If you want to fire an assault weapon, do what so many patriotic Americans do: Join the armed forces.

Does that sound familiar to anyone?  

That could have been Lenin rephrased, as in this case, where the party members were exempt from a weapons ban.  Or it could have been Adolf Hitler who said:

If any citizen wants to possess arms, let him join the Party.

But it was neither.  And it was said in todays newspaper, not by a despot known to have killed millions, but by the U.S. politician Del. Anthony G. Brown who is Martin O'Malley's running mate for the governor of Maryland.  He also said this:

Assault weapons have one purpose and one purpose only: That is to kill human beings.

Of the thousands of rounds I have fired through my "assault weapons" no humans were killed as a result.  I have to conclude that either my guns are defective or Brown's thinking is defective.  I don't have to toss a coin on this one.  In a comparison between my rifles and Brown's brain I'll take my rifles as the better of the two any day.