The Assault Weapons Ban: How Silly Was It? (Part One)
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, February 26, 2009:
As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons.
The fabled “assault weapons ban.”
Few laws ever passed have been as idolized — and misunderstood — as Title XI of the Federal Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Subtitle A (the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act).
To listen to the Obama administration, the media, or the nominated head of the ATF spin it, the ban made it illegal to purchase machine guns, and outlawed the ownership or use of high-capacity magazines, saving billions, perhaps trillions, of lives.
That mischaracterization is as wrong as it is laughable. The law had nothing to do with machine guns and real military-issue assault rifles, and did nothing to measurably impact violent crime.
The purpose of the law was to ban the sale and importation of certain semi-automatic (one bullet fired per trigger pull) firearms by name, and a wider group of firearms that had an arbitrarily selected list of largely cosmetic features. These features did not affect the rate of fire, accuracy, or range of the firearms impacted. Firearms were determined to be “assault weapons” — a term that was created by the law itself — if it had two or more of the following features:
Semi-automatic rifles able to accept detachable magazines and two or more of the following:
- Folding or telescoping stock
- Pistol grip
- Bayonet mount
- Flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
- Grenade launcher (more precisely, a muzzle device which enables the launching or firing of rifle grenades)
Semi-automatic pistols with detachable magazines and two or more of the following:
- Magazine that attaches outside the pistol grip
- Threaded barrel to attach barrel extender, flash suppressor, handgrip, or suppressor
- Barrel shroud that can be used as a hand-hold
- Unloaded weight of 50 oz (1.4 kg) or more
- A semi-automatic version of an automatic firearm
Semi-automatic shotguns with two or more of the following:
- Folding or telescoping stock
- Pistol grip
- Fixed capacity of more than 5 rounds
- Detachable magazine
It was a law passed by lawmakers who desired to “do something,” but who didn’t have the expertise or intelligence to pass a law with any real meaning or measurable impact. It resulted in a 10-year timeframe where this …
… was an “assault weapon,” but this …
… was not.
It is partly ignorance, yes, but mostly it is about framing the language of the debate and lessening the resistance to a ban.
Assault weapon ban. Sounds good and reasonable, right? But what does it mean? It means whatever they can twist the words to mean. It also allows the next ban on “assault weapons” to meet less resistance.
It is boiling the frog.
Nail on head. California is as always far more progressive on this issue, and illustrating your point with every new gun law passed. From adding .50 BMG rifles to the state “assault weapon” list (try assaulting a defended position with a 30+ pound rifle), to the requirement that handguns pass their rigorous safety tests to permit their sale in-state (basically a bribe manufacturers have to pay the state to peddle their wares there), it is always about ratcheting up the pressure as much as they can get away with ’till the glorious day when they can pass that last law that finally does away with all of them.
Or as my friend calls it, creeping incrementalism.
Don’t you see? They took action, and weapons were taken off the streets! The country was completely safe. That’s why the law had an expiration date, so that after it did its magic it could be repealed, we would be in jeopardy again, and another politician would pass another law and make us safe again…
It sounds like you don’t take these people seriously, when they’re saving us, and showing us how important it is to reelect them endlessly.
“To be seen to be doing something” is the first law of popular politics, yes.
(Corollary: “Something must be done, this is something, therefore this must be done.”)
One small correction; the term “assault weapon” was not created by the ban.
It was the brainstorm of Josh Sugarmann of the Brady Campaign. He stated in an op-ed in the Washington Post that calling “military-style” rifles “assault weapons” would “raise public consciousness about how dangerous they are”- and make it easier to pass laws against them. As a first step toward outlawing civilian ownership of all firearms, of course.
