Hysterical Legislation
Bob Culver
Some comments on “Hysterical Legislation”;
Or, here we go again, the gun-banners are in town
Just to set the background for the following article, let me cite this news release from Maryland MAHA
From MAHA web page; http://www.hgabuse.org/ns103_1.html
Improving the Assault Weapons Ban (SB 494) (HB 844);
Senate Sponsor: Rob Garagiola (D-Montgomery County) – House Sponsor: Neil Quinter (D-Howard County)
Since 1994, Maryland has had a ban on assault pistols. But we have no ban on assault weapons (those with a longer barrel). With the Federal Assault Weapons Ban set to expire in 2004 and with a Republican Congress not receptive to its renewal, Maryland could cover itself by banning these destructive weapons at the state level. The federal ban only covered specific assault weapons by name. The gun industry has been good at evading the federal ban by creating copycat weapons that fall outside the scope of the federal law. This includes the Bushmaster weapon used by the Washington area snipers. SB 494 & HB 844 would refine the definition of "assault weapon" to include specific military features common on assault weapons that are unnecessary for legitimate uses but attractive to criminals.
Here we go again
The above self serving press release announces another attempt at banning firearms. The reference is to the proposed 2004 Maryland legislative session House Bill #844 (the same as the 2003 bill that failed) by Neil Quinter and others. It is designed to replace the soon to expire federal legislation. No, not replace, but to widely expand that failed experiment.
Why was the "Assault Weapon Ban" an experiment and why is it a failure?
First lets look at the name "Assault Weapon", a manufactured and misleading name designed to generate a hysterical reaction by an easily mis-lead media and population. The military has for years used the term assault rifle to mean a particular firearm of an intermediate power (not full power), lighter weight and selective fire (selectable between semi-automatic, fully automatic and/or burst fire). Those true military firearms were effectively banned in 1934 with the passage of a highly restrictive tax and registration of the entire class of fully automatic firearms.
The firearms targeted to be banned by the present and future AW bans are NOT, repeat NOT in the same classification at the military firearms. As MAHA would have you believe, HB 844 would refine the definition of "assault weapon" to include specific military features common on assault weapons that are unnecessary for legitimate uses but attractive to criminals. Those specific features may look ugly, they may look dangerous and they may frighten some people, but they do not make the denigrated firearms into military assault firearms.
Next, the attempt of the ban was stated as being to reduce crime and criminal activity. The plain language above describes, "assault weapons that are unnecessary for legitimate uses but attractive to criminals." Intentionally vague terms such as "attractive" can mean anything, but I'll bet the farm it does not mean that this general type of firearm is "significantly" used for criminal activity. Check the stats and let me know how many times an M1A is used in crime in Maryland.
The hysterical effort to ban firearms has lead to the deliberate mis-use of BATF-E statistics. Advocates of the ban irresponsibly propagated figures from Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) trace data, ignoring the Congressional Research Service’s warning that: "Firearms selected for tracing do not constitute a random sample and cannot be considered representative of the larger universe of all firearms used by criminals, or of any subset of that universe. As a result, data from the tracing system may not be appropriate for drawing inferences such as which makes or models of firearms are used for illicit purposes."
And then tell me how an M1A or an AK variant was easily concealed and carried in the commission of that crime. A nearly 4 foot long, 9 pound rifle can be carried down the street in the open, at port arms or slung over a shoulder, but just try to stuff that sucker in your waist band.
On another point, the above language says the ban addresses, "assault weapons that are unnecessary for legitimate uses but attractive to criminals." Again an intentionally misleading, no an intentionally inaccurate term, "legitimate use". This is dangerously close to the bogus "sporting use" test recently adopted in other legislation. Do you want to control something, then just use terms that are arbitrary and capricious and then decide some time in the future what constitutes "legitimate" or "sporting". I know the legislators are lying, the legislators know they are lying, and they know we know they are lying on this point. Many of the firearms sought to be banned ARE used for sporting or other "legitimate" uses. I won't bother to cite them, just look up the various shooting disciplines on the web and see them in action. Then we come back to the term "legitimate". Here is your test for the day, please define the "legitimate" firearm use anticipated in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. If the following phrase comes to mind, ",that whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends," you are on the right track.
Now, just how successful has the ban been in reducing crime? Any legitimate study, as those done in the mid '90's, show no impact. The ban has done nothing for public safety. An Urban Institute study mandated by the original law stated, "At best, the assault weapons ban can only have a limited effect on total gun murders, because the banned weapons and magazines were never involved in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders." Neither that study nor two follow-up studies by the same authors found the law to have any effect on attacks against police officers.
You can most likely find some manufactured "studies" which show that at the same time the federal ban has been in effect, crime has gone down, and therefore the ban must be working. If you believe this constitites a proof, it is time for you to go back to school. There can be a correlation between any two events, such as between the ban and the decrease in crime over the past few years, but there is no cause and effect. The AW bill has NOT caused the average crime rate to drop (and in some cases like Maryland, crime rates have actually gone up!). What causes crime to go down? Good police work AND good court work that put criminals in jail is one. If the 10% of criminals who do 90% of the crime are in jail, crime rates WILL go down, believe me! What else causes crime to go down? Armed citizens who protect themselves from attack. Just think of the Los Angeles shop owners, veterans of past riots, and what tools protected them. In case you don't remember it was a raged assortment of AR's and AK's and other similar "assault rifles". I guess some want us to believe that it is just plain logic that when the citizen population is disarmed of evil firearms, they will be better able to protect themselves. NOT.
O, but I forgot, the police are there to protect you. Unfortunately, if they fail to protect you, even through their negligence, they are not libel for your injury or death. The courts have consistently said so.
So, through political pandering, some delegates will attempt to convince the un-educated public that they "are doing something" and by the way, they are doing it "for the children" or some other social good. But there are unintended consequences in this effort at disarmament, law abiding citizens will not be able to defend themselves. But then perhaps it is not an unintended consequence. Just call it employment security and providing a safe working environment for criminals, and tyrannical legislators too.
Bob Culver, MCSM
See; www.mcsm.org
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