For this week's cover story, I dove headfirst into South Florida's gun culture to find out why so many people in the tri-county area -- and the Sunshine State -- are into firearms. While President Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders are pushing to reinstate the federal assault-weapons ban that expired in 2004, Florida gun owners have been been vocal about protecting their Second Amendment right to bear arms, especially semiautomatic rifles such as the AR-15 and similar models that the mainstream media and gun-control advocates have labeled "assault weapons."
My goal wasn't to prove one side of the debate right or wrong. Rather, I wanted to put human faces to both sides. One of the folks I profiled is Jorge Corbato, a former CAT-scan technologist who now makes a living building custom AR-15-style rifles. During the interview, Corbato, whose company is called Nebulous Ordnance, gave a demonstration on the difference between semiautomatic and fully automatic rifles. Check it out after the jump.
See also:
- Assault Rifles Are Big Business in Florida as Federal Ban Looms
Follow Francisco Alvarado on Twitter: @thefrankness.
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