BTW, the AWB also prohibited pump-action shotguns with folding stocks, if they also had two or more of the other “objectionable features”. And as Janet Reno’s Deputy AG, Eric Holder tried to use it to prohibit pump-and lever-action manual repeating rifles (think, .22 caliber pump-actions or reproductions of Winchester or Henry lever guns used in the Old West) based on magazine capacity alone- disregarding the fact that they are neither self-loading, nor do they have detachable magazines. Holder stated then that the aim was to use the AWB to “capture an entirely new category of guns”. He finally had to be threatened with being held in contempt of SCOTUS by the high court to make him “cease and desist”.
The next intended step was indicated by another Sugarmann op-ed, in which he urged that target and hunting rifles with telescopic sights be vilified as “sniper rifles”. Being unfamiliar with firearms (and priding himself on his ignorance as a mark of his moral superiority), Sugarmann did not of course understand that “sniping” is a military specialty that can be accomplished with any suitable weapon, with or without a telescopic sight. The snipers in the American Revolution, on both sides, did not have them, to cite only one example. (Major Patrick Ferguson of the British Army nearly killed General George Washington at Germantown with an iron-sighted rifle.)
I find the ignorance of the “enlightened elite’” on such subjects to be strong evidence of their actual mental capacity. Which, on the face of it, doesn’t amount to much.
clear ether
eon
Thank you Eon. Your posts are always enlightening and intelligent. I enjoy reading them.
The only agenda of the gun controllers, is to ultimately ban the private ownership of firearms. That would leave the government as the only armed entity in the country. If you think that ‘s a good idea, I suggest you watch the videos of the Syrian security forces and the effects of their gunfire on their unarmed countrymen. The gun controllers, both inside and outside of government, are pursuing only one objective, total control of the citizens of the United States of America. They are totalitarians. They are the domestic enemies the Founders warned us about. A free people are an armed people.
“I find the ignorance of the “enlightened elite’” on such subjects to be strong evidence of their actual mental capacity. Which, on the face of it, doesn’t amount to much.”
Willful ignorance, or flat-out fraud. I watched the video of Obama’s BATFE nominee Traver discussing the dangerous nature of “assault weapons” at an outdoor range whereby he had a woman trying to hit a target with a fully-automatic rifle. She apparently had no experience with the weapon, and was spraying rounds all over the berm behind the target, only hitting the target a couple of times by chance. He discussed how these weapons were turning the streets of Chicago into a battleground. Never once did he describe the difference between a semiautomatic and full-auto rifle, or mention that the gun in the demonstration was in fact not available to the general public at gun shows or shops.
These people know the difference. They don’t care. They can’t debate the issue on the facts, and crime statistics belie their assertions, so they count on misinformation and flat-out lying to make their point. They simply don’t believe anyone should own a gun.
Except them.
Liberal logic now: Gun control– because BATF can’t be trusted with firearms!
If memory serves me right the statistic from the FBI was that “assault weapons” accounted for less than .03% of crimes with a firearm. That alone should have been enough to derail the legislation but not to a demmerhoid.
Millions upon millions were spent for nothing other than to create a false narrative. Politicians jumped on that wagon back when the media scared us into believing that we were “less safe” and therefore had to be tough on crime even though every stat indicated that we were indeed safer than in the ’60s.
The ban on assault weapons was a sick joke the first time and under strict interpretation a gun with a magazine, any number of rounds, and a trigger pull they tried to pass to make illegal. Only a few legislators stopped the madness and they went with 30 rounds limit until the joke expired. That is the first step, next step, make single shot and bolt actions illegal. Canada, England, Australia are all safer because of gun control? The stats show less violent crime but that might be cultural, a better education or a better social welfare minimum standard of living. However what we miss from the reporting is the stats for burglary which is a huge number, and many are while you are in your home and they hold you there huddled in a corner until you show them all your possessions of value. It is rampant in countries without arms. We call it home invasion here but in reality it is kidnapping and confinement. That is what you get. Forget the fact that governments respond to the will of the people with arms. Maybe, but with the illiteracy, stupidity and lack of wisdom of the population the government no longer feels threatened.
