Since opinion pieces that oppose the assault weapons ban are rare, here’s a link to one:

Chicken Little arrives every four years in a feather-ruffled flurry squawking about some kind of impending doom. This year she is incited to a level of hen-ish hysteria by the encroaching expiration of the federal “assault weapons” ban.

Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry is all for extending the ban on 19 military-style firearms, coos Chicken Little. He suspended his campaign back in March so he could go to Washington and cast one of the few Senate votes he found time to make in the past year. No one should read anything political into that.

But that bad ol’ President Bush, clucks the harried hen, he said he’d sign an extension of the ban, but he isn’t doing anything to force those nasty, gun-loving, NRA-co-opted Republicans to bring it to a vote.

Chickie needs to pipe down and revisit what the president did say about the ban, adopted by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1994. Bush said he’d sign the extension if it made it to his desk. He never promised to pressure lawmakers into getting it to that point.

This is just one more example of how hysteria and ignorance can warp understanding of an issue.

The uninformed make audacious claims: “If the ban expires, it will become legal to buy dangerous, rapid-fire guns most commonly seen in action movies.”

First, all firearms are dangerous, which is why it is so important to teach children never to think they are toys. But this line from a Statesman Journal editorial, which ran last month in the Salem, Ore., newspaper, equates the firearms covered by the ban with machine guns.

Even if the ban is lifted, John Q. Schnutz still will not be able to purchase fully automatic machine guns, which are highly regulated.

I can add action movies to the list of rhetoric used by proponents of the ban, which has included automatic weapons, bullet hoses, spray fire weapons, people killers, and weapons of mass destruction. And the following quote dispels the misconceptions that most media types try to shove down our throats regarding the ban:

The 1994 crime bill forbade the manufacture and import of certain guns that Congress defined as “assault weapons.”

These firearms were classified by how they looked and not by how they operate. Cosmetic and ergonomic features like telescoping stocks, bayonet lugs, pistol grips and flash suppressors that give the firearms a military-style appearance were banned even though they are mechanically indistinguishable from traditional sporting rifles.

The provision that banned “high-capacity” ammunition magazines is also scheduled to expire Sept. 13, although the House bill calling for the ban’s extension does not mention high-capacity magazines.

The ban did “not” outlaw ownership of semi-automatic guns. Banned “assault weapons” have always been available on the secondary market, and owners of those guns don’t break any law by reselling them.

Indeed.

Posted in uncategorized on August 11th, 2004 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |