Walaker, Forum misfire
Date: Feb 18, 2007 10:43 AM
Once again, an antigun politician has to misrepresent NRA positions.
The Mayors Against Illegal Guns is just another antigun campaign.
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http://www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=156920?ion=Columnists&columnist=Ross%20Nelson
Walaker, Forum misfire
Ross Nelson,
Published Sunday, February 18, 2007
Ross Nelson sorts mail at the post office. To delay total brain atrophy he writes an occasional column for the Forum. He also reads on his breaks when he’s not arguing politics or epistemological first principles with his co-workers.
You might wonder what Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker is up to, fervently attending the ?National Summit of Mayors Against Illegal Guns.? Gun crime in Fargo and North Dakota at large is a minor problem. He might as well have attended ?Northern Tier Mayors Against Tropical Breezes in January.?

The mayor has a problem with firearms but wishes to establish his bona fides as a knowledgeable citizen. Unfortunately, he shoots himself in the foot. He states that he was an NRA member, of which there?s no evidence, and that he broke with that organization for its stand on ?automatic weapons.? (Full disclosure: I?ve long been an NRA member. Second disclosure: Such membership has no effect whatever on the validity of the following remarks.)
As letter writers pointed out, automatic weapons are illegal without special permit, and quite rare. The NRA has never had a problem with this ban. Walaker inexplicably appears to use the Gordon Kahl shootout as his reason for quitting that organization. But automatic weapons weren?t used in that deadly encounter, and the NRA did not and does not condone criminal gun violence. So what is the mayor?s problem?
It?s hard indeed to imagine a ?lifelong hunter? and one-time NRA member who doesn?t know the difference between an automatic and semi-automatic weapon. Presumably he favors bolt action or pump firearms, but why stop there if hunting is the sole reason for the Second Amendment and firearm ownership? Surely single-shot muzzleloaders, if not bows and arrows, are the plain outcome of his view.
If automatic weapons are a virtual non-problem in the United States, then it seems Walaker is either mistaken about the prevalence of such guns or up to something else.
The mayoral summit on illegal guns, unless it was just a feel-good kumbaya sing-along exercise like ?Take Back the Night,? clearly purposes to further restrict gun ownership nationwide. Such constraints typically affect only the law-abiding, who are the ones we don?t have to worry about in the first place.

The Forum?s editorial statement makes the unjustified defense that the mayors were talking about illegal automatic weapons. Nonsense. ?Automatic? was nowhere in the summit?s title nor its primary concern. In fact, nowhere in the Jan. 19 Forum article the editors refer to is it mentioned that illegal automatic weapons were discussed by Walaker and other mayors. Gun tracing, targeting dealers illegally selling guns, and various other redundant measures were mentioned, but not the automatics. Only Walaker brought them up, and seemingly as a bid to justify signing on to the mayoral coalition?s anti-gun stand.
Indeed, the letter writers to The Forum, whose comments The Forum editors were pleased to call ?rant,? accurately pegged the whole matter. The so-called gun summit was an effort to put further restrictions on gun ownership ? all types of gun ownership. Walaker is apparently very mistaken about what automatic weapons are and the NRA?s stand on them, and it seems he and a good many other politicians haven?t the faintest idea of what the Second Amendment is all about.
For the record, the NRA has for decades worked closely with law enforcement agencies across America sponsoring firearm instructor schools, police pistol combat shooting matches (such as the National Police Shooting Championship, now 44 years old), and other support for security and law officers. The relationship between them hardly appears to be hostile. If the good mayor really was an NRA member he must not have paid much attention to the literature.
Anti-gun politicians are like floodwater: always probing for cracks in the dike. Eternal vigilance is our only answer.

Nelson is a Fargo postal worker and regular contributor to The Forum?s commentary pages.

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !