Gun ban round up
Oregon is still pushing for a ban.
More myths debunked about supposed assault weapons:
The Justice Department’s interviews also gave lie to the notion that so-called assault weapons in private hands decrease the safety of police officers and citizens. Only about 8 percent of the inmates used one of the models covered in the now-expired assault weapons ban, passed under Bill Clinton in 1994. If the supposed increased firepower of these firearms truly made them attractive to lawbreakers, the percentage would have been much higher.
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors is up to its old tricks again, trying to control violent crime by penalizing law-abiding citizens. In their infinite wisdom, the supervisors want to ban private citizens from owning handguns, while the very criminals they seek to undermine are free to purchase them on the black market.
Led by Chris Daly and supported by outgoing board president Matt Gonzalez and fellow supervisors Tom Ammiano, Bevan Dufty and Michela Alioto-Pier, the proposal is a disaster in the making. Nevertheless, they plan to put the misguided measure on the ballot in November, and, considering San Franciscans’ propensity for supporting feel-good laws with little thought for the long-term consequences, it could very well pass.
But should this passage occur, the supervisors might find themselves in for a bit of a challenge. Little thought seems to have gone into the practical elements of this drastic ban, such as enforcement and possible ramifications. These are minor considerations for the Board of Supervisors, perhaps, but some of us have more than a few questions.
For instance, because there’s no public gun registry for the City, let alone for California, how will San Francisco start its collection efforts? The ban claims not to “create or require any local license or registration for any firearm,” but how else does the City plan on keeping track of the process? Snooping in federal files? The ban applies “exclusively to residents of the City and County of San Francisco,” but what if a person claims to keep a gun at a friend’s house in the East Bay?
January 11th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
Actually, California has had a statewide registry for longer than I can remember. It’s point of sale, however, and is not typically updated when people move. Thus, it probably won’t be a very useful tool for confiscation, assuming the City of Frisco gets to use it (and I don’t know that they would).
January 11th, 2005 at 4:42 pm
Don’t see how the 8% figure proves much of anything. How much higher would which model have predicted usage-if-attractive? More to the point, what is the fatality rate among police officers and citizens when criminals use these guns vs. when they use other guns?
January 11th, 2005 at 4:46 pm
I think that’s pretty self evident in the above quote. And, in actuality, the figure is much lower (less than one percent per other sources).
And i don’t know of any fatality rate studies of one gun vs. another. I would venture that a rifle compared to handgun would have a higher fatality rate per use since rifles in most calibers will penetrate body armor (body armor is designed to stop handgun rounds).
The weapon most commonly used to kill police is their own handgun.
It also discredits the claim that gun banners make about these being the “weapons of choice” of criminals.