One of the big reasons that the U.K., Australia, Canada, and other Anglo sphere countries appear to have lower homicide rates that the U.S. is the fact that the U.S. is the only front-reporter in the group. The U.S. reports all bodies found under obviously criminal and questionable circumstances towards its homicide rate. The other English-speaking countries are end reporters-they only report at the end of the criminal process, which may hide the true homicide rate.
For example, when violent crime (including homicide) spiraled up in the wake of Australia’s ban on semi-auto firearms, the Aussies hid that fact by increasingly adjudicating homicides as manslaughter regardless of case circumstances. Since manslaughter does not count towards homicide rates in Australia, doing this gives the appearance of a lower homicide rate.
Homicide is just one example of this kind of deception. Claims that the U.S. has a “vastly higher infant mortality rate” rely on the fact that all live births which end in the infant’s death count in the U.S., but most European countries only count infants who live 24-48 (or more) hours before expiring.
Thank you for education. I have contacts near Birmingham, England that tell me about the home invasions and when the constable finally shows up, long after the terror, they note it as a burglary?
Let’s not forget that “W” said he would sign an extension if presented with one. And let’s sure as hell not forget how fond Romney, Guiliani, and in all likelihood Huntsman are of the idea.
Rinos suck, we know.
But he also didn’t push for it either.
…to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness…
Hard to alter or abolish a government when the government holds all the powers: monetary, military, media, regulatory and education.
Having said that, when you have morality on your side, you can move mountains.
But it may take awhile.
Who was it that said: “All power comes from the barrel of a gun”?
I don’t think he as talking about moral power, but the power to impose a chosen morality upon someone else.
You may be thinking of Mao-tse-tung:
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
Extradite those responsible for Gunrunner to Mexico for trial, and then we can talk. It’s a waste of time to talk with hypocrites.
Of course they wouldn’t face the same penalty for a capital crime as they would here. They’d be stuck in a Mexican jail. Hmmmm, looking at it that way, that’s even better.
That would be fine if first all of their assets were stripped and “spread around” to the families of the victims. Otherwise, with the kind of money this criminals have a Mexican prison would look more like a resort with hot and cold running hookers.
It was said back in the day of the M1 Garand rifle, and I know this because I was one of the ones who said it: “If you can see it, and it isn’t moving sideways too fast, you can hit it.” This was the case without the aid of a telescopic sight. I’m sure this could have been said of a number of rifles of that era, most of which, however, were not semi-auto like the M1. The M1 had an optional grenade launcher and a bayonet mount. It did not use a detachable magazine but rather a clip that was ejected with a sweet ping sound when the last round was fired.
http://www.memorableplaces.com/m1garand/
An uncle of mine (Lt. Col., Army Corps of Engineers, North Africa and Italy 1942-45) called that ping “the loudest sound in the world”. Because when a German soldier heard it, he’d be up and charging at you with his MP-40 because he knew you’d be shoving in another 8-round enbloc clip as hard as you could go.
My uncle had an issue .45, but he early on acquired a Garand to keep handy. He considered a pistol a poor match for 7.9 m/m Mausers, or even 6.5 m/m Mannlicher-Carcanos. There was something about the airfields he was in charge of building that seemed to make them magnets for Axis soldiers with rifles and hostile intentions. (To say nothing of their penchant for targeting officers- like him.) In any such encounter, he preferred to be able to give at least as good as he got, or better.
cheers
eon
File that one in the, “DUH!” column!
Well, maybe not the Carcanos….
Not as much as you’d think on the Carcanos. He told me that the Army surgeons hated those “damn Italian rifles”, because that long, skinny bullet tumbled over and over inside a man’s body after impact, making a wound channel a lot like a bayonet that had been twisted after being thrust in. (The Japanese 6.5 m/m Arisaka slug, another long, narrow bullet, acted much the same way.) And that it was quite capable of going through one man, tumbling, exiting, hitting another man (sometimes going sideways), and making a mess of his insides, too (doubly so if it hit bone). He knew this from watching it happen first-hand, a few times too many, especially on Sicily and going up the Boot.
