I’m always amazed at the number of foreigners who feel they need to opine on American politics. I mean, it’s fine they have an opinion, but they’ll fiercely offer an opinion on social media and vigorously defend it as if the regulations in question impact them directly.

It’s amazing.

Guns are a prime example, actually. I’ve had plenty of people from Europe try to debate gun rights with me, all while ignoring the fact that their opinions are completely irrelevant.

But they do it anyway.

Take this piece from the Irish Times which refers to gun control here as a “national scandal.”

So far this year there have been 203 mass shootings – incidents in which four or more were injured or killed – in the United States. Automatic weapons have been implicated in a quarter of deaths and three quarters of non-fatal injuries in the mass shootings in the decade to 2018. Their sale is prohibited in only seven states.

The US is, meanwhile, in the middle of a gun-buying boom that shows no sign of letting up – the annual number of firearms manufactured has nearly tripled since 2000 in a country home to around 400 million guns.

Gun control opponents insist that semi-automatic rifles are essential for hunting, but as one former gun company executive retorted last week, it is like arguing that you need a Formula One racecar to go shopping. And the Buffalo shooting gave the lie to the repeated claim by gun advocates that the best answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. The supermarket had a good guy, an armed security guard, who couldn’t stop ashooter wearing body armour and was himself killed.

Actually, that’s a strawman. Almost none of us argue that we need semi-automatic rifles for hunting–though many of us concede that yes, they’re great for that.

No, we need semi-automatic rifles to protect ourselves, both from criminals and any tyrannical government we may find ourselves dealing with in the future.

And really, the comparison between semi-automatics and Formula One racecars is beyond ridiculous.

Now, if we were talking about using full-auto for hunting, then maybe I’d agree. Fully automatic is really too much for hunting anything. Even a three-round burst is probably a bit excessive.

But the reason I know the hunting claim is a strawman is because the Second Amendment isn’t about hunting. Look at the text. The militia clause–the one anti-gunners routinely like to trot out to justify gun control–makes it clear that our guns are to be protected from regulation so we can defend our homes and our nation.

For that, semi-automatics are barely acceptable.

On the upside, literally no one cares what the Irish Times thinks about our right to own guns. Instead of taking their concerns seriously, the best they deserve are all the Irish jokes you care to tell. As someone who happens to be part Irish, though, I’m a little concerned that a paper in a nation with a history like Ireland–a history full of being oppressed by England–would fail to appreciate the right to own guns.

What I’m not, though, is surprised by it.