This is being peddled as some sort of national special report by the WaPo, which only goes to show that the WaPo knows little about guns and didn’t bother consulting anyone.   It also should — as I noted yesterday — act as a wake-up call to all the go-along to get-along “hunters” who just don’t see the use in an AR-15-type military style rifle, even as they cling to their high caliber bolt action sniper rifles. Because anything can be made to sound scary to those who don’t know anything about what it is that is being demonized, and you “good gun owners” and sportsman, with your “staggering” stockpile of birdshot, are next on the gun-grabber’s list.

For instance, we now learn that the Lanzas — yes, two of them, Adam and his mother (who didn’t belong to the NRA, incidentally, not that it matters) — had 1700 rounds of ammo stored.  That’s the equivalent of 3 + bricks of 22LR, or maybe 5 trips to the range between the two gun users who lived there. This, according to Senator Dick Blumenthal, who hopes to use this “staggering” number to push for background checks on ammunition, is an excessive amount of ammo worthy of government, of necessity (and for the children!), limiting aspects of the Second Amendment to fight the scourge of ammo stocking.  Even as the federal government has purchased billions of rounds for its own use.  Some pigs being more equal than others.

Now, any gun owner knows that 1700 rounds of various calibers for various weapons is not only not “excessive” — particularly when it’s far cheaper to buy in bulk — but is instead embarrassingly depleted. Yet, look at what the WaPo (and Blumenthal, et al.) do: they list each item found separately, so that they can savor names like “Blazer” and luxuriate over “Winchester Wildcat” instead of categorizing the numbers by caliber.  For instance, how many rounds of very cheap .22LR?  How many rounds of even cheaper shotgun shells?  How much in the way of .45?  How much in the way of .223 or 5.56 NATO (which is what is generally used in the “assault weapons” we’re supposed to be frightened of)? How many 9mm pistol cartridges?

The decision to break the list down as it is broken down is a rhetorical one.  And it’s meant to suggest that there’s more there than there actually is.  The decision to include spent shell casings — odd though it may seem — is meant to suggest that these were fired, and that in turn is meant to remind you who this guy fired on, though not with those cartridges.  Trust me:  I used to teach this stuff professionally.  These rhetorical decisions are intentional.

As for the guns Blumenthal, et al., hope to use to push the necessity of drastic changes to gun laws — of which their were 4 between the two gun owners living there (and not including those Lanza brought with him to Sandy Hook) — one of them is a BB-gun, available at Walmart and used by many kids to train gun safety and perfect aim and control. One of them doesn’t even exist as listed — but going from the inventory of ammo, which included some British .303, might be a WWII Enfield No4 MK1 rifle. One is a starter pistol. And the last is a .22LR.

Again, for clarity: what your government considers “staggering” and “extreme” and worthy of being detailed in the national media as the kind of dangerous arsenal used by prolific killers boils down to the following:

1) A BB gun (you’ll put your eye out, kid!); 2) a starter pistol;  3) a WWII era rifle that shoots British ammo; and 4) a 22LR, which shoots rimfire cartridges the size of a fingernail — and is often a starter rifle or target practice rifle, purchased specifically because the ammo (used to be) cheap and plentiful.

And for those weapons, and others taken to Sandy Hook, 1700 rounds of ammo — much of it belonging to the shotgun found in Lanza’s trunk (not used) and the two pistols found on the scene (which I’, presuming from the inventory were a 9mm and a 45, neither of which was used) — is not at all “staggering.”

What this suggests — to me, at least, and to the pro-2nd Amendment supporters and champions standing up for their natural right to self-defense, I suspect — is the exact opposite of what it supposedly will suggest to those unfamiliar with firearms:  namely, that Lanza had a modest arsenal, and that, pace what the government and its statist media arm have been trying to push over these last several months,  it isn’t the size of the magazine or the caliber of the bullet or the aesthetics or usability features of the rifle that caused the tragedy at Sandy Hook, or any other mass murder by a spree killer; but rather the intent to carry it out and the will to do so, coupled with the government prohibitions on concealed carry that advertise these spaces as turkey shoots for those bent on committing mass murder.

But then, lawful gun owners already knew that.  As would anyone not pretending that the problem is the guns or the size of the magazines.  And that’s what they are doing:  putting on a show.  Pretending.   And using the corpses of dead children as a shield against their lies.

Lanza was able to kill over 20 people with a standard-mag, AR-15 rifle, of which there are more than 4 million in circulation.  And yet these rifles are hardly ever used in crimes, mostly because they are more difficult to conceal than pistols, and because they are oftentimes impractical for the kinds of indoor crimes in which guns are typically brandished.

He was able to use the rifle because he knew he was heading into an area where no one was armed to stop him.  He could have taken his time if he wished.  But the truth is, it would have been just as easy for him to commit this crime with handguns (given the proximity to his victims).  And that includes revolvers, with which he could have used a speedloader or merely brought four or five with him — three or four on his person and one in a fanny pack.

But he probably felt a lot more badass carrying a rifle around in public.  Or that the media would present it that way in order to sensationalize what didn’t need any sensationalism — and he would somehow appear superhuman in his evil, not merely because he killed a large number of innocent school children, but because he did it with a “military-style” “assault” weapon.

The sad truth is, the media took the focus off of Lanza and placed it on semi-auto rifles with bayonet lugs.  They politicized a tragedy to try to affect a sea change in personal liberties for law abiding citizens.  They were opportunistic and ghoulish and cynical and craven.

It’s who they are. It’s what they do.  And shame on any so-called “conservative” who allows them to get away with any little bit of this.