Why does Lindsey Graham have an AR-15?

No, I’m serious.  I know he has a constitutional right to have one.  He’s got the right to have almost any kind of gun he wants, as do I and as do you.  What I want to know is:  Why does he choose to have an assault rifle?  

The Constitution allows us a lot of liberties, but we don’t take advantage of all of them.  The ones we do, we have a reason for.  Deer hunters have hunting rifles.  Duck hunters, too.  Makes sense.  They like to hunt animals and – I hope – use all parts of those animals as my father taught me to.  Skeet shooters use rifles for that purpose.  That also makes sense.

AR-15?  That’s a toughie.  Why would an upstanding member of Congress own a gun whose primary purpose is the efficient killing of large numbers of people?  What is it that makes him an assault weapon guy rather than a deer hunter or a skeet shooter?  Sure, he was in the service, so he’s familiar with them.  But he’s not in the service anymore.

I promised myself I wouldn’t make any anatomy jokes like I do whenever I see a Hummer with a pristine paint job drive by on the city streets.  The overcompensation is so easy and so obvious, I don’t like to bother.

I’m not asking in that keyed-up pacifist “why does anyone need a gun?” way.  I’d like to understand what it is about owning a gun like that that appeals to him.  And at a time like this, I’d think that Senator Graham and other gun owners would want to explain it to the rest of us.  Screaming Second Amendment is a response that is both too simplistic and misleading.

As it is, Graham simply says “I own an AR-15” and that’s the end of it, as if his declaration puts all arguments to rest.  Please sir, I want more.  That kind of argument holds little water now and will hold none the next time a “responsible, respectable” pillar of the community snaps and takes out his whole family.  Then we’re reminded respectability and the lack of a criminal record aren’t absolute predictors.

Yesterday I watched the footage of Alex Jones on the Piers Morgan show going almost purple while he railed about how we have to protect ourselves against our government.  Invoking Hitler, Stalin and Mao, he bellowed that we would see 1776 rise again if “they” tried to disarm us.  Pretty scary stuff.

Some would say Mr. Jones is “respectable.”  He’s got most of the trappings of respectability:  home, family and a syndicated radio show to boot.  Others would say he’s crazy and that someone who acts like he does is the very last person on earth who should have access to any kind of a weapon.  And if we lived in the country Mr. Jones thinks we do, his would already have been taken away from him.

Mr. Jones claims to own over 50 firearms.  I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one of them is an AR-15.  And we know why.  He has to protect his family from the evil empire that is the United States Government.  Now I would very much like to know why the responsible, respectable gentleman from South Carolina feels the desire to keep military weapons when he is no longer in the military.  I don’t think he’s going to take up arms against the government, but I would think he’d want to drown out or at least offset voices like Alex Jones’.