The "gun show loophole" is mentioned as well as the problem of straw purchasing, but it's his treatment of the "assault weapon" argument that I most enjoyed.
Every major U.S. law enforcement organization supports strong restrictions on assault weapons. Does the gun lobby really believe the police oppose these guns because they merely "look scary"?And the funniest part is how pro-gun writers, who endlessly repeat this "look scary" motif, will accuse the gun control folks of being sheep.
Isn't it often the case that the accuser is guilty of the very thing he claims for the others? That's what we've got here. We've got hundreds of bloggers and pro-gun writers who continually repeat a handful of slogans and themes, many of which make no sense, like the reason we oppose military ordnance for civilian use is because it's scary looking.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
When you write laws to ban guns based solely upon cosmetic features, then it must be the "scarey looking" features that make the difference between a banned, evil gun and a good gun.
ReplyDeleteThen you do it by function, under the 26 USC 5845 definition of a Machine gun:
ReplyDeleteis designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.
Treasury-ATF would like to use this as the defintion of a machinegun anyway and does whenever it can.
So, Jadefool's Biggest (Only?) Cheerleader, a law that makes this illegal, but considers this to be perfectly permissible, makes sense to you?
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't bother you that since the AR-15 platform is entirely modular, anyone could buy an AR with just one "assault feature" (which was perfectly legal under the ban), and then buy aftermarket parts to equip it with other "assault features"?
This makes sense to you?
It doesn't bother you that one "assault feature" was a bayonet lug--has "bayonet crime" ever been a problem?
How about the fact that another "assault feature" is a "barrel shroud"--something that covers the barrel, to protect the hand from burns (could be improvised with duct tape)?
If you want to ban all semi-automatic rifles that accept detachable magazines (and given the fact that some people have modified their SKS rifles from their original internal box magazine design, to accept AK magazines, maybe even internal magazine-fed semi-autos would be on the chopping block), have the guts and integrity to come out and say it.
And good luck with that.
Someone needs to remind Dennis that they are not a gun ban organization. By the way Mike, I thought you were off the AWBs.
ReplyDeleteWhere did he break a myth? Other than saying “Mexicans have them, so they must be bad”?
You know what else has a pistol grip and a detachable magazine? Pistols (you know, the guns they claim not to not want to ban).
I have a challenge for henigan, or anyone else that uses these arguments. Set up two targets 25 yds out. You take an AK clone with a 30 rd magazine and “spray fire from the hip” at it. I’ll take a bolt action 5 shot rifle and shoot from the shoulder (also referred to as "aiming"). We’ll see who puts more shots on target.
One of the most amusing aspects of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about so-called "assault weapons" is that the crybabies can't even make up their own tiny little minds about what they find so objectionable about them.
ReplyDeleteThe usual objection is that they're not accurate enough for anything but killing people(?)--they just shoot "faster" than other semiautomatic rifles(?). From the Brady Bunch, for example:
While semiautomatic hunting rifles are designed to be fired from the shoulder and depend upon the accuracy of a precisely aimed projectile, the military features of semiautomatic assault weapons are designed to enhance their capacity to shoot multiple human targets very rapidly.
Funny--when on the rifle range while in the Army, with a real assault rifle, if I had tried to "spray fire from the hip," I'd have been kicked off the range, and would probably still be doing push-ups.
To Be Continued . . .
On the other hand, Maryland state Senator Michael Lenett (D) repeats the "only suited for high volume of inaccurate fire in a hurry" theme, but also whines about their use as sniper rifles:
ReplyDeleteSen. Mike Lenett, D-Montgomery, described the weapons as ones "built to be fired from the hip rather than aimed from the shoulder, allowing the user to spray a large quantity of ammunition from high capacity magazines over a wide area at close range as quickly as possible."
"These weapons are particularly ill-suited to hunting or target-shooting, but remarkably well-suited to killing a lot of people in a hurry," said Lenett, who is the bill's chief sponsor and mentioned the sniper slayings in 2002 that left seven Maryland residents dead as one reason why such a law is needed.
So which is it? Are they "too inaccurate" for anything but killing people (what the hell kinda sense does that make, anyway?), or are they "sniper rifles"? They can't be both.
