Deleted Comments: A Visit From The Gunsplanation Man!

My Little Pony: Friendship is Semi-Automatic

Yr Wonkette is not one to complain, but we were slightly disappointed that, following the worst single-perpetrator mass shooting in American history (for now), we didn't have a lot of gunhumpers showing up here to explain that a few mass killings are simply the price a society must pay for the freedom to defend against tyranny. Have they all just migrated from comment sections to Twitter these days? We did at least get one brave Gunsplanation Man, who dropped by our piece on the House's decision to hold off -- for the moment -- on a bill that would make it much easier for everyday folks to purchase silencers. "KenTFM" dropped by to play that always-popular game, "You Used A Gunhumper Worship Word Wrong, So You Aren't Allowed To Talk About Guns Ever."

"KenTFM" wasn't here to nitpick the article's use of silencer instead of the industry-approved suppressor; instead, he was aghast that a bunch of dumb liberals used the common (but VERY INACCURATE ) term "assault rifle" to refer to firearms that are nothing more than semi-automatic rifles, and so obviously it's impossible to have a useful discussion of policy, since stupid liberals do not even know the right terminology, stupid. After a Wonketteer wrote, "America. Where we make it easier to get your hands on an assault rifle to kill people than get a ballot in your hands to vote," our man "KenTFM" was there in a jiffy (and a snit, and also no doubt in a camo outfit) to call foul:

Have you ever read the National Firearms Act? Do you have any clue at all what an assault rifle really is?

No, I doubt you do on either score.

You see, the fiction here is that since, strictly speaking, an "assault rifle" is a military weapon that can be switched between semiautomatic (one round per pull of the trigger) to full-automatic fire (bullets come out as long as the trigger is held and there are rounds in the magazine), then NO YOU IDIOT, it it NOT easy to get an assault weapon, haven't you even read the National Firearms Act, which requires an extensive licensing process for civilians to own automatic weapons? WELL HAVE YOU, PUNK?

Oh, but the Gunsplaining really started flowing when another commenter said -- even acknowledging the term's squishiness -- "I don't see a place for weapons commonly called assault rifles--that is, war weapons toned down for civilian use." WELL! You are clearly a dumb juvenile lagomorph if you say that, you silly liberal!

Part of your issue is not understanding what you are talking about. A weapon modeled on a military weapon but still in it's original configuration is a semi-automatic firearm. That is, as originally designed it requires ONE trigger pull per bullet fired. That would be things like the Colt .45ACP, Browning Hi-Power, Ruger 10/22 or AR-15.

An automatic weapon is a machine gun. It is illegal for anyone in America to own a machine gun that was made after 1986. For the ones made before 1986 the rules and regulation of the National Firearm Act severely control ownership.

Having an AR-15, an AK-47 or any other semi-automatic "military styled" weapon does not result in superior firepower. I really wish folks would stop pushing this idiotic myth.

You can almost feel the steam coming out of the poor lad's ears as he thinks of all the morons out there talking about assault rifles when they clearly mean semiautomatic rifles (the ones that look badass). Obviously, if only everyone would adopt Approved Firearms Enthusiast Terminology, then they would also stop thinking there's a problem with people having easy access to the goddamned things, and everyone would agree with Gunsplanation Man that firearm ownership is a God-given right. (Shut up, atheists -- if you used the right gun terminology, you'd believe in God, too.)

Also, if "having an AR-15, an AK-47 or any other semi-automatic 'military styled' weapon does not result in superior firepower," we sure hope "KenTFM" will have a word with his fellow gunhumpers, who fetishize those very firearms so much. They need to be educated that no matter how wicked-looking such rifles might be, there's really no point in paying big bucks for firearms that have that neato paramilitary mystique.

We're not sure which article got him so upset, but we heard again this week from "Jacob," the unhappy reader who emailed Wonkette back in July to tell us nobody reads our garbage piece of shit website except our friends and family. That made us happy to know we have so many friends. He's the guy who came up with our superhero names, "Dr. Fat and Rebecca Skankopf."

The subject line of "Jacob's" email this time out was "Dr Fat still tearing it up with illiterate "criticism"?" That's pretty non-specific, sadly, so we're not sure which particular piece he was unhappy with -- possibly our review of the Ken Burns "Vietnam War" documentary, which would qualify as "criticism" in a formal sense, at least. We suspect "Jacob" just doesn't like us criticizing his hero, Donald Trump. In any case, his new email was every bit as charming as the earlier ones:

You guys sure are lucky that the ruling party subsidizes you. (It's amazing that Google links to your crap because they're such soviets who don't care about the quality of journalism as long as it agrees with their baby-murdering, evil, godless, pervert ideology. Some friends in a graduate classics program were actually laughing at what a joke you are...they said you reminded them of the patients at a methadone clinic telling them how to fix the world or a McDonald's addict telling them how to get skinny in the case of Dr. Fat. : )

Dr. Fat and all the aspartame-addicted femi-beasts at Wonkette really are quite the menagerie! : )

So much wonderfulness there! Jacob seems not to have noticed that the party currently in power is in fact the Republicans, who are definitely not paying us a dime. That, or "ruling party" means the Deep State, or possibly The Jews, who really run everything anyway. Google is a bunch of soviets, and only links to sites pushing a "baby-murdering, evil, godless, pervert ideology," which was news to us. What's really weird about Google is its seeming selective blindness to Wonkette -- for instance, if you search "Idaho republican liberal nut-tard," it'll pull up lots of stories that aren't Wonkette's (happily, the top result, at RawStory, links to us), even though we're fairly sure we hit that Idaho story before most other national outlets Thursday. Weird. Google, why aren't you holding up your end of the conspiracy?

 
 Oh, but the most cutting line of all: "Jacob's" friends in a graduate classics program think we're not good journamalists! Call us godless skeptics, but we have a feeling these friends go to grad school with "Jacob's" Canadian Girlfriend. That, or he googled "rhetoric" and saw the ancient Greeks were big on rhetoric, so obviously a reference to a classics program would really cheese us off. Joke's on him! Classics departments may be sending America many fine people, but we've always preferred hanging out with postmodernists, though medievalists are fun, too. Truly, we are so hurt that we may just fall off the methadone wagon and go to McDonalds for one of those fine Anus burgers. But "Jacob,"have you even readAristotle's Rhetoric? 

We wrote back to "Jacob" to ask whether he'd been set off by any particular article, or just the general awfulness of Wonkette as an enterprise, but he didn't favor us with a reply. We'll just have to hope he sees this and will keep in mind that if he doesn't offer more specific critiques of what he considers flaws in our writing, we just won't be able to improve, now will we? Also, why is he only griping about Rebecca and me? Not a word of abuse for Evan? Relegating him to just another of the "aspartame-addicted femi-beasts at Wonkette" is pretty mean, almost as bad as reducing The Professor and Mary Ann to "And the rest." Not cool, man.

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 Remember, Wonkers in Idaho, Eastern Oregon, and Northern Nevada/Utah, we have a Wonkette Drinky Thing coming up in Boise on Tuesday October 17. Know a reasonably-priced bar in Boise that will be good for conversation (no karaoke!) and OK with a babby? Let us know in the comments we don't allow, or email us atdoktorzoom at wonkette dot com