No, my uncle never believed any of the “conspiracy theories” about the JFK assassination, either. An expert rifle shooter himself even before the war, he considered the “single bullet” hypothesis just a good description of the wound ballistics of the 6.5 m/m slug. As for JFK’s head exploding when another one hit him there, his response was to point out that the 6.5′s bullet had a fairly weak jacket compared to our .30-06 or the German 7.9 m/m, making it prone to “blowing up” exactly like that when it hit bone nose-on at full velocity.
Instead of the “patsy” portrayed by the media for decades, he considered Oswald a creepy, psychotic little bastard who was unfortunately just smart enough to choose a seriously nasty caliber of rifle for his wannabee “revolutionary activities”.
And no, I’ve never believed in any of the “conspiracy theories” either- because of my uncle. In fact, his explanation of what happened there was one of the things that got me interested in forensic science in the first place- at age 6.
cheers
eon
Ah, the false expertise of someone who’s only seen guns on their security detail, basing opinions on reports by academics who have never fired a gun, and outlining the contours of the law based on what sounds or looks scary. A methodology that argues not only for freer access to firearms, but smaller government generally.
But…but…DiFi has a CCW, she’s a licensed gun-slinger, she knows stuff.
Since dems have repeatedly lost on the gun control issue, and it has been shown to cost them numerous elections in swing districts, you have to wonder why they keep trying. Must be to try an please some fanatics on the base.
Dear richard40:
They keep trying, if they are progressive true believers, because socialism can never be wrong. Gun control is proven not to have no positive effect, or not to work? That can only be so because socialism hasn’t had long enough to do its magic or insufficient socialism has been applied, or it has not been applied fervently enough or the opponents of socialism have been allowed to continue to exist.
An allied reason is the genetic socialist/progressive impulse to absolutely control everyone and everything. Allowing people to own firearms–except those who will protect the brilliant guardians of the socialist revolution from those not enlightened enough to understand how hopeless and anti-revolutionary they are, of course–is the most powerful and dangerous hinderance to that impulse.
Democrats, not all of whom are anti-American, anti-Constitution tyrant wanna-bes, can see the writing on the wall, and some additional number of them are willing to suppress their true desires in the furtherance of the most important possible goal: their continued residence in office. They will not overtly pursue gun control, but their socialist/progressive leaders, who are seemingly now the heart of the Democrat party and base, will.
Considering the rampant corruption of the Clinton-Obama era,couldn’t we prosecute the Demcrats under the RICO?
Regrettably, the Enemy’s propaganda worked. I hate to think of how many NRA members I talked to who felt the Assault Weapon Ban didn’t apply to them, because they were duck hunters or whatever, and no one “needed to own an assault weapon.
First they came for …
The M4 lookalike is now America’s favorite rifle.
This is the smartest quote I have ever heard concerning weapons bans;
Jeff Snyder
“To ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow… For society does not control crime, ever, by
forcing the law-abiding to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of criminals. Society controls crime by forcing the criminals to accommodate themselves to the expected behavior of the law-abiding.”
Good quotation.
Remember, those who stabbed Julius Caesar were already criminals, as the City of Rome had banned carrying swords or knives = only criminals had them, even bodyguards were restricted to clubs/nightsticks.
No, they were not illegally armed. Caesar was killed at Pompey’s Theater, which at the time was outside the city walls and officially not part of the city. Their knives were smuggled in, but that was to avoid suspicion, not arms control law.
In the days after the assassination, both sides would flagrantly violate the ban on being armed in the city, but as far as I’ve read, only one person was killed in the disturbances following. That was a friend of Caesar’s who was accidentally confused with one of the assassins by a mob of Caesar loyalists.
(Stephen Dando Collins’ “The Ides” is a great book on the subject.)
