On March 1st, The Heritage Foundation posted an article about the debate on gun control. The article lists four faulty ideas currently being discussed. Please follow the link to read the entire article.
The four ideas:
1) Banning ‘Assault Weapons’
2) Banning ‘High-Capacity Magazines’
3) Background Checks On All Gun Sales
4) Eliminating Immunity for Gun Manufacturers
Even if they were to pass constitutional muster, none of these are good ideas.
In 2004, the Updated Assessment of the Federal AssaultWeapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003 was released. The purpose of this report was to study the impact of the Assault Weapons Ban that Congress had passed in 1994.
The article at Heritage notes the conclusions of that study:
Even assuming that every criminal turned in his or her “assault weapon” and never obtained a different type of firearm to commit the same crimes in the future, there would be likely be no noticeable drop in gun-related crime as a result of this policy.
That is, in fact, exactly what the official study of the original federal assault-weapons ban found in 2004.
The article notes the current liability laws regarding gun manufacturers:
It’s important first to understand what the law currently is with respect to gun manufacturers and immunity.
Under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, gun manufacturers (as well as sellers and distributors) are still liable for selling defective products, for failing to abide by numerous federal regulations regarding safety, sales, and records, for false advertising, and for a wide array of other widely recognized tort claims.
The law only protects them from lawsuits claiming that they are liable whenever a third party criminally misuses a firearm that the company manufactured and sold in compliance with the law.
To hold a manufacturer liable for the misuse of their product is ridiculous. Are the manufacturers protected if they put a warning label on their guns that says “Not intended to be used to shoot people”?
The Founding Fathers put The Second Amendment in The Bill of Rights for a reason. The Bill of Rights was written to limit the power of government. The Second Amendment is part of that limitation–it is intended to limit the power of government–not the power of the people. Losing our Second Amendment rights would be a huge step toward government tyranny.
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