Issue: Assault Weapons; NOT 2nd Amendment
Sub “assault weapons” for NRA-speak (1)
* Combatting NRA deflection and obfuscation to stay focused *
On Fox & Friends Sunday, co–hosts Abby Huntsman, Ed Henry, and Pete Hegseth had the following exchange (with substitution) about March for Our Lives participants:
Ironic Huntsman: “We can’t talk about assault weapons¹ in a rational way in this country right now. It doesn’t seem like we have any middle ground still.”
Insulted Hegseth: “Forgive me if I don’t want a lesson on assault weapons² from a 16–year–old. Forgive me if I don’t want to watch a 9–year–old (granddaughter of the late Martin Luther King Jr.) tell me that her dream is a world without assault weapons¹.”
More Hegseth: “They shouldn’t be giving me lessons on assault weapons². They should be in civics class. They have a right to do whatever they wanna do. But I watch that, and you know what my reaction was, honestly? I donated to the NRA this morning. I’m serious.”
(1) substituted for “guns”
(2) substituted for “the Second Amendment”
Note: At the time that the now-defunct Federal Assault Weapons Ban passed in 1994, the U.S. Department of Justice said, “In general, assault weapons are semiautomatic firearms with a large magazine of ammunition that were designed and configured for rapid fire and combat use.”