Thanks, that’s going in my notable quotables document…
Like everything libtards do, it backfired. Thanks to the ban, we now have a recession proof domestic assault rifle industry turning out high-quality clones of the banned rifles.Nice going Sarah,(and the veg. James) Thanks for turning the AK 47 into a new american 2nd amendment icon.
The discussion shouldn’t be about re-instituting the AWB. IT should be about eliminating the 1986? restrictions on new full-auto weapons.
From the US Court of Appeals, DC decision upheld by SCOTUS in Heller:
“To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment
protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right
existed prior to the formation of the new government under the
Constituti¬on and was premised on the private use of arms for
activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being
understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the
depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from
abroad). In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the
important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the
citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient
for the Federalist¬s in the First Congress as it served, in part, to
placate their Anti-federalist opponents. The individual right
facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be
barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth
for militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second
Amendment’s civic purpose, however, the activities it protects
are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual¬’s
enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or
intermittent enrollment in the militia.”
Pg 53 of that decision states:
“The modern handgun—and for that matter the rifle and
long-barreled shotgun—is undoubtedly quite improved over its
colonial-era predecessor, but it is, after all, a lineal descendant
of that founding-era weapon, and it passes Miller’s standards.
Pistols certainly bear “some reasonable relationship to the
preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” They are
also in “common use” today, and probably far more so than in
1789. Nevertheless, it has been suggested by some that only
colonial-era firearms (e.g., single-shot pistols) are covered by
the Second Amendment. But just as the First Amendment free
speech clause covers modern communication devices unknown
to the founding generation, e.g., radio and television, and the
Fourth Amendment protects telephonic conversation from a
“search,” the Second Amendment protects the possession of the
modern-day equivalents of the colonial pistol. See, e.g., Kyllo
v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 31-41 (2001) (applying Fourth
Amendment standards to thermal imaging search).”
From the orals before SCOTUS in the Heller case (AG Glement arguing in support of the ban acknowledeges something important):
GENERAL CLEMENT: Well, Justice Scalia, I think our principal concern based on the parts of the court of appeals opinion that seemed to adopt a very categorical rule were with respect to machine guns, because I do think that it is difficult — I don’t want to foreclose the possibility of the Government, Federal Government making the argument some day — but I think it is more than a little difficult to say that the one arm that’s not protected by the Second Amendment is that which is the standard issue armament for the National Guard, and that’s what the machine gun is.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: But this law didn’t involve a restriction on machine guns. It involved an absolute ban. It involved an absolute carry prohibition. Why would you think that the opinion striking down an absolute ban would also apply to a narrow one — narrower one directed solely to machine guns?
GENERAL CLEMENT: I think, Mr. Chief Justice, why one might worry about that is one might read the language of page 53a of the opinion as reproduced in the petition appendix that says once it is an arm, then it is not open to the District to ban it. Now, it seems to me that the District is not strictly a complete ban because it exempts pre-1976 handguns. The Federal ban on machine guns is not, strictly speaking, a ban, because it exempts pre – pre-law machine guns, and there is something like 160,000 of those.
JUSTICE SCALIA: But that passage doesn’t mean once it’s an arm in the dictionary definition of arms. Once it’s an arm in the specialized sense that the opinion referred to it, which is — which is the type of a weapon that was used in militia, and it is -it is nowadays commonly held.
GENERAL CLEMENT: Well -
JUSTICE SCALIA: If you read it that way, I don’t see why you have a problem.
GENERAL CLEMENT: Well, I — I hope that you read it that way. But I would also say that I think that whatever the definition that the lower court opinion employed, I do think it’s going to be difficult over time to sustain the notion — I mean, the Court of Appeals also talked about lineal descendants. And it does seem to me that, you know, just as this Court would apply the Fourth Amendment to something like heat imagery, I don’t see why this Court wouldn’t allow the Second Amendment to have the same kind of scope, and then I do think that reasonably machine guns come within the term “arms.”
That is one of the best stories I read on the subject. Thank you for writing it.
