Assault Rifles & American Idol

Wiley’s Non Sequitur does it again. I haven’t yet figured out why gun owners are so against legislation banning assault rifles or requiring background checks before purchasing. Why should anyone own such a weapon? Surely, no one goes out hunting with them unless they’re hunting human beings. And we have enough folks out there hunting human beings with knives and pistols, which pretty much limits their hunting to only one or two at a time. We don’t need to hand them a weapon that can spit out as many as a hundred rounds in less than a minute. I went on-line and learned that one such high-capacity magazine is appropriately called a "Casket" and that assault rifles (or AK-47’s) that are fully automatic are currently banned. It’s the semi-automatic that isn’t banned. You can still insert a magazine that holds anywhere from ten to a hundred rounds but you can only fire them one at a time, one with each trigger pull. One can spray-fire with a fully-automatic weapon but fire only one shot at a time as fast as one can pull the trigger. I’m not opposed to hunting bear, deer, whatever, or anything with fur. But why does one need to hunt those things with a rifle that can fire as many as a hundred rounds before reloading? When I was in Korea I carried a semi-automatic M-1 Garand rifle that held a clip with six 30-caliber bullets. It was a wonderful weapon for fighting a war, but I can’t think I’d ever need it for shooting a deer. I’m not opposed to our Second Amendment right to bear arms, but I don’t think we need to bear machine guns or bazookas or mortars or atom bombs. C’mon, hunters and rifle owners, all you NRAers, get real.

American Idol has cut its contestants to 48 with a final reduction next week to the 24 who will compete for the big one. It seems to us that this year's crop has singers that are better than most of them in past seasons. And so many of them are so young. I guess with the ease and availability of YouTube and karaoke sites, kids now have lots of opportunities to perform and improve their techniques. I envy them that. I wish I'd had YouTube when I was a young, shy lad. I might have even tried out for Idol. Or not. We can never know how life might have changed if we'd taken that less-traveled road.

And, since it's Valentine's Day, I thought I'd present any readers I have with a field of red roses. Happy Valentine's Day whoever you are.