A rant on "Assault Weapons".
Something occurred to me -- there's a point that I haven't made in a long time, on this whole gun-ban debate. I keep forgetting to bring it up, because it's buried in my list of reasons to oppose bans. It's like a fish, remembering to argue that water is wet.
Here it is: The entire "assault weapon" issue is a SCAM. That's right. it's a con job, perpetrated by people who wanted to get traction for banning something, anything, back in the late 1980s and early 90s.
A strong accusation, you say? Can't be true, you say? Let's look at some history. After Ronald Reagan and Jim Brady were shot, the Bradys hooked up with what was then Handgun Control, Inc. They figured that they could ride the wave of emotion over the Reagan and Brady shootings, to ban handguns. The effort fizzled. We note, here, that in the 1930s when the National Firearms Act was being written, early versions wanted to make all handguns into NFA items. That got shot down, RIGHT quick. Same thing, in the late 80s / early 90s: there was widespread opposition to banning handguns.
So, we get to around 1988 or '89, and the ban-them-all crowd is feeling frustrated. Then, Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center comes up with an idea. Make up a scary new propaganda term, "assault weapon". It doesn't actually have to MEAN anything (and didn't, before it became a legal term-of-art as defined in the 1994-2004 ban). Use the new propaganda phrase, to push for the idea of banning something, ANYthing, just to get something banned.
A quick side note (you may skip if you've heard this): But wait, you say. Isn't an "assault weapon" the same as an assault rifle? No. No, it's not. "Assault RIFLE" is a military and technical term. It means, specifically, a rifle that is a compromise between a submachinegun and a battle rifle. It is light-weight, magazine-fed, select-fire (means it will go semi / one shot per trigger pull, or full-auto / machinegun), and fires an intermediate-power cartridge. That last part is because battle rifles in .30-06, .308 Winchester, 7.62x54 Russian, or 8mm Mauser are downright painful to fire in full auto. A 7.62x39 (AK and SKS round) is about as powerful as Grandpa's old .30-30 Winchester cartridge. The 5.56x45mm cartridge fired by the M16, is a .223 Winchester, aka a .22 on steroids. So, an assault rifle is a real thing, with a specific set of characteristics, INCLUDING being a machinegun. "Assault weapons", not so much. Back to the discussion.
When Vice President Biden said, in the primary debates in '08, that he'd written the original "assault weapon" ban, he was in fact correct. But wait, you say. Didn't Dianne Feinstein write the ban? She wrote the one that PASSED in 1994. Biden's original one basically got laughed out of congress. Something to do, maybe, with the wording that banned anything with a bayonet lug. The way Biden (or the clueless dolts on his staff) worded his ban, it would have applied to MUSKETS. Since I was a Civil War target shooter in those years, I got very familiar with that bit of flummery.
So, what's an "assault weapon"? Isn't that a technical term? Nope. It's a Humpty Dumpty phrase. Remember Alice in Wonderland?
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
"Assault Weapon", then, means whatever the politician using it wants it to mean. Likewise, journalists. People around me get extremely tired of my ranting at the radio, when some journalist says, "The shooter used an assault rifle..." and I yell "No, he didn't! It was a semi-auto!". Generally, it means "Scary black rifle that looks military, but is mechanically indistinguishable from that wood-stocked hunting rifle."
But what do you mean, by "scam"? Isn't that a strong phrase? I mean that every single rationale for distinguishing an "assault weapon" from a "sporting rifle" is total and utter bullshit. Take pistol grips, for example. The Brady bunch will tell you that "A pistol grip [...] facilitates spray-fire from the hip without losing control. A pistol grip also facilitates one-handed shooting." That quote was copied-and-pasted directly from the Brady website. It is absolute, total, and utter bullshit. A pistol grip makes it HARDER to shoot from the hip, and if you "spray fire from the hip", you'll waste ammo anyway. Here's the proof, they really do say that: http://bradycampaign.org/legislation/msassaultweapons
Now, as to it being a deliberate con job, let's ask the guy who invented the phrase, Josh Sugarmann: "Assault weapons [...] are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons -- anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun -- can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons." http://www.vpc.org/studies/awaconc.htm if you want to read the whole thing. Bring a barf bag. The [...] snip was some side comments that Sugarmann threw in.
Basically, there are two major groups of people who support banning "assault weapons". Group one is people like Sarah Brady, Dianne Feinstein, Josh Sugarmann, and their ilk. These people HAVE to know what's actually going on. Either that, or they're incompetent to write legislation.
Group two is mostly people who don't actually know enough about guns to see through the BS, but are either scared of guns, or riding a wave of emotion, and have been hoodwinked into supporting bans by the scammers. People like Carolyn "Shoulder thing that goes up" McCarthy, and most of the Misguided Mommie March, and smaller gun-control orgs, are generally in this category.
There are a few other sub-groups. Some are even gun owners. For example, there is a sub-species of gun owner out there, frequently called a "Fudd". That's as in Elmer Fudd. A Fudd will preface his remarks with "I'm a gun owner / hunter / sportsman, BUT..." followed with "Nobody needs an assault weapon for [x-purpose]." The Fudd is a particularly blind sort -- he is willing to throw folks who own black rifles under the bus, as long as he can keep his walnut-stocked Bambi-zapper.
I suspect that this may open some eyes, and will probably piss quite a few people off. To those who get pissed, I have a challenge. I have several guns that are, and several that aren't, "assault weapons" under the '94-04 definition. Meet me at the range. I'll provide guns, ammo, and instruction. When we're done, you tell me if you think you've been scammed by the banners.
