Water is Wet

And politicians lie, but some lies are more ridiculous than others.

Senator John Kerry, a hunter who supported the recently expired assault weapons ban, frequently tells audiences he has never met anyone who wanted to use an AK-47 to shoot a deer. But it is not clear what Mr. Kerry does with the Chinese assault rifle he told Outdoor Life magazine he kept in his personal collection.

In interviews appearing in the October issue of Outdoor Life, Mr. Kerry and President Bush were asked whether they were gun owners, and, if so, to identify their favorite gun.

Mr. Bush named the Weatherby 20 gauge (although he gave a slightly different answer in a separate chat with Field and Stream magazine.) Mr. Kerry's answer was more complicated.

"My favorite gun is the M-16 that saved my life and that of my crew in Vietnam," Mr. Kerry told the magazine. "I don't own one of those now, but one of my reminders of my service is a Communist Chinese assault rifle."

Mr. Kerry's campaign would not say what model rifle Mr. Kerry was referring to, where he got it and when, or how many guns he owned. A spokesman for the senator, Michael Meehan, said Mr. Kerry was a registered gun owner in Massachusetts. On Thursday morning, Mr. Meehan said he had not been able to ask Mr. Kerry about the rifle because of Mr. Kerry's hoarse voice; he did not respond to further inquiries.

The lack of specificity about the details of this "Chinese assault rifle" leads me to think that Kerry owns no such item, and was simply attempting to pander to the readership of Outdoor Life. As political fibs go, this is no big deal, but it will provide powerful ammunition (forgive the pun) for the other side, especially amongst those for whom gun control is a make-or-break issue.

Comments

[LK]

Your surmise about whether Kerry really owns such a rifle is the same as mine.

This episode reminds me of an ESPN PAGE2 interview about Kerry's athletic interests. Kerry referred to having run the Boston Marathon--rather impressive, because I think you have to have a time qualification to run in that one. Anyway, ESPN tried to confirm in which year he ran and, exactly as with the Outdoor News, his "spokespeople" did not respond to inquiries. I got the impression, again, that he could well have been fibbing to impress his interviewer.

These statements about sporting interests would seem trivial, but the pattern is quite disturbing re Kerry's character. His story about "Christmas in Cambodia" seems to be in the same vein, even more disturbing as he used it to make a political point in the Senate. Most disturbing of all is that, when responding to enquiries about this, his campaign apparently responded by removing references to Cambodia from his website.

If he was there then he should stick firmly with his story! Not doing so makes him look like a "fibber," to use the nicest word.

[Mrs Tilton]

I am in no position to ascertain whether Kerry does, in fact, own a 'Chinese assault rifle', nor do I have any opinion one way or the the other on the matter.

But if he is indeed 'pandering to a base' (and the truth or otherwise of his claim is irrelevant to this question), I wonder whether he is not being subtler than you give him credit for. Perhaps he is not trying to impress those who find Chinese assault rifles impressive, but rather underscoring the point that he was, in his youth, in a position to collect one as a souvenir, while his opponent famously was not.

[Abiola Lapite]

"Perhaps he is not trying to impress those who find Chinese assault rifles impressive, but rather underscoring the point that he was, in his youth, in a position to collect one as a souvenir, while his opponent famously was not."

That certainly is a possibility, but if it is correct, it strikes me as a case of being too clever by half; I am extremely doubtful that those who read Outdoor Life would pick up on such a subtle association, most of whom I suspect fall into precisely the class which finds assault rifles of all kinds fascinating.

[Mrs Tilton]

Then they're going to be disappointed, I fear. According to the NYT, it's not an assault weapon but an old bolt-action rifle.

Still not something I'd care to have pointed at me, but decidely less 'cool' than a Kalashnikov (or whatever the ChiCom version would be).

[Mrs Tilton]

BTW, would your typical Outdoor Life reader think assault rifles impressive? I have never seen the magazine, but from the name it sounds as though it's aimed more at the fishin' and shootin' crowd; I don't know whether their readership would overlap much with that of Soldier of Fortune. Now, if Kerry had claimed he owned a high-powered deer rifle with laser-aiming device and telescopic night-vision scope...

[Abiola Lapite]

No, they aren't exactly the Soldiers of Fortune demographic, but they are overwhelmingly likely to be Flyover Country folk, and as such would entertain a hearty fascination with firearms of all kinds; which isn't to say that the "assault rifle" bit would actually have impressed them, as the term is actually rather meaningless when considered carefully, at least within the context of the AWB. It cannot mean "semi-automatic rifle", as not all such rifles fell under the aegis of the ban, only the "scary looking" ones, while banning all semi-automatics would indeed mean the outright criminalization of many firearms used by people who hunt.

I think it would be more fruitful to look at this story from the perspective of a campaign staffer who knows very little about guns per se, but imagines from what little he does know that "assault rifles" would be impressive to the Outdoor Life demographic. Although Kerry's campaign is trying to shift the blame to the Outdoor Life staff, my suspicion is that his staff imagined that "ChiCom assault rifle" would go down a treat with the readership, and forgot to consider that the inherent hypocrisy of his opposing the lapse of the AWB while claiming to own such a weapon would be noticed by a large audience.

This sort of political fudging is certainly of a piece with Kerry's notable silence on the Assault Weapons Ban right up until its lapsing was a fait accompli, at which point he could come out vocally against a dead measure incapable of triggering the NRA's wrath, while satisfying the psychological need on the part of large portions of his base to have a candidate who appears to see "scary" firearms in similar terms as they do.

[Mrs Tilton]

I don't think there'd be hypocrisy in supporting the AWB while owning a 'ChiCom assault rifle' one had brought back from Vietnam as a memento, if one had (say) removed the bolt (or whatever one does) and hung the thing on a wall. And, though the thing isn't an assault rifle at all (even by the dodgy 'looks scary' standard of the AWB) and the point is therefore moot, hanging it up as a decoration is essentially what he seems to have done -- he claims he has never fired it.

[Stentor]

To back up Mrs Tilton's original point, note that the first thing Kerry said was to emphasize his Vietnam service. I think he was going for both "I'm cool because I have a high-powered gun" and "vote for me because I fought in Vietnam."

[Julian Elson]

Many Americans in Vietnam took AK-47-based assault rifles not merely as trophies, but as weapons for their own use. The m16 is generally considered the worst assault rifle in use (it's comparatively lightweight, so it has a big recoil and is somewhat unreliable. While the m16 is still said (I'm no gun nut, so this is all second or higher hand) to be a mediocre weapon, these problems were especially accute when it was first introduced, and it was prone to jamming as well.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of the Chinese Assault Rifle bit, but there were certainly many Americans in Vietnam who did take AK-47s.

[Julian Elson]

Many Americans in Vietnam took AK-47-based assault rifles not merely as trophies, but as weapons for their own use. The m16 is generally considered the worst assault rifle in use (it's comparatively lightweight, so it has a big recoil and is somewhat unreliable. While the m16 is still said (I'm no gun nut, so this is all second or higher hand) to be a mediocre weapon, these problems were especially accute when it was first introduced, and it was prone to jamming as well.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of the Chinese Assault Rifle bit, but there were certainly many Americans in Vietnam who did take AK-47s.