1994 Assault Weapons Ban Expires--Liberals loose their minds

I enjoy shooting a nice gun. I presently own two shotguns, three rifles, and one pistol. I grew up with guns in my parent’s home, having received my first BB gun for Christmas when I was eight years old. My father took me squirrel hunting and taught me to shoot his 22 semi-automatic rifle by the time I was six. We built working replicas of civil war vintage flintlock rifles and pistols that were muzzle loaded with black gunpowder. Under his supervision, I learned gun safety and a respect for firearms. Our idea of gun control was “hitting the intended target, each and every time.”

Both of my grandfathers were avid hunters. My mother’s father hunted to feed his family and control varmints and pests on his farm. My father’s father was a casual hunter, taking trips each year to Canada and the northwestern US to hunt elk and caribou. Guns were present in their homes and the grandchildren all knew of the punishment earned by messing with their guns without permission and supervision.

I can confidently make the above statements without fear of reprisal here in the safety of my internet blog, but I’ve learned to carefully temper my statements in public in the south and outright avoid mention of gun ownership in states like Massachusetts and Vermont. It seems that having a southern accent and admitting to owning a gun makes people automatically deduct about 20 I.Q. points in their assessment of your intellect. Not my problem…however.

It seems that the federal government and much of the US population has come to believe that, as a society and individually, we are incapable of safely owning and operating guns without general madness and mayhem ensuing. Case in point--the furor over the expiration of the Federal Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act, also known as the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.

I beg to passionately differ.

I’ll just come right out and state the facts, then back up my assertions with some details. This law was the legal equivalent of rearranging the furniture on the deck of the Titanic. The law has made absolutely no difference whatsoever what weapons were allowed into the hands of criminals—individuals who just so happen to not care about breaking a gun law while they break the 8th commandment (thou shalt not steal.)

The general public thinks that the law banned machine guns. This perception is assisted by misinformation in news reports, newspapers, and the new ad by MoveOn.org that asserts that automatic weapons are somehow now legal. WRONG! True machine guns have been and continue to be illegal to possess, except by the military, law enforcement, and specially licensed private citizens, according to the National Firearms Act of 1934.

What this recently expired law did was ban semi-automatic weapons, guns that fired one shot with each pull of the trigger, based on their similarity of appearance to their fully automatic cousins. Basically, if the gun looked like a military weapon, it was banned, even if it could only fire as quickly as my dad’s old reliable JC Higgins 22 rifle.

This web site has a nice comparison of the previously illegal guns and shows the absurdity of the law’s requirements. I am definitely not inclined to behave in this manner, but I can assure you that I can cause severe bodily harm just as quickly from a range of 50 yards with my dad’s plain old vanilla looking 20 shot, 22 semi-automatic as I can with any of the weapons the disputed law banned. Dead is dead. Whether it took three shots or five, I guarantee that someone that knows what they are doing can get the job done with a semi-automatic 22 caliber weapon just as well as a fully automatic 30-06.

The bottom line is that the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban made people feel better by limiting law abiding citizens choices in the type and physical appearance of the guns they could buy and legally possess. Congress did us all a favor by not sending an extension or revised law to President Bush for his signature.

The partisan mainstream media and the DNC should get off of the presidents back and live with the results of the congress listening to the voting public. It was our choice today and our right from our country's beginning as outlined in the second amendment of the US Constitution.