Most of us are familiar w/ the oft cited statement by Josh Sugarman of the VPC:
"The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons."
How is this confusion encouraged? Let's take a look at some campaign literature from
Brady Campaign endorsed Illinois Representatives Kathy Ryg (now resigned) and
Naomi Jakobsson (who also sponsored the local ammo encoding bill).
Assassinations? Legal in Illinois? Nope.
Terrorists? Armor-piercing firepower? Nice scary phrasing.
Military assault weapons? Wait. First it was "Assault Rifle". Why the change?
"Gun Show Loophole"? Of which there wasn't one since all legal sales in Illinois require the possession of a FOID card which IS a universal background check unless the police aren't doing their job.
Nice picture of a Browning M2 Machinegun and associated info. This has to do w/ the topic how? Oh, right, more intentional misdirection.
Hey, that looks a little different from the 'Sniper Rifle" pictured above. Of course the other gun, a real machine gun, is NOT legally available in Illinois. But what's a little dishonesty during a campaign right?
More of those scary words and Brady Campaign talking points.
So are people like these ignorant, confused, or deliberately lying to their constituency?
Either way, this is one of the ways that this myth is kept alive. Since the Brady Campaign endorsed these individuals, they are directly complicit in spreading these distortions which graphically puts into perspective their claims of only wanting 'reasonable common sense' laws.
Images provided by Ol' Coach from
Illinois Carry. And as a note, these are not new but were sent out some time ago.