As Second Amendment supporters, we may not have heard it all, but we sure have heard a lot. And by what I’m speaking about is the bovine excrement served as rhetoric from the anti-civil liberties camp. Josh Sugarmann is about as deceptive as they come concerning verbiage used to damage the Second Amendment. Sugarmann is the force behind so-called “assault weapons,” noting an ignorant public won’t be able to discern the difference between semi-automatic firearms and fully-automatic firearms. Recently Sugarmann went on a deceptive tear against Ruger, and the other anti-civil liberty vultures followed suit – or perhaps coordinated.

Two weeks ago in Lewiston, Maine, we saw once again the horrific price our nation pays as the gun industry relentlessly innovates for lethality—and mass shooters repeatedly use military-bred semiautomatic assault weapons for the exact purpose for which they were designed.

Soon after this most recent attack, the VPC released a 13-page backgrounder on the Ruger assault rifle reportedly used in the shooting, which one gun magazine describes as “easy to carry, fast to the shoulder, and packing the punch of an old school .30-caliber battle rifle.”

The report’s release is just one way in which the VPC continues to focus attention on America’s unregulated gun industry and works to hold it accountable for the deaths and injuries that result from its products.

At the same time, nearly 134 Americans die each day in gun suicides, homicides, and unintentional deaths.

As illustrated above, Sugarmann continues to use the term he coined, “assault weapons” pairing the descriptor with the modifier “military-bred” – whatever that is. The 13 page “backgrounder” referenced is worth a gander if you have the stomach for garbage. The report lists alleged mass shootings that were conducted with Ruger manufactured firearms.

The datasheets listing out the details of these shootings include terms like “high capacity” magazines, which are not defined. Other descriptions like “Large capacity magazine, at least 16 rounds” were used, as well as “100-round magazines.” There’s no venn diagram indicating if a 100-round or 40-round magazine meets the definition of “high capacity” according to them.

My personal favorite magazine description in the chart was “‘banana-style’ large capacity ammunition magazines.” These banana-style magazines were paired with a Ruger 10/22, a common rimfire .22 rifle used to teach children marksmanship. The “sawed-off Ruger 10/22 rifle” proved to be deadly, indeed, it is a firearm, but the lethality of this rifle has very little to do with the banana style magazines Sugarmann’s group is fear mongering over. I detect some projection with this anti-banana undertone.

Yes, the near smallest caliber rifle can be deadly. A fact that they’re not going to focus on, because that’s part of the big picture – to ban all guns.

The report goes on to describe the lethality of the rifle said to be used in the recent Lewiston, Maine shooting and Ruger’s “assault rifles.” The group also coined a term “assault pistols,” where a pistol version of the 10/22 is described on their list. What makes these “assault pistols” is not explained. Just they lament a description from an article describing one of the pistols to look as if if were from a “Terminator” film.

We see some convergence with other anti-liberty groups. The report talks about state compliant versions of these so-called “assault weapons.”

“State Compliant” Assault Weapons to Evade State Regulation

Ruger also designs and markets “state compliant” assault rifles and pistols designed to purposely circumvent specific state bans on assault weapons, including the SFAR, as seen below.

A chart comparing features shows different versions of a semi-automatic rifle. The “state compliant” moniker is being used to infer that Ruger and other companies are being deceptive, when in reality they’re just looking to follow the laws in given jurisdictions.

Recent coverage from the commie mommies at Everytown parroted a similar “fact.”

Ruger offers “state-compliant” AR-15s that are slightly modified to remain legal under select states’ assault weapons bans but can be just as deadly, and in the past, the company offered “pistol” versions — like the kind used by the Boulder shooter.

I think this is a solid place where all these groups lose their arguments, “but can be just as deadly.” Like the .22 used to kill people? They practically admit that the banned features do nothing but inhibit the law-abiding, rather than make a rifle more or less lethal.

The Everytown coverage does not end with that bullet point on the rhetorical overlap.

Last night, law enforcement officials confirmed that the gunman in Lewiston, Maine, likely used a Ruger SFAR, an AR-10 that fires a .308 caliber cartridge, even more powerful than the AR-15. Surveillance photos suggest that the shooter equipped his Ruger SFAR rifle with tactical gear, including an optic or red-dot sight, a flashlight, and 20-round magazines that were taped together for faster reloading, a tactic often referred to as “jungle style.” By taping two magazines together, the shooter was able to bolster his capacity to that of 40 rounds.

…

To date, AR-15s manufactured by Ruger have been used by mass shooters in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and Boulder, Colorado, and AR-10s produced by Ruger have now been recovered in two of the country’s deadliest mass shootings: Las Vegas and Lewiston.

The twist to paint one firearm as being more lethal than another is absurd. These are arguments that Second Amendment supporters have been making for years – that is, if a person is murdered by a wooden stock .22 rifle, are they any less dead than if they’re shot with a .223 or in this case a .308? Somehow Everytown decided to up the ante on the lethality, completely ignoring that an AR-15 and AR-10 can be offered in different chamberings.

The war on Ruger spilled over to The Trace, a publication of Daddy Bloomberg’s. In their weekly bulletin, they decided to share a story which the original reporting is trapped behind a paywall that seems to tap into an anti-Ruger sentiment.

Robert Earl Tucker Jr. spent years trying to get his Ruger back. Authorities seized his pistol in August 2019, in connection with an incident in which Tucker apparently drew his gun during an argument in a Baton Rouge Walmart just days after the mass shooting at one of the company’s stores in El Paso, Texas. The saga that followed, The Advocate reports, showcased the limits of Louisiana’s gun laws.

…

Then the 5th Circuit got involved. Tucker appealed his conviction, and the federal appellate court overturned it and vacated his sentence, ruling that because he had been declared a danger by a physician, rather than a judicial authority, there wasn’t “sufficient evidence” to back the charges. The state case was dismissed in September, and a Louisiana judge last week ordered that Tucker’s gun be returned.

When he ruled that the Ruger should be returned, the state judge noted that Louisiana has no extreme risk protection order law. “The issue is: Under whose authority can I do anything,” he asked prosecutors during the hearing. “You want me to do something that I have zero authority to do.”

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all of these anti-liberty entities are ganging up on Ruger all at once. It appears this is going to be the prevailing tactic going forward, attack the manufacturer by name. 

There are only a limited number of firearm manufacturers and to stigmatize one brand over another based on the number of situations the arms get misused in or criminally used, is just bad logic. We don’t categorize the number of fatalities due to DUIs on whether or not the negligent act was caused using a Ford or GM vehicle, do we?

We know this is all part of the plan to continue to give bad name recognition to companies in the public’s eye. The more lethal these groups can make any one company over the other is all the more of a win for them. Even if that means listing .22 caliber rifles several times in the list of alleged mass shootings insinuating they are so-called “assault weapons.”

The excrement is thick from these groups, and Second Amendment supporters need to keep circling the wagons to protect each other. Today it’s Ruger, tomorrow it’ll be Glock. It doesn’t matter what’s being manufactured and for what purpose, any statistical upper hand these cretins write for themselves, they’re going to exploit, and we need to stick together. Side bar news flash, all firearms can be used to inflict mortal wounds.