But please, allow me to point out, fuck you, 49 innocent people are dead and either weapon could have been used to commit this horror.

And last time our country went through this insane ritual discussion, my gun nut friend and I got into it and I was saying--these guns are dangerous. These guns aren't for hunting and they aren't for defense. They should be illegal--and my gun nut friend like your gun nut friends do too went into some technical mumbo jumbo about how these are rifles not guns and these are not technically "high capacity" because of some feature being there or not there in the manufacture and how are you going to legally regulate and distinguish... blah blah blah...

and excuse me, but I'm not a gun expert. I don't have to be. People are being killed in record numbers by these mass shooting incidents. If a hit-and-run victim gets wheeled into an ER, the doctors are not going to sit around arguing about whether it was a Ford or a Chevy that plowed down this pedestrian. So please allow me to point out, fuck you, I want these kinds of guns off the market, these non-assault rifles that assault innocent people by the goddamn dozens, whether or not they meet the legal definition of "assault-like firearm", whether or not they meet the definition of "high capacity", whether or not the second fucking comma in the 2nd Amendment is a punctuation error because it separates the noun from the verb. Fuck you.

Look at the floor of the Orlando night club, the office park in San Bernardino, the schoolhouse in Newtown CT. Look at the pictures of the bodies and the puddles of blood until you understand what assault really means. The weapons that can do that, that can cover those floors with dead people, any weapon that can do that needs to be off the market. And as much as I love the Bill of Rights, every fucking firearm that can do that in the country needs to be pulled out of circulation, out of inventory, out of reach of second hand weapons expos and burned down to slag.

You can keep your 223 Remingtons and your back-of-the-closet handguns and your birding shotguns and anything else that your toddler is going to use to shoot your neighbor's toddler in the eye with by accident--I'm not so naive as to think we're going to ever have a gun free society. Accidents are always going to happen, from the easily preventable to the Act of God freak occurrence. I'm just saying 9 is less than 49 and if this Omar Marteen bastard had had only the option of charging into Pulse nightclub in his psychotic anger and gunning down 9 innocent people instead then an additional 40 families would not be mourning this week. Maybe you don't call that progress. If you can't then fuck you, you care enough about people.

And I know this one little reform isn't going to cure Islamic militarism or homophobia or mental illness or the glorification of violence or toxic masculinity that are behind all of these senseless slaughterfests. I get that. You're right. But we don't wait to cure alcoholism before we start passing drunk driving laws. You take the toys away from the boys. You stop the bleeding. If we can't cure it all, we can at least reduce the size of the problem. That's progress. And it needs to happen starting literally last week.