[DW Original]
Here it is: The entire "assault weapon" issue is a SCAM. That's right. it's a con job, perpetrated by people who wanted to get traction for banning something, anything, back in the late 1980s and early 90s.
A strong accusation, you say? Can't be true, you say? Let's look at some history. After Ronald Reagan and Jim Brady were shot, the Bradys hooked up with what was then Handgun Control, Inc. They figured that they could ride the wave of emotion over the Reagan and Brady shootings, to ban handguns. The effort fizzled. We note, here, that in the 1930s when the National Firearms Act was being written, early versions wanted to make all handguns into NFA items. That got shot down, RIGHT quick. Same thing, in the late 80s / early 90s: there was widespread opposition to banning handguns.
So, we get to around 1988 or '89, and the ban-them-all crowd is feeling frustrated. Then, Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center comes up with an idea. Make up a scary new propaganda term, "assault weapon". It doesn't actually have to MEAN anything (and didn't, before it became a legal term-of-art as defined in the 1994-2004 ban). Use the new propaganda phrase, to push for the idea of banning something, ANYthing, just to get something banned.
A quick side note (you may skip if you've heard this): But wait, you say. Isn't an "assault weapon" the same as an assault rifle? No. No, it's not. "Assault RIFLE" is a military and technical term. It means, specifically, a rifle that is a compromise between a submachinegun and a battle rifle. It is light-weight, magazine-fed, select-fire (means it will go semi / one shot per trigger pull, or full-auto / machinegun), and fires an intermediate-power cartridge. That last part is because battle rifles in .30-06, .308 Winchester, 7.62x54 Russian, or 8mm Mauser are downright painful to fire in full auto. A 7.62x39 (AK and SKS round) is about as powerful as Grandpa's old .30-30 Winchester cartridge. The 5.56x45mm cartridge fired by the M16, is a .223 Winchester, aka a .22 on steroids. So, an assault rifle is a real thing, with a specific set of characteristics, INCLUDING being a machinegun. "Assault weapons", not so much. Back to the discussion.
When Vice President Biden said, in the primary debates in '08, that he'd written the original "assault weapon" ban, he was in fact correct. But wait, you say. Didn't Dianne Feinstein write the ban? She wrote the one that PASSED in 1994. Biden's original one basically got laughed out of congress. Something to do, maybe, with the wording that banned anything with a bayonet lug. The way Biden (or the clueless dolts on his staff) worded his ban, it would have applied to MUSKETS. Since I was a Civil War target shooter in those years, I got very familiar with that bit of flummery.
So, what's an "assault weapon"? Isn't that a technical term? Nope. It's a Humpty Dumpty phrase. Remember Alice in Wonderland?
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
"Assault Weapon", then, means whatever the politician using it wants it to mean. Likewise, journalists. People around me get extremely tired of my ranting at the radio, when some journalist says, "The shooter used an assault rifle..." and I yell "No, he didn't! It was a semi-auto!". Generally, it means "Scary black rifle that looks military, but is mechanically indistinguishable from that wood-stocked hunting rifle."
But what do you mean, by "scam"? Isn't that a strong phrase? I mean that every single rationale for distinguishing an "assault weapon" from a "sporting rifle" is total and utter bullshit. Take pistol grips, for example. The Brady bunch will tell you that "A pistol grip [...] facilitates spray-fire from the hip without losing control. A pistol grip also facilitates one-handed shooting." That quote was copied-and-pasted directly from the Brady website. It is absolute, total, and utter bullshit. A pistol grip makes it HARDER to shoot from the hip, and if you "spray fire from the hip", you'll waste ammo anyway. Here's the proof, they really do say that: http://bradycampaign.org/legislation/msassaultweapons
Now, as to it being a deliberate con job, let's ask the guy who invented the phrase, Josh Sugarmann: "Assault weapons [...] are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons -- anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun -- can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons." http://www.vpc.org/studies/awaconc.htm if you want to read the whole thing. Bring a barf bag. The [...] snip was some side comments that Sugarmann threw in.
Basically, there are two major groups of people who support banning "assault weapons". Group one is people like Sarah Brady, Dianne Feinstein, Josh Sugarmann, and their ilk. These people HAVE to know what's actually going on. Either that, or they're incompetent to write legislation.
Group two is mostly people who don't actually know enough about guns to see through the BS, but are either scared of guns, or riding a wave of emotion, and have been hoodwinked into supporting bans by the scammers. People like Carolyn "Shoulder thing that goes up" McCarthy, and most of the Misguided Mommie March, and smaller gun-control orgs, are generally in this category.
There are a few other sub-groups. Some are even gun owners. For example, there is a sub-species of gun owner out there, frequently called a "Fudd". That's as in Elmer Fudd. A Fudd will preface his remarks with "I'm a gun owner / hunter / sportsman, BUT..." followed with "Nobody needs an assault weapon for [x-purpose]." The Fudd is a particularly blind sort -- he is willing to throw folks who own black rifles under the bus, as long as he can keep his walnut-stocked Bambi-zapper.
I suspect that this may open some eyes, and will probably piss quite a few people off. To those who get pissed, I have a challenge. I have several guns that are, and several that aren't, "assault weapons" under the '94-04 definition. Meet me at the range. I'll provide guns, ammo, and instruction. When we're done, you tell me if you think you've been scammed by the banners.
[DW Original]