Weapons Bans And Other Symbolic Nonsense

The the anti-gun liberals admit in private that an assault weapons ban would be symbolic at best, the intent is to demonize firearms rather than acknowledging their need to protect freedom. Our forefathers knew that with freedom comes those that will take advantage of it. Freedom requires an armed citizenry to keep the criminals in check; in every state where concealed carry laws have been liberalized, violent crime has plummeted; in every state where firearms are restricted to the criminals, the criminals own the streets. Diane Fienstein has posted her idea for an Assault weapons ban, and then uses some cherry picked stats to prove her allegation that the 1994-2004 federal ban accomplished something. The reality is the federal ban accomplished nothing (there has been a 49% reduction in gun violence over the last 15 years that has had no connection with banned firearms); least one forget the Columbine massacre occurred right in the middle of the ban in 1999. In 2004 The Nation Institute of Justice released it's report on the Federal Assault Weapons Ban An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003 In general the finding were there's no evidence that an assault weapons (AW) ban accomplished it's goal to reduce gun violence; this included the fact the pistols with large capacity magazines (LCM) were classified as assault pistols and pistols are used in far more crimes that AR(s). " ...the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement. AWs were rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban. LCMs are involved in a more substantial share of gun crimes, but it is not clear how often the outcomes of gun attacks depend on the ability of offenders to fire more than ten shots (the current magazine capacity limit) without reloading." In recent history the mass casualty shooters all have some level of mental illness, but instead of responding to these psychotic killers as terrorists, the powers that be want to ban gun from law abiding citizens. Further, the police have already admitted they can't protect individuals from criminals. There is an old saying, "If you have a gun you can decide if you are going to use it or not. If you don't have a gun you can't make that decision". Even Diane Fienstein admitted to carrying a concealed weapon in this 1995 speech caught on video, I carried a concealed weapon .

 In the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting that tragically took the lives of so many children and teachers the anti-gun lobby is ramping up it's efforts to demonize guns. These ideologues have never shown any interest in gun safety, i.e.actually trying to control gun violence, they simply want to regulate or ban them out of existence; the problem is this can never happen. With 300-400 million firearms in circulation in the USA, assault weapons make up only about 1%, but that is still some 3.5 million so called assault rifles. The only known action that has ever effectively reduced gun crimes is arming the citizenry with less restrictive concealed carry laws. In states were this has been done gun crimes plummeted, but were gun possession is strictly controlled, the criminals rule the streets.It's an interesting to note that if you subtract the gun violence that occurs in cities where gun possession is the most restrictive, such as Chicago and Washington DC, the national average that has been falling for decades, would plummet even more; it is in those where gun violence has increase while the national average has gone down!.  It is no accident that these massacres occur most frequently in gun-free zones. It's interesting that a shooting incident occurred 2 days after the Newtown killings and it received no media coverage at all. There an off duty female police officer saved a theater full of possible victims by wounding a deranged shooter that had just shot his girlfriend at the location, Two Wounded in Theater Shooting The moment these cowards are confronted by someone who is armed they stop. Too bad there wasn't an armed someone at Sandy Hook.

Even the term "assault rifle" was manufactured by the anti-gun lobby. The term was meant to describe an AR-15/AK47 (the AR in AR-15 does not stand for Assault Rifle, it's stands for ARmalite, the company that designed the AR-15), the civilian semi-automatic versions of the fully automatic military grade M16/AK47 rifle. But since an assault rifle is defined by how it looks, not how it operates, there are numerous guns the operate exactly the same as a so called assault rifle, are just as deadly, but would not be included in any ban. There are also many restrictions already on guns; automatic assault weapons are so highly regulated the may as well be banned, short barrel shotguns are banned and so are exploding rounds. One of the justifications for banning assault rifles is the fact that at the time of the Constitution's writing the long rifle of the day was a musket; but the Constitution does not describe a particular arm. Our founding fathers wanted the miltia (best defined as an armed citzenry)  to protect itself from enemies foreign and domestic, so it is reasonable they would have wanted the citizenry armed with whatever the weapons of the time was. It would be absurd to believe anything different. Further there is the argument that it takes more to buy and drive a car than to obtain a gun. Regardless of the validity of this statement, the 2nd Amendment describes a right, not a privilege (like driving a car. The right to own a firearm is no less restrictive than the right to vote; something always lost on the left. Have you ever noticed that when a liberal agrees with the constitution it's a right, but if they don't it's a privilege?

 Any politician that wants a weapons ban and refuses to afford our children and schools the same safeguards they enjoy with armed security agents simply has an agenda that is not centered on saving lives. The primary way to address illegal gun violence is to enforce existing laws and provide armed security for schools. The reason that pro-gun advocates get a little crazy about gun bans is they know they it will not stop the killings like the massacre of children at the Sandy Hook school. Pro gun advocates want to protect their children and don't want liberal ideologues in the name of "not letting an emergency go to waste" and ignoring the cause of mass shootings, to simply push forward their agenda. If the powers that be get their assault weapons ban, they'll walk away saying " look we did something to save the kids," when they have done nothing but demagogue. Then they'll wait for the next mass shooting and start the process all over again. We all deserve better than this.