Chris W. Cox: Spin Wizard

"Nope, political correctness.
Now don't you all feel like idiots?"

-NRA spin wizard 

Chris W. Cox

And there it is. It's not from Wayne LaPierre, but it is a response from the NRA to Sunday morning's massacre and it turns out we got it all wrong. According to Chris W. Cox, Chief lobbyist and political strategist for America's favorite firearms fan club, it turns out that the problem isn't the ridiculous ease with which anyone can lay their hands on assault rifles that's the problem, it's political correctness which is surprising because I'd read that Omar Mateen used an assault rifle to kill or injure a hundred people, but I guess I've just been listening to the liberal media.

They're like any other piece of sporting
equipment...any piece of semi-automatic
sporting equipment with 30-round magazines.

I know right? It's not that we, as a country, have a weird obsession with violence and an even weirder insistence that an assault rifle is sporting equipment and not  an assault rifle, it's that the President didn't uh...actually I'm not sure what Cox is suggesting here. I mean, he talks a lot about how awesome assault rifles are and how banning them didn't make a difference, but they were banned between 1994 and 2004 and, I don't know, doesn't it seem like we have a shit ton more mass murders involving them now that they're easier to get a hold of?

Besides, if we ban assault rifles again,
what are people like Ted Nugent
supposed to recklessly brandish?

The NRA says no, but then they would right? Like, it's literally Cox's job to point to anything other than lax gun laws as a contributing factor in gun violence.

"It's time for us to admit that radical Islam is a hate crime waiting to happen. The only way to defeat them is to destroy them--not destroy the right of law-abiding Americans to defend ourselves."

-Chris W. Cox on how we should totally defeat 

the terrorists...you're not pro-terrorist are you?

"I'm sorry, is the NRA complaining that
we're not being Big-Brother-y enough?"

-The FBI, incredulously

Cox also said that terrorists aren't deterred by bans, but since they're not banned anymore I guess we'll never know. He went on to suggest that the FBI, who investigated Mateen, didn't do anything to prevent this because of the 'Obama administration's political correctness' but I kind of get the impression that they didn't do anything because Mateen was one of hundreds of people on their 'to keep an eye on list' and since apparently buying an arsenal isn't in itself a crime and resources are limited he slipped past them.

"Um, let me think about that
...uh....no, no we shouldn't."

-Some gun enthusiast

Look, I'm climbing up on the soap box here but for real, in what sporting or home defense scenarios are one going to need an AR-15? The only ones that spring to mind are ones in which they're hunting man, the most dangerous game, or that they're defending their homes from an ATF raid both of which seem problematic and point to bigger problems in one's life. Why then are we totally cool with these things being manufactured in the first place? Shouldn't public safety be just a little higher on the priority list than gun enthusiasts' right to lethal sporting goods?

Like, assault rifles seem to only have one possible use and that's mass-murder...or maybe defending yourself against Predator, but that's not super-likely, so maybe we could talk about some reasonable restrictions?

Ok, if Predator is in the mix fine, I'll back off on the assault rifles but don't forget, he
has lasers, blade discs and a cloaking device, so you're probably pretty screwed either way.