Not scary enough. Needs a bayonet mount, maybe.
I'm not much a fan of picking on witnesses in Senate hearings—I'm sure that, as we speak, Michelle Malkin is hot on the story of what Gabby Gifford's kitchen countertops are made of, because
that's some good quality jourmalism, right there—but Senate testimony-giver Gayle Trotter's testimony today was just a wee bit wacky, and that's me being nice about it. Also, to be clear, I'm sure NRA spokescritter Wayne LaWhatever was 10 times as wacky, but Wayne was on the losing end of a battle with my mute button, during his own preaching sessions, because I've already used up my yearly allotment of listening to Shootie the Clown there.
So then, here's Trotter, testifying about why good American moms need to be able to blow the holy effing bajeebus out of any potential intruders who might wander into her home, even if there are, like, 50 of them and they're all on meth and have bazookas or something:
"You are not a young mother who has a young child with her and ... you cannot understand. You are not a woman stuck in her house, not able to defend her children, not able to leave her child, not able to go seek safety, on the phone with 911," Trotter said. And that woman, "she's not used to being in a firefight."
This is the reason for ready access to
assault weapons, mind you. No mere shotgun will do for home defense, in this case. It's not "scary-looking" enough. Yes, the pro-gun side brought in someone to argue that it's important to have "scary-looking" guns.
Despite arguing for serious firepower, Trotter said later the most important thing about assault weapons for women's defense is the way the guns look.
"An assault weapon in the hands of a young woman defending her babies in her home becomes a defense weapon," said Trotter, a mother of six. "And the peace of mind she has ... knowing she has a scary-looking gun gives her more courage when she's fighting hardened violent criminals."
You need it to be scary looking, for courage? Christ, put some flame stickers on the sides or something. If you're in the middle of your little imaginary home firefight with a passing Mexican drug cartel and your first thought is "damn, this gun isn't scary looking enough, these 'hardened violent criminals' are gonna think poorly of me while I'm shooting them in the face," your paranoid fantasies need more work. You could buy a less "scary-looking" gun and more therapy, it'll do you more good.
This is the basic NRA complaint. On the extreme edge you've got the True Patriots, people who argue they need to be able to kill the government because the government might someday need killing, and close behind you've got the NRA, believers that all of human society as being illusory at best, and that we in America are only one little Hostess factory closing away from all hell breaking loose and you having to defend yourself and your family from roving Twinkie-craving gangs. We're that close. Trotter's imagination-enhanced version is basically that she needs to be ready to defend her kids against an entire Zombie Apocalypse, and that means assault rifles, period. It also means giving all our zombies ready access to the exact same weaponry, but that goes without saying. They need to look scary too, ya know.