In a rush to ensure they don’t waste a crisis, the Democratic liberals are climbing all over themselves to enact a litany of new gun laws.  Liberals have focused their efforts on those dangerous looking assault weapons that aren’t really military weapons and those great big magazines.  They want these things banned.  Oh, they want to ban anything that has an assault weapon like feature, like a pistol grip.  They want to ban the sale of these things on a state by state basis, because the liberals in the House and Senate know they will never get reelected if they attempted a national ban.  

Little matter that none of this makes sense.  The civilian versions of the U.S. military small arms are very different from ones used by the military.  The most significant difference is that all civilian versions are semi-automatic while the military versions are fully automatic.  When firing a semi automatic fire arm you must pull the trigger every time you want the gun to fire.  A military version has a function built in that allows the shooter to select the rate of fire.  When the selector is engaged, the weapon fires like a machine gun.  The civilian version may look like military weapons, but they don’t have anywhere near the same rate of fire as their military cousins.

The states that are banning these weapons and accessories are the liberal Northeast states, Maryland, Colorado and California.  The Northeast states are the traditional home of the fire arms industries.  Many of the companies were founded prior to the civil war when the American industrial revolution was born in New England.  Missing in the emotional process employed by liberals as they wrote these laws was the understanding that were banning products produced in their states.  The liberal lawmakers didn’t care, the nasty gun companies are owned by those filthy rich people that weren’t paying their fair share of taxes.  Good riddance!

Not considered in their emotional rush to action is the very nature of a corporation.  Most large, successful, companies in the U.S. are very diversified.  Companies that make firearms make many other sporting products, market based diversification.  The technologies used to manufacture fire arms are readily adapted to a wide range of products, volume products that require high precision manufacturing techniques.  This has led to firearms companies producing a large number of products that have no relationship to the firearms market.  

The truly tragic aspect of the liberal rush to legislate personal responsibility is not the financial cost in millions to the American taxpayers to implement unenforceable, ineffective laws but the destruction of jobs.  When you destroy an industry you destroy the jobs of the individuals that are employed in that industry.  One of the companies that is under the gun is Colt Manufacturing.  Colt is a 175-year-old company with obligations to its owners, employees and loyal customers.  There are many families that have more than one family member working for Colt some families have more than one generation working for Colt.

The companies will likely move their production facilities to another, more friendly state.  Some of their employees will follow.  Some of the employees, for a variety of financial reasons, won’t be able to move.  The overall, public impression left by the employees of Colt, is that Colt Manufacturing is a very good company. A good employer for their employees, a responsible member of their community, and responsive to their customers.  

Not to be lost in this discussion is the fact that Colt Manufacturing is a major supplier of equipment to local law enforcement and the U.S. military.  To harm a company like Colt, to destroy the jobs of their employees, is to weaken an entire industry.  It is more than an assault on a single company, it is an effort to destroy an industry that is very important to our national defense.  I guess the liberals were just practicing when they killed the luxury boat industry in the 1990s.

There has been plenty of discussion about the individuals constitutional rights to own firearms.  Liberals have no respect for the Constitution or the Second Amendment and apparently they have no respect for the employment of hardworking skilled individuals.  The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness should include the restriction on government assault of legitimate industry for purely political purposes.