Emily Miller: NYT got it wrong
I made the mistake of quoting a New York Times article yesterday in regards to Aaron Alexis’ inability to purchase an AR-style rifle in Virginia because of his residency. But our buddy, Emily Miller of the Washington Times sets us straight;
“Virginia law does not prohibit the sale of assault rifles to out-of-state citizens who have proper identification,” Dan Peterson, a Virginia firearms attorney, told me Tuesday night. The required identification is proof of residency in another state and of U.S. citizenship, which can be items like a passport, birth certificate or voter identification card.
The Commonwealth defines “assault firearm” as any semiautomatic centerfire rifle or pistol with a magazine which will hold more than 20 rounds or can accommodate a silencer or is equipped with a folding stock.
John Frazer, also a firearms attorney in the Commonwealth, told me that, “State law in Virginia — like most states — allows purchase of rifles or shotguns by residents of other states. Virginia simply requires some additional forms of identification.”
[…]
Perhaps they were confused with the federal law on handguns, which can only be sold or transferred through dealers in the same state as the buyer.
Miller goes on to say that Alexis passed the required background checks in order to purchase the shotgun, a Remington 870 pump-action, recommended by certain members of the Obama Administration as an acceptable means of defending your home when discharged randomly into the atmosphere periodically. So, the problem isn’t the gun, it’s law enforcement’s inability to update the NICS system in a timely manner.
Thanks for straightening us out, Ms. Miller, we still love you.
Category: Guns
The NYT pushing false information on purchasing “assault weapons” and firearms laws; wow, who would’ve thunk. It’s like they have an agenda or somethin’….
Naawwww, not the NYT!!
Stupid is as stupid does.
The problem is that the Navy Yard is in the District of Columbia, not Virginia.
Go here: http://www.nraila.org/gun-laws/state-laws.aspx
if you have questions about gun laws in various states and their reciprocity statutes, too.
Another interesting analysis of the AR-15 boogeyman is by media critic Eric Wemple in the Washington Post who points out the wide range of news outlets who got the facts wrong, including the expected hysteria from CNN’s Piers Morgan:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/09/17/navy-yard-shooter-what-about-that-alleged-ar-15/
It seems to me there are also two elements driving a lot of this that are rarely mentioned. One is that as the traditional news business has collapsed and consolidated, it has set up an increased echo chamber effect coming from a smaller number of news outlets concentrated on the island of Manhattan. And when one gets it wrong, they all tend to get it wrong.
That same echo chamber, in a lot of subtle ways, also seems to have gotten more Anglophilic. You can see this with CNN’s choice of Morgan as a commentator as well as the NYT’s choice of Mark Thompson, a former BBC guy, as its new CEO. The British, just in case it needs pointing out, have never had a Second Amendment, and to some extent are still arguably caught up in the romantic myth of the kindly unarmed police constable trying to figure out who killed the vicar in the rose garden.
Yet another thing to consider, and you never hear this, is that a Remington 870 loaded with 00 buckshot can be a more formidable weapon than an AR-15 given the right circumstances.
But that would require a certain level of understanding the echo chamber might not want because it complicates the simple talking point narrative.
A long time ago, when I worked in the towers at the Utah State Prison, we were armed with a Remington 870 shotgun and an AR-15 rifle.
I never had to use those weapons, but I’m guessing the rifle was for shooting at escapees, or inmates in the yard, while the shotgun was for defending the tower from being accessed by inmates.
Nice weapons, both of them ideal for home defense.
I reckon you guys already know that the nickname for the shotgun is “the poor man’s machine gun”.
Back in those days, our sidearm was a Smith and Wesson .38 calibre revolver, but after I left, they upgraded to a Glock 9 milimeter semi-automatic pistol, AND issued everyone a ballistic vest.
This is also the problem:
“My son was at Marine Barracks — at the Navy Yard yesterday – and they had weapons with them, but they didn’t have ammunition. And they said, ‘We were trained, and if we had the ammunition, we could’ve cleared that building.’ Only three people had been shot at that time, and they could’ve stopped the rest of it.”
To be fair to Joe The Biden I believe he was not talking about an 870 but rather a double barrel.
“The NYT got it wrong”. In other news, water is wet.