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Originally Posted by Taltarzac725
Guns of a military type can kill many people in very little time. Is this just not common sense to try to limit access to these weapons to anyone who might pick up a weapon of this type to commit any kind of crime be it a robbery, hijacking, drive by shooting, assassination, mass murder, domestic dispute involving violence.
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Let’s start with what we are trying to accomplish...what’s our goal. If the goal is to gut the second-amendment, or ban private gun ownership, then I’m against it. If the goal is to eliminate (or dramatically reduce) deaths from guns (whether assault guns or regular guns) that fall into the wrong hands by passing some restrictive legislation, then I’d support that initiative. However, I don’t believe an assault weapons ban would accomplish that.
Prohibition lasted from 1920-1933. Despite the overall consumption of alcohol declining by half in the 1920s, Prohibition was repealed. “Anti-prohibitionists criticized the alcohol ban as an intrusion of mainly rural Protestant ideals on a central aspect of urban, immigrant and Catholic everyday life.” (Wikipedia) So the national social experiment failed despite resulting in a dramatic reduction in the consumption of alcohol.
The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) lasted from 1994-2004. In this former U.S. law, the legal term “assault weapon” included certain specific semi-automatic firearm models by name (like AK-47s and Uzis) AND other semi-automatic firearms because they had a minimum set of cosmetic features. The gun industry easily found ways around the law and most of these weapons continued to be sold in post-ban models virtually identical to the guns Congress sought to ban in 1994.
So, how did the AWB work out? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied the assault weapon ban and other gun control attempts, and found "insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence." A 2004 critical review of research on firearms by a National Research Council panel also noted that academic studies of the assault weapon ban "did not reveal any clear impacts on gun violence.” Thus, despite a desire to conclude that gun controls reduced gun violence, two independent federal entities (CDCP and NRC) were unable to reach that conclusion. It might seem like common sense; however data-based decisions are better than intuition-based (“common sense”) decisions.
Opponents of the AWB claim that its expiration has seen little if any increase in crime, while Senator Diane Feinstein claims the ban was effective because "it was drying up supply and driving up prices." This argument of raising street prices for a controlled substance has been used before...it’s the primary argument of the war on drugs. “In June 2011, the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a critical report on the War on Drugs, declaring ‘The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.’ Years after President Nixon launched the US government’s war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed." (Wikipedia) So, the common-sense approach of drying up supply and driving up prices has been discredited in another context.
So, we’ve come full circle. Depending on the specifics, I’d be willing to support a legislative initiative that had some chance of reducing gun violence. But, the same old AWB isn’t going to be more effective now than it was from 1994-2004.
I’d support federal legislation that limits the rights of certain citizens to possess guns of any type. How about no guns (purchase or possession) for anyone who has ever taken psychotropic drugs or was ever admitted to an insane asylum; all convicted felons; anyone convicted of any legal offense (whether crime or misdemeanor) where ANY type of weapon was used or threatened, including juveniles whose record is eventually expunged? Then, we have to be willing to enforce those laws.