Tag Archives: Federal Assault Weapons Ban

People Who Don’t Know Anything About Guns Making Gun Laws…

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Maura Healey, the attorney general of Massachusetts, posted an article in the Boston Globe today. Attorney General Healey has declared war on guns.

The article reports:

The Massachusetts assault weapons ban mirrors the federal ban Congress allowed to expire in 2004. It prohibits the sale of specific weapons like the Colt AR-15 and AK-47 and explicitly bans “copies or duplicates” of those weapons. But gun manufacturers have taken it upon themselves to define what a “copy” or “duplicate” weapon is. They market “state compliant” copycat versions of their assault weapons to Massachusetts buyers. They sell guns without a flash suppressor or folding or telescoping stock, for example, small tweaks that do nothing to limit the lethalness of the weapon.

That will end now. On Wednesday, we are sending a directive to all gun manufacturers and dealers that makes clear that the sale of these copycat assault weapons is illegal in Massachusetts. With this directive, we will ensure we get the full protection intended when lawmakers enacted our assault weapons ban, not the watered-down version of those protections offered by gun manufacturers.

The directive specifically outlines two tests to determine what constitutes a “copy” or “duplicate” of a prohibited weapon. If a gun’s operating system is essentially the same as that of a banned weapon, or if the gun has components that are interchangeable with those of a banned weapon, it’s a “copy” or “duplicate,” and it is illegal. Assault weapons prohibited under our laws cannot be altered in any way to make their sale or possession legal in Massachusetts.

I am having trouble understanding why the state wants to ban AR-15’s. The AR-15 is a semi-automatic weapon. It is not an assault rifle. The AR does not stand for assault rifle as some people opposed to gun ownership would have you believe–it stands for “Armalite rifle, design 15.”

Yesterday The Conservative Tribune posted an article that further explains the problem with the Attorney General’s decision.

The article at The Conservative Tribune reports:

She (Maura Healey) ended her piece with the typical liberal huffing and puffing about “if Congress won’t act, we must” because of some “moral obligation” that we have heard far too often over the past seven years.

Furthermore, this woman revealed that she had no idea about the guns she seeks to ban. The rifles she spoke of are “state compliant,” meaning they fully comply with the state ban as it was written and passed and upheld in court. She doesn’t like that, so she is now moving the goalposts, so to speak.

Furthermore, her redefinition of “copy/duplicate” to include firearms that use the same operating system would seem to encompass far more than just the scary AR-15s and AK-47s she is fretting about, as the overwhelming majority of modern firearms, no matter what they look like, have pretty basic operating systems across the board (with some exceptions, of course).

This gun-grabbing attorney general has overstepped her bounds, and will hopefully be put back in her place real quick once the avalanche of lawsuits she has invited with her extra-legal actions begin rolling in.

See you in court, Ms. Healey.

Note to Ms. Healey–guns are not the problem. The terrorist in France used a truck. The terrorist at the French resort used a knife. Another terrorist used an axe. Guns are not the problem.

There are conflicting reports as to whether or not the Congressional Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 actually had any impact. People who want to commit crimes are not generally concerned about weapons that are banned and often have sources of weapons that are not interested in following the law. All a gun ban does is allow the percentage of the population that knows nothing about guns to feel safer (while being unable to defend themselves) and let the criminals know that they will be unlike to meet resistance when they commit their crimes.

Things I Needed To Learn

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As a relatively new resident of North Carolina, I was very uneducated in the gun culture in this state. Everyone seems to have a gun and go shooting periodically. I am working to correct my ignorance and learn about guns and gun safety, but it is going to take me a while to catch up. Meanwhile, I have gotten some help from a friend on Twitter.

Here are some excerpts from a post of Twitter about assault rifles:

The AR-15 rifle is the most popular rifle sold in America today.

Sometimes the AR-15 is incorrectly called an ‘assault rifle.’ Prior to 1989, the term “assault weapon” did not exist in the lexicon of firearms. It is a political term, developed by anti-gun publicists to expand the category of “assault rifles.”

The M4A1 carbine is a U.S. military service rifle. It is also an assault rifle. It is fully automatic–it fires multiple rounds. It is also sometimes called a machine gun. In 1986, the Federal government banned the sale or transfer of new machine guns to civilians.

The AR-15 is semi-automatic (like most guns sold in America). That means that when you pull the trigger, one round is fired.

According to a 1988 report by the Violence Policy Center, an anti-gun lobby: “Handgun restriction is simply not viewed as a priority. 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.”

The article goes on to explain that since machine guns were already banned, so the anti-gun lobby began a campaign to convince the public that the semi-automatic guns were machine guns. This was relatively easy to do because of public ignorance and because of the military look of some of these guns.

The article further explains:

On September 13, 1994, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban went into effect. A Washington Post editorial published two days later was candid about the ban’s real purpose:

[N]o one should have any illusions about what was accomplished [by the ban]. Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime. The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control.

The end game of some of those in power is to take the Second Amendment rights away from Americans. After the Orlando shooting, there will be more cries for gun control. Where are the cries for better investigations of people making inflammatory statements about murdering people in the name of Islam? The problem in Orlando was not the gun.