And now we have a direct assault on the 2nd Amendment with some “Felony Stupidity” that caused the deaths of hundreds of Police Officers in Mexico and the United States. In the July 4th testimony given to Representative Issa by high ATF officials, it appears that the DOJ, ATF, FBI and several other agencies were complicit in the selling on guns to the Narcotic Cartels of Mexico, please see the following letter sent to Mr. Holder about this at:
http://grassley.senate.gov/judiciary/upload/ATF-07-05-11-CEG-Issa-letter-to-Holder-Melson-interview.pdf
All of these Police Officers deaths can be laid at the door of the Department of Justice, it looks like a set up, an indirect attack on the 2nd Amendment using subterfuge and “felony stupidity.”
The only way we let another garbage law like the Clinton assault weapons ban happen again is if first ALL law enforcement officers are disarmed! Want to reduce firearms deaths? Then get firearms out of the hands of cops.
Things everyone should do. 1) Pray for the health of the four conservatives and Kennedy. 2) Buy lots of ammo, most people have guns but few stock up on ammo which may be the currency of the future.
The assault weapons ban was one of the stupidest pieces of legislation ever passed by Congress and signed by the President. I know that’s a high bar, but there it is: one of the dumbest laws in American history.
Here’s an analogy: suppose Congress wanted to “do something” to reduce the number of traffic accidents, injuries, and fatalities, in which excessive speed was a factor. Several congressmen have noticed that sportscars such as Corvettes and Ferraris can accelerate much quicker and drive much faster than most other vehicles on the road. Red is a popular color for such cars.
So Congress passes a law forbidding the manufacture or sale of red-painted cars.
That’s smart.
And as confirmation of the ban’s stupidity you need only look at California. Which of course has a legislature which demonstrates it’s well deserved reputation on a daily basis as the “the dumbest legislature on the face of the planet”. I know it exceeds the levels of incompetence of any past legislature in human history, and can’t imagine any future legislature being this ignorant. They remind me of the line from the Replacements, “I’ve seen monkey-s**t fights at the zoo that are more organized than this!”
And CA of course, continues to have an AWB in place
Another unintended result was the invention of the thumb-hole stock. This design replaced the seperate pistol grip and butt-stock with one conformal unit. As it turns out the thumb-hole stock was MUCH stronger and more robust than the sexier looking (and slightly lighter) pistol grip designs. The law actually made these guns more rugged and were arguably an improvement.
As someone who has worked fairly extensively with the AK-47/AKM in various iterations, I can personally attest that the wooden thumbhole stock of the semi-automatic Norinco MAK-90 made it a good bit more comfortable to shoot, too. It had a decent length of pull (I’m 6′ tall and have long arms), and allowed a decent cheek-weld without getting the takedown button shoved up my nose with each shot.
cheers
eon
This reply is a day late and a trillion dollars short but I hope you read it. There is no reason for us to call our weapons semi-automatic. It would be completely truthful and a better description to call them non-automatic.
The anti’s are killing us with semi-automatic phrases. The next time semi-automatic is mentioned we should just say they are non-automatic. No matter what the anti’s try to say just answer those guns are non-automatic. No matter how they want to argue, no other is discussion needed or necessary.
Of course we need to begin to get all of us, and all manufacturers, dealers and catalogs etc, to begin to change, but I have a feeling everyone will see the usefulness in this simple change.
It was actually a scary military looking gun ban nothing more or less. That is all. If they could, the same people would ban “trucky” looking vehicles and for the same reason -their take on esthetics and control.
Dr. Shalit
Our DOJ and law agencies have become a threat to the American people. I do not care what capacity your clip can hold, it only takes one bullet to kill you. Our police will not and can no longer protect the American people from criminals, but they want control the type of weapon and ammunition a law biding citizen can posse. While our government, ATF and other police agencies sell these outlawed weapons to the drug cartel and our enemies here and over seas. When they take our weapons they no longer fear us!