The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #73392   Message #1280014
Posted By: Nerd
24-Sep-04 - 11:18 AM
Thread Name: BS: Does anyone care when Kerry lies?
Subject: RE: BS: Does anyone care when Kerry lies?
Also, bb, here is your initial claim:

In a recent speech, Kerry said that not renewing the "assault weapons ban" would put military assult rifle on the street.

So, where did he say "Military assult rifle," or even "military assault rifles?" He didn't.

He said two things: that cops wanted the ban renewed because they felt it would help keep machine guns off the streets. Even though machine guns were not specifically covered by the ban, this is an arguable position in many ways. For example, shipments of now-legal semi-automatics could be used to hide and therefore assist in the smuggling of still-illegal automatics, since they look essentially similar.   In any case, Kerry was making claims about police officers' beliefs, not the actual effects of the ban.

Second, he argued that if you tried to buy an "AK 47 or some other military assault weapon" you could do so. We have learned on this thread that the AK 47 can probably be modified into a now-legal gun that only fired in semi-automatic mode. Whether it would still be an AK-47 is a technicality that I don't think Kerry knows. The rest of his statement, that semi-automatic military assault weapons are now legal, is true.

So nothing Kerry said is necessarily false. If you want to prove it's false you have to prove that

1) No police officers believed that the ban was helping to keep machine guns off the streets.

2) There are no semi-automatic military assault weapons.

We have dealt ad nasaeum with the latter; everyone from the US Government to the Gun Lobby agrees they exist.

So what about the former, bb?

I also think it's interesting that you began claiming he was lying by

1) lying yourself, by claiming he said "assault rifles"

2) not quoting him directly.

And that you then blamed ME for not knowing which part of what you didn't quote you were claiming was a lie.