Hey, NRA, is this what you call hitting ‘em with your best shot?

Honestly, in the Age of Trump, it’s sometimes difficult to discern between real news and The Onion.

Can it be possible that the lobbyist for the Florida NRA – an 80 year-old woman named Marion Hammer – actually made this argument against a proposed ban on assault rifles?

“How do you tell a 10-year-old little girl who got a Ruger 10/22 with a pink stock for her birthday that her rifle is an assault weapon and she has to turn it over to government or be arrested for felony possession?” (Source: Tampa Bay Times)

Since I don’t know a ton of 1-year-old little girls to begin with, and the ones I do know aren’t clamoring for pink ARs, I haven’t given these types of question much thought if any.

But now that Ms. Hammer mentions it…

My first thought would be to ask that 10 year-old what she needed a Ruger 10/22 for to begin with.

If she explained that she needed it for sport hunting, I might ask why she needed a rifle that could hold more than 10 rounds, or that allowed you to add-on a much larger ammo magazine. Because isn’t sport hunting supposed to be something of a fair fight, in which the doe or bear or duck or panther or alligator or whatever else Florida sport hunters like to kill, pit their instincts, their native wiles, their keen awareness of the terrain, against a human with a gun. But the human with a gun should be a good shot, no? Not someone who needs a weapon of mass destruction to mow down their prey.

After covering this ground, I might want to note that a pink gun is sort of babyish. But that would be a bit insulting, so I’d go with something along the lines of a pink rifle looking like a toy. And no self- or other-respecting 10-year-old girl would want a younger child - one without the advantage of having been raised in a home where guns are oh so respected, a young child lacking the vast knowledge, superb skills, and inerrant judgment of a 10-year-old – to grab that pink rifle – looking oh so much like a toy – and blow an even younger child’s brains out.

I might give the 10-year-old, Ruger-toting little girl an out, gently asking whether she really wanted that rifle for her birthday, or was she just doing it to please her gun-loving family. I might probe a bit. Would you want a bicycle? An electric scooter? An art set? A jewelry-making kit? A nail kit? The complete Harry Potter?

I mean, that pretty in pink Ruger cost several hundred bucks. That’s an awful lot of other stuff that could be had instead.

Hammer had plenty of other arguments against the (unlikely-to-pass) Florida assault rifle ban.

After all, Florida has worked long and hard to woo the gun industry to locate to that state.

“Gov. Rick Scott and Enterprise Florida solicited and offered significant financial incentives to gun manufacturers to come to Florida to bring more jobs,” she said…

The amendment would ban the future sale of assault rifles in the Sunshine State and force current owners to either register them with the state or give them up.

But Hammer said the proposed amendment doesn’t protect the more than 150 major gun manufacturers in the state, of which many produce weapons that would be outlawed by the ban. Those companies would be forced to move because they couldn’t possess any new assault weapons, she said.

Those gun manufacturers, by the way, churn out as many as three-quarter-of-a-million guns each year. That’s a lot of nifty gifties for 10- year-olds.

“If I were the owner of one of these firearm manufacturing companies, I wouldn’t wait to see what voters do,” she said. “If this were allowed to go on the ballot, I’d say, ‘I’m outta here.’”

Actually, what I’d say is ‘you’re outta your mind.” But that’s me doing me. To the NRA: you do you.

In any case, the measure is unlikely to pass. Even with the assault rifle murders of the students at Marjorie Stoneham Douglas High School still relatively fresh in everyone’s mind, Republicans/the NRA pretty much hold sway in Florida. And those kids at MDS High? Yesterday’s news. Dead and gone. Now there’s that 10-year-old girl with the pink Ruger rifle to worry about. Guess the NRA thinks she might be their best shot at a stay of execution for any gun control measures in the state of Florida.