While campaigning for the office of county legislator, I have spoken with Democrats who feel that their party is not anti-gun. Many of them own semi-automatic pistols such as the glock. They have assured me that their party has no interest in confiscating their handguns.

The facts say otherwise.

The 2016 Democratic Party Platform states that Democrats will "keep weapons of war—such as assault weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines—off our streets."

For a Democrat, the defining features of an assault weapon is that it is semi-automatic and has what they consider to be a high-capacity magazine. How high is high-capacity? In justifying his imaginary seven-round magazine, Governor Andrew Cuomo famously remarked, "No one needs ten bullets to kill a deer."

The Glock 17, one of the top-selling handguns in America and the model on which all other Glocks are based, could easily be characterized as a weapon of war. It was developed by Gaston Glock in the early 1980s for the Austrian Armed Forces, which sought a replacement for the Walther P38, which in turn had been developed at the beginning of WWII to replace the iconic Luger P08. All three guns take the 9x19 mm round called Parabellum, which is Latin for "prepare for war." The original Glock 17 magazine holds 17 rounds. It is a soldier's sidearm owned by many American civilians for sporting and self-defense purposes.

If the gun owners of New York want to keep their semi-automatic weapons, they must vote the Republican line at the federal, state and local levels. The Democrats hope to gain control in November and they are already whetting their legislative knives as they dream of whittling the 2nd Amendment down to nothing.

Kevin Beary

Colton