Predictable: Gail Collins Recycles Brady Campaign Lies

Dear Gail Collins,

You are entitled to have your own opinions about firearms, but you are not entitled to your own reality. That means you should not parrot the speech of people with a vested political and financial interest in lying, like, say, a spokesperson for a gun control organization who is paid to pass along absurdities such as this.

If Loughner had gone to the Safeway carrying a regular pistol, the kind most Americans think of when they think of the right to bear arms, Giffords would probably still have been shot and we would still be having that conversation about whether it was a sane idea to put her Congressional district in the cross hairs of a rifle on the Internet.

But we might not have lost a federal judge, a 76-year-old church volunteer, two elderly women, Giffords's 30-year-old constituent services director and a 9-year-old girl who had recently been elected to the student council at her school and went to the event because she wanted to see how democracy worked.

Loughner's gun, a 9-millimeter Glock, is extremely easy to fire over and over, and it can carry a 30-bullet clip. It is "not suited for hunting or personal protection," said Paul Helmke, the president of the Brady Campaign. "What it's good for is killing and injuring a lot of people quickly."

First, Collins' is factually wrong when she asserts that a Glock 19 is not "a regular pistol." It is perhaps the single most "regular" pistol in the United States, being one of the family of the most popular sidearms purchased and used by civilians, military and law enforcement around the globe, and it uses the most common centerfire pistol caliber in the world (9x19mm). It is perhaps possible for Collins to be more wrong in her characterization of the Glock 19, but I fail to see how.

Then we have Paul Helmke, of the Brady Campaign, who claims that the Glock 19 is "not suited for hunting or personal protection."

He is perhaps half right. I don't know of anyone who would advocate the use of a compact 9mm pistol for hunting, but that doesn't mean it could not be done. It would be too small to take big game humanely, and is generally regarded as too large of a bullet for small game such as rabbit or squirrel, but I've heard the occasional anecdotal stories of mid-sized handguns being used to dispatch predators such as coyotes and feral dogs.

Helmke is of course laughably dishonest when he claims the Glock 19 "is not suited... for personal protection."

Personal protection is the entire reason the Glock 19 was created!

It was conceived of, designed to be, and marketed as a personal protection handgun from the ground up. It is particularly well-suited for concealed carry by law enforcement and citizens, and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, have been sold just to fit that role, just in the United States.

Perhaps it is too much to expect either competence or honesty from left-wig ideologues such as Collins and Helmke, but I do appreciate the fact that they don't even attempt to hide their dishonesty.