Famed author Malcolm Gladwell appeared on the “Breakfast Club” to promote the new season of his podcast, “Revisionist History.”
A six-part series, it tackles “everything Americans get wrong about guns.”
Over the course of the “Breakfast Club” interview it’s clear that Gladwell himself gets many things wrong about guns (e.g., believing the Bruen decision was detrimental to the country, considering concealed carriers as threats to public safety, assuming all cops are proficient marksmen, etc).
But one thing he does get right, is that a ban on so-called “assault weapons” is dumb.
“I think assault rifle bans are a dumb idea,” said Gladwell. “They’re dumb because they’re not actually banning assault rifles. Assault rifle is a kind of platform. And what assault rifle bans do is essentially identify if you accessorize your gun with a certain number of cosmetic things we think that’s bad and we want to ban ‘em.”
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“Why are we identifying a class of weapons because they look ugly? We’re not banning semiautomatic rifles with an assault weapons ban,” he continued. “We’re banning a tiny subcategory that happen to have a certain number of cosmetic features that we don’t like. It’s not solving the problem.”
“Guns are dangerous. They’re used in different ways. To spend all of our time and energy trying to remove one tiny subcategory of guns from the equation in the hope that it’s gonna change things is just dumb,” Gladwell said.
Gladwell’s right. Rifles, let alone black rifles, are rarely used in murder.
Rifles as entire category (including the much maligned “assault weapons”) accounted for roughly four percent of gun-related homicides in 2021, according to FBI data. Even a sweepingly confiscatory ban on them would not lead to a measurable reduction in violence.
This fact is obvious to anyone with a shred of common sense. Kudos to Gladwell for admitting what so many anti-gunners won’t. Assault weapons bans are dumb.
Of course, the next step for Gladwell is not only admitting that they’re dumb — but they’re unconstitutional as well.
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Really enjoy this guy’s books. He’s a hell of a writer. Glad to see he’s not COMPLETELY retarded about guns.
Hey, brilliant idea, instead of outlawing inanimate objects, why not simply outlaw CRIME??
That makes just as much sense as any other idea liberals have come up with…
i wouldn’t put this commie moron on a pedestal yet……….It’s just a push to call anything they want an assault weapon without any kind of justification!