The "gun problem" for the Democrats and the left is a thorny issue that Joe Biden is realizing cuts right across demographic lines, including even historic Democrat-supporting factory workers who happen to own a gun or two.

No one questions that the driving force to abolish the Second Amendment, or simply confiscate guns in spite of the Second Amendment, is a pet project of the coastal elites (along with a Texas elite named Beto O'Rourke) who know in their heart of hearts how we should be behaving ourselves in a de-militarized society where only the police and elites themselves enjoy the privilege having guns around.

Biden's misstatement about AR-14s probably has more to do with senility than with ignorance of weapons terminology, but he did confuse fully automatic guns (outlawed) with semi-automatic guns (not yet outlawed) and followed up with an explicit statement that such pieces need to be taken out of the hands of Bernie's working class at the Chrysler Auto Plant in Detroit.

While I do not own any AR-15s (or 14s or 13s) and have only briefly considered getting myself an AK-47, I do happen to own a classic semi-automatic firearm: the Remington Model 8, designed by John Browning in 1900.  Kalashnikov lifted some of the designs for his AK-47 right off the Browning invention, and the USSR did not admit any patent infringements.  Perhaps we can suggest that the future gun-confiscators rename the Model 8 the AK-46; that would make life easy for them, because 46 comes before 47, just as the Model 8 came before the AK.

I guess if Beto gets the job of separating us from our semi-auto rifles, I'll need to ask him if my piece that's been around for almost 120 years needs to be separated from civil society and sent to the foundry to be melted down for industrial use.  That may actually be a smart move for any future Democratic administration because by then, all steel production will have moved completely to China or perhaps Russia.

So here is my ode to the Model 8 while I can still openly talk about this beautifully designed but morally questionable piece of iron and wood.  Many fully automatic guns fire lesser munitions, such as the famous Thompson submachine gun that shoots the same .45 ACP cartridge used in the 1911 Colt pistol.  But most Remington Model 8's fire a .35 caliber hunting bullet considered just fine for deer and bear on the East Coast, while practically nobody on the West Coast has ever heard of the .35 Remington or even the Remington Model 8.

The old Model 8 was a favorite of policemen and prison guards, the only ones who could purchase variations equipped with a 15- or 20-round magazine.  My more common example of the Remington 8 loads its cartridges from the top, and only four fit in — which is quite all right for hunting but probably not enough for some situations that law officers face.

When former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer examined a shot up car used by Bonnie and Clyde, he realized that the tommy guns that the police had wielded had not even penetrated the metal.  Since he and his growing team of investigators and Texas State Police were getting close to ambushing the murderous duo, he went to a local gun shop in Austin, Texas and bought himself a Remington Model 8 with a 20-round "police" magazine.  I'm pretty sure that at the same time, he bought himself a good supply of "bear" cartridges.

At the time of the ambush in Louisiana on May 23, 1934, both Frank Hamer and sharpshooter Deputy Sheriff Prentiss Oakley held Remington Model 8 rifles.  All in the posse agreed that it was Oakley's shot that hit Clyde Barrow's left temple and forever silenced his wild and deadly run.  But silence was not the order of the day: at least 167 rounds were fired through Bonnie and Clyde's car, 40 of those coming from Hamer's and Oakley's guns, and all within 20 seconds.  The continuous firing was so deafening that people for miles around thought a crew was using dynamite to fell a tree.

Nine lawmen were viciously killed in Bonnie and Clyde's short binge, but those two also ended the lives of four civilians.  Those four would probably agree that not just the police should be armed.  An AR-14 or one of my AK-46s might be a good place to start.