“After reading Ryan Donohue’s article “Rap not responsible for violence”, I was surprised at the number of factual errors it contained concerning firearms. I’ll list them in bullet (no pun intended) format:

- The assault weapons ban of 1994 did not make it “illegal for gun manufactures to make and sell automatic weapons”. Automatic weapons have been tightly controlled since 1934, and illegal to manufacture in the US since 1986.

- Uzi’s, M-16’s, Mac-10’s , etc., fall into the realm of machine guns (AKA “automatic weapons”) and are therefore already tightly controlled, and virtually unobtainable to the average law abiding citizen. Mr. Donohue seemed to imply they were readily available.

The bottom line is, the assault weapons ban mentioned in the article only pertained to what could best be described as “replicas” of military style automatic weapons. They can and are used for hunting, target and recreational shooting. They merely look scary and remind us of the last shoot-em-up Hollywood movie we saw on TV.

It’s a shame these misconceptions continue to plague us, because I do agree with Mr. Donohue’s final comment. It is time to start focusing on the causes of these horrible crimes rather than demonizing their after-effects. Or, in this case, firearms.”

Thankya, thankyaverramuch.

Sure, you can own them if you’re rich. Because of the 1986 ban on registration of new transferrable machine guns, the prices for NFA weapons are through the roof; beyond the means of normal Joes. My friend went through all the NFA stuff for a submachine gun back when stuff was more affordable. I wish I had.