By the way, about Lenett's argument about their unsuitability for hunting. The Brady Bunch "report" I linked to a couple comments ago cited two BATFE studies claiming that "sportsmen" don't use "assault weapons," but those studies were conducted during the administrations of the first George Bush, and Clinton, respectively (the Brady Bunch "report" is dated Oct. 2008). It was probably a good idea to use such outdated information--"sporting 'assault weapons,'" like these Remingtons, are getting more popular all the time.
ReplyDeleteLaci the Ambulance-Chasing Dog:
Treasury-ATF would like to use this as the defintion of a machinegun anyway and does whenever it can.
Get with the times, Ambulance-Chaser--the BATFE was moved out of Treasury, into the Department of Justice, as part of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (the actual change happened in early '03, I believe).
Zorro, As TS mentioned, I "got off the AWB" thing a long time ago for all the reasons you so convincingly point out. Nevertheless Henigan is right and you are wrong. The fact that the objectionable weapons are difficult to legally differentiate from the acceptable ones used for hunting is a problem that you exploit in your mocking derision of gun control initiatives.
ReplyDeleteYour (you and all your friends) lack of cooperation in this should lead us to another AWB, better written and perhaps naming a longer list of offending weapons that need to go.
That, of course, will lead to a barrage of slightly modified weapons to fill the gaps, but perhaps some of that can be prevented at the manufacturing level.
Jadefool's Biggest (Only?) Cheerleader:
ReplyDeleteYour (you and all your friends) lack of cooperation in this should lead us to another AWB, better written and perhaps naming a longer list of offending weapons that need to go.
It's not "[my] ([me] and all [my] friends) lack of cooperation in this" that it the problem with banning so-called "assault weapons"--reality itself conspires against you. There is no way to ban firearms with the capabilities you want banned, without banning all detachable magazine-fed semi-autos (and as the SKS example illustrates, even internal mag-fed guns can be converted to detachable mag-feed, so you might have to go after those, too).
That won't happen. Any such ban affect dozens of types of guns that satisfy the "common use" test for Second Amendment protection (even the '94 AWB would do that, by now).
Besides, it could never get that far. The '94 ban happened at the zenith of the pro-tyranny lobby's power in the U.S., and it still only barely passed, and only with a 10-year "sunset provision" inserted. And the Democrats still remember how badly the AWB came back to bite 'em in November '04.
The pro-rights side is vastly more organized now thanks, in large part to the Internet (thanks, Al Gore!).
From our cold, dead hands--and I don't see anyone on your side with the balls to make that happen.
MikeB: “The fact that the objectionable weapons are difficult to legally differentiate from the acceptable ones used for hunting…”
ReplyDeleteMike, have you asked yourself WHY assault weapons are so difficult to define, considering they are such proficient killing machines over “regular” guns and all? A machine gun is of course very easy to define, with no gray area. Answering this question sums up the issue quite well.
TS:
ReplyDeleteMike, have you asked yourself WHY assault weapons are so difficult to define, considering they are such proficient killing machines over “regular” guns and all?
TS, in the space of one sentence, strikes to the heart of the same matter I only managed to dance around, over the course of almost half a dozen long comments. Thanks, TS, for concisely making the point I had hoped to make.
The question, indeed, is: If the distinction between permissible semi-automatics on the one hand, and naughty, so-called "assault weapons" on the other, is so difficult to nail down, how can they be so radically different as to justify different levels of regulation--particularly given the ease of conversion from acceptable to "bad" (swapping out a few components--a trivial operation with a modular platform like the AR-15)?
Laci the Ambulance-Chasing Dog is at least a bit honest about his agenda--by that definition, all semi-autos (which are actually a bit more complex than fully-automatic firearms) would be banned.
Go for it--try to pass that in the U.S.--I'll have a wonderful time watching it go down in flames, year after year, after year.
Machine gun gray area.
ReplyDeleteWhoops. And this one. Not the gun--the string is the federally-registered machine gun.
Sorry Laci the pooch, the ATF likes to use whatever definition they find convenient.
Laci for ATF Director.
ReplyDeleteJadefool's Biggest (Only?) Cheerleader:
ReplyDeleteLaci for ATF Director.
This might surprise you, but I like that idea. Let us, indeed, appoint Laci the Ambulance-Chasing Dog as chief kitten stomper.
I want the BATFE to have to spend its entire budget on security for the director, thus leaving it without resources for its usual mission of oppression. I especially like the fact that the BATFE's entire budget is not likely to be adequate for that task.