> does Dan Coats deserve the vitriol he has received from many gun
> rights advocates because of an argument over just how many
> bullets can be fired from a rifle every 60 seconds?

I assume that question is in good faith, but it seems to confuse NFA “machine guns” with the semi-automatic carbines that the Clinton “AW” ban, er, banned. That’s not really an accident–the gun control lobby *intended* you to make that mistake. Rate of fire is simply not an issue here.

> So this column is a sincere inquiry on the relative importance of how
> semi- must semi-automatics be

Not much…unless you think the Constitution is still binding and that Madison & Company might, after all, have been right in connecting gun ownership with freedom.

> (and what is the constitutional basis
> for same, e.g. a right to ?bear? bazookas?)

Of the several specific things the 2A is supposed to protect, the only one important enough to be enshrined in a prefatory clause was your ability to own the rifle that you are obliged to report to militia duty with, until roughly age 45 (that number has essentially been constant for the entire history of the Republic). That is your weapon of honor and civic duty–I suppose that sounds incomprehensible today, but the document was written by men for whom honor was so metaphysically concrete that they still fought duels. To be well-regulated, among other things you need to report with the standard-issue rifle chambered in the standard-issue cartridge. Thus, according to the original logic, the AR-15 pattern rifle should be the most protected firearm in America. It is the one that the government has the power to *require* you to possess and maintain, after all (if you are a male between about 17 and 45, or IIRC since about 1903 a female in the National Guard or reserves).

Second, if we want to be really honest about it, the founders spilled a great deal of ink on the necessity that the people be comparably equipped to the regular army and to select militias (such as the National Guard). Thus, in a broader sense they were more concerned with specifically military rifles than any others. That means the contemporary military, just as the freedoms of speech and press cover electronic media (such as RedState!). The “sporting purpose” lie is precisely the opposite of the truth: sporting arms are protected simply to protect the positive gun culture that teaches boys to be riflemen before they even reach the military. The 2A doesn’t say “duck hunting being necessary to a free state. (That isn’t just a militia problem. The NRA was originally founded because the Northern recruits didn’t know which end of the rifle pointed at the other guy. Sometimes you don’t have time to take a city boy and start from scratch, and even today the army finds that hunters make better soldiers.)

Third, the incremental banning of guns has mainly progressed by first establishing the false premise that there exists at least one bad, evil kind of gun whose owners, we’re assured, shouldn’t be supported by “normal” gun owners. Then the “evil” categories of guns and owners expands until it includes *all* guns and all gun owners, but in such a way that at each step we’re told we shouldn’t have common cause with *those* people.

There is simply no doubt about this–dear departed Ted Kennedy railed on the Senate floor about the horrible cop-killing armor-piercing guns available everywhere in America–the .30-30. As that is a rather weak cartridge, and has always been chambered only in sporting arms (almost always a lever-action carbine, a “cowboy gun” to people who don’t know guns), dear old Ted let the cat out of the bag. *Everything* is going to get banned, in due time. There’s nothing surprising about this pattern–that’s how it worked in each country that lost the right, too.

Fourth, “assault weapons”, i.e. semiautomatic carbines with furnishings that make Diane Feinstein wet her pants (literally–they ban was based on appearance, not function), are actually customarily chambered in weak cartridges anyway. Most hunting rifles are *much* more powerful, and even in semi-auto an old M1 Garand from the CMP or a (modern, sporting) Browning BAR in a suitable hunting caliber is far more gun, and will fire as fast (as fast as you pull the trigger, basically).

In short: (1) we have an obligation to the rule of law to protect *everything* the Bill of Rights was understood to protect, and may not on our honor throw part of the law under the bus, (2) “assault weapons” are the do-or-die battleground where we *must* defeat the “sporting purpose” lie once and for all, and (3) we must not let the gun control lobby set up their follow-up attack against “sniper-rifles” (that will be any bolt-action rifle), “cop-killers” (that will be any cartridge at least as powerful as the 5.56, which is a varmint cartridge), “street sweepers” (eventually, any shot gun), and the like.

We *know* how their rhetoric and procedure works. We must not play their game on taxes, Constitutional interpretation, *or* gun control.

a diary. I’ve mostly been a reader here so far though….