Assault Weapons
I hear so much misinformation on the subject of so-called ‘assault weapons’, that I thought I’d spend a few minutes to put together some actual, verifiable facts on the subject.
First, the term ‘assault weapon’ itself… this term was made up by anti-gun groups for political purposes. From a gun owner’s perspective, the category simply doesn’t exist. The idea is this, if we can’t get political support to eliminate guns entirely, we’ll divide guns up into different groups, and go after them one at a time. The term is applied to anything that looks like something the military might use. Functionally, there is absolutely no difference between a modern AR15 and great-grandpa’s 1905 Winchester hunting rifle. The only difference is in how it looks. Remember the ‘Assault Weapons Ban’ of the Clinton era? It banned guns, not based on functionality, or capability, but simply on cosmetic features, such as adjustable stocks, pistol grips, etc.
Assault weapons use extremely powerful ammunition: No, they don’t. The most common rifles that would be considered ‘assault weapons’ by people who use that term, would be the AR family of rifles. In fact this platform uses a very mild cartridge. From a hunting perspective, this caliber is suitable only for small game… typically referred to as a varmint round, used mostly for prairie dogs, coyotes, that sort of thing. Compared to serious hunting calibers, these rifles are quite mild.
Assault weapons are only good for killing people: Tell that to the millions of shooters who use AR15 type rifles for competitions, hunting, target shooting, or just plain fun. AR platform rifles are light weight, easy to shoot, low recoil, accurate, reliable, and modular. Those qualities make it an ideal target rifle. It’s the single most popular type of rifle in the civilian market, and has been for years.
Assault weapons are the same as Machine Guns: Ask the BATFE on that one, they created the definition. A Machine Gun is capable of firing multiple rounds with a single pull of the trigger. Machine guns are strictly regulated and heavily taxed by the BATFE. They have a list of civilian owned machine guns, and it’s been illegal to add to that list since 1986. The hundreds of thousands of AR and AK type rifles being sold every year in this country are all semi-automatic, meaning that a single round is fired with each press of the trigger. They can’t be converted into machine guns legally, and have been designed specifically to make such a conversion as difficult as possible.
Assault weapons are commonly used by criminals: Wrong. According to the FBI, 358 murders were committed in 2010 by all types of rifles combined, we don’t know how many of those could be considered ‘Assault Weapons’, as the FBI doesn’t use that term either. To put that number in perspective, 745 people were beaten to death with bare hands during the same year. Hardly the scourge of humanity that the anti-gun people would have you believe.
Banning guns, assault rifles or otherwise, provides no benefit to society, and has many negative consequences. Like it or not, the cat is out of the bag, when it comes to firearms. They’re not terribly complicated devices, a functional firearm can be built with tools and materials found in a typical suburban garage. Keeping such a simple device completely out of the reach of people willing to commit crimes is simply impossible. They exist, and they’re always going to, at least in the hands of criminals, who, by definition, don’t follow the laws. Thus, if you ban guns, only criminals will have them. Guns are used defensively by law abiding citizens many times as often as they are used by criminals. They also prevent corrupt governments from committing acts of genocide. Hitler had to ban guns before he could round up the Jews. Same in Rwanda, Russia, China, everywhere in the world where this type of despicable behavior has happened, civilian gun ownership was banned. The founding fathers of this great nation believed that an armed populace was the only guarantee of a free society, and they placed the 2nd amendment in the bill of rights to keep that promise. I, for one, will fight with any means necessary to keep that promise for my children.