To get this post you just gotta read the response from the infatuated Bill Menezes.  Ever wondered what it’s like to try to have a rational discussion with someone paid to be constantly offended?

Imagine that you take your eleven-year-old nephew to the aquarium. You’re standing in front of a dolphin tank, and the nephew says “Wow, look at all the big fish!”

You respond, “Well they sure do look like fish, but really they’re mammals.”

“You’re lying!” the nephew shouts.

So you try to explain the differences between fish and mammals. Fish lay eggs; mammals give live birth. Fish breath water; mammals breath air.

“It’s the Big Lie Technique,” he screams. “You’re just repeating a lie over and over so that people will believe it.” Then he throws himself on the floor, crying hysterically that you have hurt his feelings and have offended children everywhere.

Later, you find out that a neighbor Tim pays your nephew a dollar every time he accuses someone of lying, and gives him an extra two dollars if he acts really upset about the “lie.” Now you have the gist of what Tim Gill pays for.

Now let me go into way too much detail. Last week on the radio, I talked about the manufactured claims that Mexico is being flooded with “assault weapons” smuggled from Mexico from the US.  “Assault weapons” are a type of machine gun, and machine guns have been strictly regulated in the United States since 1934, and the manufacture of new machine guns has been banned since 1986. To buy a pre-1986 machine gun now takes months of paperwork, and will cost you at least several thousand dollars.

I suggested that the source of assault weapons in Mexico was probably the same source that the Mexican drug cartels use for their grenades, mortars, and so on: the former Warsaw Pact weapons dumps which have flooded the Third World with AK-47s, ever since the Soviet empire collapsed.

What is an assault weapon? Well, since I know something about guns and I work next to 2nd Amendment super-star Dave Kopel, I use the proper technical definition: assault rifles are “short, compact, selective-fire weapons that fire a cartridge intermediate in power between submachine gun and rifle cartridges.” That definition is from the United States Department of Defense, Defense Intelligence Agency book Small Arms Identification and Operation Guide.  So an assault rifle is a medium size combat rifle; with the selector switch, it can either fire automatically (like a machine gun) or semi-automatically (when you press the trigger, only one bullet comes out).

Now, starting in the late 1980s, the anti-gun lobbies began promoting a national panic about “assault weapons.” They knew that when they said “assault weapons,” the public would think “machine guns.” That is, after all, the correct definition.

But the gun ban lobbies were not trying to ban any type of machine gun. They were trying to ban a bunch of guns just because they looked like assault weapons. Some of the guns looked like an AK-47. Others looked like science fiction weapons. In terms of how the guns worked, they were just like other ordinary guns, but much of the public was duped into thinking these guns were machine guns.

A few states banned these scary-looking guns, and in 1994, the Clinton “assault weapon” ban was passed by Congress. It expired in 2004. Again, the ban did not apply to a single genuine assault weapon (which is a type of machine gun). It just applied to regular guns which looked like true assault weapons.

So anyway, the bogus definition of “assault weapon” is still on the books in some states, and in some regulations created by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE).

Now, these days, when Eric Holder or the New York Times says that American “assault weapons” are being smuggled into Mexico, it’s doubtful that they even know the difference between a machine gun and a semi-automatic. If they’re thinking about real assault weapons (according to the Department of Defense definition), America is not the source. If they’re talking about pretend “assault weapons” (using the definition made up by the gun prohibition lobbies, and adopted by anti-gun government officials), then they’re right; there are a lot of regular American guns, including some scary-looking guns, which get smuggled into Mexico. But they’re not machine guns. They are not assault weapons.

So when I go on the radio, and explain the correct definition of assault weapons, I don’t call Eric Holder a “liar.” He pretty clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about, so he’s not intentionally lying. Besides, if he did know what he was talking about, he could point to the “assault weapon” definition which the gun prohibition lobbies pushed into law. His use of “assault weapon” wouldn’t really be a lie, because it would match with a statutory definition, even if that statutory definition is ridiculous and plainly wrong. (Just like the Washington, D.C., ordinance which banned regular guns like the Colt. 45 semi-automatic and the Ruger .22 caliber rifle by labeling them “machine guns,” even though they were not real machine guns, and could not fire automatically.)

The funny thing is, Bill Menezes is apparently oblivious to the fact there’s a debate over the meaning of “assault weapon.” When I use the correct definition, and explain precisely what I’m talking about, he shrieks that I’m lying. But his only evidence is to point out that anti-gunnies use the incorrect definition.

If Bill wants to argue that the “assault weapon” definition fabricated by the gun prohibition movement is superior to the definition used by the United States Department of Defense, that’s his privilege.

But he really shouldn’t fly into a phony rage because I use the right definition. Even if Tim Gill does pay him a bonus every time he throws a temper tantrum.