Massad Ayoob
Backwoods Home Magazine
August 31, 2009

Since blog reader feedback on the last couple of entries – regarding new Smith & Wesson products – had gone so heavily toward discussion of the internal lock feature on S&W revolvers, I had planned to make that the topic of this blog entry. However, the recent death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy eclipses in for news value, as it did on TV news stations for the past few days, which seem to have been “all Ted Kennedy, all the time.”

There’s actually a connection between the two topics. Kennedy vehemently supported mandatory internal locks on all firearms, and all manner of other Draconian measures that would have profoundly infringed on the civil rights of the firearms owning community… and sometimes did.

We can all understand the visceral reaction he must have had to his two gifted brothers being shot to death by assassins. What was harder to understand was his blaming of objects for human hatred, and his willingness to punish and dis-empower good people because of the acts of bad ones.

They called him “the lion of the Senate” when he died, but his advocacy of banning private citizens’ ownership of certain firearms because it would somehow enhance the public good, smacked more of “lyin’ in the Senate.”

I’ve worked for decades as a Trustee of the Second Amendment Foundation with SAF stalwart Dave Workman. HERE brother Workman provides a rich trove of links and reading for those who want to refresh on what the late Senator from the Bay State tried to do to gun owners and their rights, occasionally succeeding to a degree.

As you remember the last of the Generation of Princes in America’s Royal Family, remember him whole. His commitment to civil rights seemed to be limited to the ones he approved of. I recall Ted Kennedy’s private bodyguard being arrested for attempting to carry a fully automatic Beretta machine pistol into a Government building. Apparently, the guns he didn’t want the peasants to have were OK for protecting the Royal Family, whose immense wealth allowed them to hire high-priced private Praetorian Guards…

I’m just glad I managed to get through all that without mentioning Mary Jo Kopechne.