kudos to you, Democrat Paul Hackett

The other day I posted about how rifles are not great for home defense, and that shotguns should be used instead. This is not to say that rifles don't have their uses: hunting, target shooting, your constitutional citizen militia duties, etc.

Today I found a case of why using a rifle, even though it is physically a good choice in defense, is a bad political choice.

Indian Hill lawyer and former congressional candidate Paul Hackett - armed with a loaded assault rifle - chased down three men in a car after it crashed into a fence at his home in the early morning hours of Nov. 19.

His "assault rifle"? It was a semi-automatic AR-15. A rifle that you could pickup for anywhere between $600-2000 depending on what you add onto it. A rifle that is the civilian, semi-auto version of what our troops use. It's a great accurate rifle. Depending on how it's configured it can be a perfect long range varmint rifle or a fun short range plinker.

But, because it's a so-called "assault rifle", people are going to give him shit for this. If he had used a shotgun, he wouldn't be getting part of this heat.

Just look over at the left-wing Huffington Post, in the comments section, to see how he's getting grilled about this in the public mind. Some of the gun ignorance there is astounding, to say the least. It just shows again that people often fear what they don't understand.

The funny thing is that of all people for this to happen to, Hackett was one of the most well trained for the situation.

Hackett told police "he had done this about 200 times in Iraq, but this time there was not a translation problem."

Personally, I completely support what Paul Hackett did. I don't even have a problem with the fact that he used his AR-15. But the fearful mentality of this country, which has been force fed this idea that "assault weapons" are evil, makes people unable and unwilling to see that they do have legitimate uses.

Oh, and for the record, he ran as a Democrat. So kudos to him.