“Clarification” about machine guns:

Several days ago, the Chicago Sun-Times ran an editorial that begin with this paragraph:

How ridiculous is the notion that private citizens should be able to tote machine guns? It takes someone with extreme positions like Alan Keyes to righteously argue that cause. Most Americans — Democrats and Republicans — are against claiming Second Amendment protections for these guns and support the federal assault weapons ban. . . .

I wrote that this was a pretty serious error: By its explicit terms, the assault weapons ban doesn’t cover machine guns, but covers certain kinds of semiautomatic guns — guns that are actually closer to the typical semiautomatic gun that tens of millions of people own, rather than to machine guns. The argument with which the editorial begins is thus based on an error (the implied claim that the assault weapons ban is about machine guns).

I called and e-mail the Sun-Times about this; they at first told me they’d run my point as a letter to the editor, but I suggested that, if I was right, the situation called for a correction and not just a response. They told me they’d run a clarification, and here it is, from the bottom of the Sunday letters to the editor page:

Clarification

An editorial in the Sept. 7 editions about the need to extend the assault weapons ban included a reference to machineguns. The assault weapons ban covers semiautomatic weapons.

I leave it to readers to decide how apt the Sun-Times‘ response is.

Thanks to Michael Demmons and the Spoons Experience for the pointer. Note that their response might have well been prompted also by other people’s letters — I refer to my correspondence with them simply because that’s all I know about.