Well, this is not really that big of a surprise, is it? Sniper Suspect Shown in Campaign Ad

WASHINGTON (AP) - John Allen Muhammad, accused in the sniper killings, has made his political debut. His image is appearing in a gun control commercial that an underdog Democrat hopes to ride to victory in New Jersey.

"Scott Garrett shouldn't be blamed for the sniper," says a commercial that Anne Sumers' campaign has begun airing in a district in the northern part of the state. "But Garrett's positions are the problem."

The Garrett campaign sharply criticized the ad.

"I think it's sickening to see Anne Sumers exploiting the tragedy of the sniper shootings in a cheap attempt to get votes and avoid the real issues," said Evan Kozlow, a spokesman for the GOP contender.

Jeff Garcia, a spokesman for Sumers, defended the ad as an attempt to use a recent event to bring the important issue of gun control to the voters.

The commercial opens with a newspaper photo of Muhammad, who faces charges in the shooting deaths that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area this month. That fades to the image of a barrel of a gun on one side of the screen and a picture of Garrett on the other.

The ad says Garrett voted in the Legislature to repeal a ban on assault weapons and to weaken laws covering concealed weapons. [...]

Typical.

And for what it's worth, the so-called "assault weapon ban" is based on purely cosmetic criteria that have nothing to do with the lethality of a particular caliber of bullet. According to the terms of the The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a semiautomatic rifle can be considered an "assault weapon" only if it has at least two of the following characteristics:

i) a folding or telescopic stock;
(ii) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon;
(iii) a bayonet mount;
(iv) a flash suppressor or threaded barrel designed to accommodate a flash suppressor; and
(v) a grenade launcher;

The rifle used in the sniper attack, manufactured after the law went into effect, only has one of these characteristics, a pistol grip. The .223 round is no more or less lethal when fired from something that has a pistol grip and fearsome looking black plastic stocks than it is from Granddad's shiny blue Ruger with the nice pretty wood stock.

And in the end, no matter what the law is, there were men out there who didn't much care one way or the other about the finer points of law.

They are killers, and deserve justice.
posted by Terry at 9:55:00 AM