Still wrong, still a POS

The New York Times has a series of editorials on the gub situation, including this one:

Adam Lanza shot twenty children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut using a semiautomatic, military-style assault rifle made by Bushmaster. William Spengler Jr. used the same type of Bushmaster rifle to kill two firefighters last week in Webster, New York. The Washington snipers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, also used a Bushmaster in a spree that killed ten people in 2002.
Bushmasters are by no means the only assault weapons of choice among mass killers (the Aurora shooter used a Smith & Wesson), but the brand’s repeated presence in murderous incidents reflects the Bushmaster’s enormous popularity in the gun world, the result of a successful marketing campaign aimed at putting military firepower and machismo in the hands of civilians. Gun owners once talked about the need for personal protection and sport hunting, but out-of-control ad campaigns like the Bushmaster’s have replaced revolvers and shotguns with highly lethal paramilitary fantasies.
The guns, some of which come in camouflage and desert khaki, bristle with features useful only to an infantry soldier or a special-forces operative. A flash suppressor on the end of a barrel makes it possible to shoot at night without a blinding flare. Quick-change magazines let troops reload easily. Barrel shrouds allow precise control without fear of burns from a muzzle that grows hot after multiple rounds are fired. But now anyone can own these guns, and millions are in civilian hands.
“There is an allure to this weapon that makes it unusually attractive,” Scott Knight, former chairman of the International Chiefs of Police Firearms Committee, told USA Today, speaking of the Bushmaster rifles. “The way it looks, the way it handles— it screams assault weapon.”
The company’s catalog and ads show soldiers moving on patrol through jungles, Bushmasters at the ready. “When you need to perform under pressure, Bushmaster delivers,” says the advertising copy, superimposed over the silhouette of a soldier holding his helmet against the backdrop of an American flag. “Forces of opposition, bow down. You are single-handedly outnumbered,” said a 2010 catalog, peddling an assault rifle billed as “the ultimate military combat weapons system”. (Available to anyone for $2,500.)
In case that message was too subtle, the company appealed directly to the male egos of its most likely customers. “Consider your man card reissued,” said one Bushmaster campaign (pulled off the web after the Newtown shooting), next to a photo of a carbine. “If it’s good enough for the professional, it’s good enough for you.”
The effect of these marketing campaigns on fragile minds is all too obvious, allowing deadly power in the wrong hands. But, given their financial success, gun makers have apparently decided that the risk of an occasional massacre is part of the cost of doing business.

Rico says he's got plenty of machismo, thank you, and doesn't need a POS like the Bushmaster to make him feel manly... (Though it shouldn't, this does remind Rico of the old joke about 'how do you shoot women and children', the punchline of which is 'you just don't lead them as much'... Awful, he knows, but ya gotta laugh.)