Here we go again.

Another terrible mass shooting, another chorus of gun control from liberal Democrats—but this time with a twist: the shooting took place all the way down in New Zealand, a place that your average voter had probably never even heard of before those Lord of the Rings movies came out.

So how is it that stateside progressives are using the Christchurch atrocity as a rallying cry to ban guns over here? Part of it is the usual cynicism of using tragedy as a way to push bad laws and stifle dissent—but I think another reason is that Democrats and their allies in the media are looking at New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern and sighing wistfully as she announces an initiative to ban all semi-automatic weapons in that country:

While curtailing gun owners’ rights is a political battleground in the United States, Christchurch gun owner Max Roberts, 22, predicted Ardern won’t face serious opposition to her agenda.

“There will be no opposition to it. There’s no movement in New Zealand for that. Our media and politics are more left wing,” said Roberts, a carpenter who uses guns for hunting.

I can already tell what our left wingers are all thinking: If only we could do that…

Of course, being the sniveling weasels that they are, the politicians who always swear up and down that they’re not coming for our guns aren’t quite so direct as their compadres Down Under, and so they couche their desires by phrasing things a different way. Exhibit A—Chris Murphy, the Senator from Connecticut, who tweeted out this pearl of wisdom:

Nobody needs an AR-15 to hunt.



Nobody needs a semi-automatic rifle to defend their home.



But mass shooters NEED these weapons in order to murder as many people as efficiently as possible.



And so nobody will miss them when they are illegal – except for the killers. — Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) March 16, 2019

Yes, Chris Murphy knows just what you need—even though I’d bet real money that he’s never even hunted in his entire life, much less hunted with an AR-15. I think it’s also safe to assume that Murphy doesn’t understand that the only difference between an AR-15 and any other run-of-the-mill .223 caliber semi-automatic hunting rifle is the way it looks.

News flash for the Senator: pistol grips, rails and other cosmetic stuff don’t make the AR-15 work any differently than one of those other rifles you profess to be okay with. But by all means, tell everyone it’s just that one specific rifle that they don’t need. If you can play them for suckers with the AR, it’ll be that much easier to do the same thing when you come for their Remingtons and Rugers.

Or maybe Murphy could just stop pretending he knows what you need better than you do. As long as the Second Amendment protects your right to make that choice for yourself, he doesn’t have a damn thing to say about it anyway.