Gun rights advocates decry proposed ban on semi-automatic weapons in Lexington

The Boston Globe reports:

Gun rights advocates spoke out Tuesday night against a proposal to ban certain types of semi-automatic weapons in Lexington, calling it an affront to the very principles on which their town and the nation were founded.

“The birthplace of American liberty is not going to be its gravesite,” said Michael Barg, a lifelong resident of Lexington. “This will accomplish nothing other than to glorify the proponents’ phony dogma and misinformed political ideals.”

Barg was one of about 150 gun rights advocates, including many from as far away as Lowell and Ashburnham, who appeared before the Board of Selectmen in opposition to a citizen’s petition that would create a town bylaw prohibiting the manufacture, sale, ownership, or possession of specific weapons in town.

Robert Rotberg, president emeritus of the World Peace Foundation. described the need to “remove assault weapons” from Lexington.

That proposal was filed by town resident Robert Rotberg, the founding director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Intrastate Conflict and president emeritus of the World Peace Foundation.

“It is time as citizens, and citizens of Lexington, that we attempt to remove assault weapons from the inventory of town residents,” Rotberg said in front of the overwhelmingly pro-gun crowd of mostly men.

The struggle against the Harvard types.